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Title: St. George and St. Michael
Author: George MacDonald
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5753]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Distributed Proofreading Team
ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL
BY GEORGE MACDONALD
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
1876
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER I. DOROTHY AND RICHARD.
CHAPTER II. RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.
CHAPTER III. THE WITCH.
CHAPTER IV. A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.
CHAPTER V. ANIMADVERSIONS.
CHAPTER VI. PREPARATIONS.
CHAPTER VII. REFLECTIONS.
CHAPTER VIII. AN ADVENTURE.
CHAPTER IX. LOVE AND WAR.
CHAPTER X. DOROTHY'S REFUGE.
CHAPTER XI. RAGLAN CASTLE.
CHAPTER XII. THE TWO MARQUISES.
CHAPTER XIII. THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.
CHAPTER XIV. SEVERAL PEOPLE.
CHAPTER XV. HUSBAND AND WIFE.
CHAPTER XVI. DOROTHY'S INITIATION.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER XVII. THE FIRE-ENGINE.
CHAPTER XVIII. MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOSSOMS.
CHAPTER XIX. THE ENCHANTED CHAIR.
CHAPTER XX. MOLLY AND THE WHITE HORSE.
CHAPTER XXI. THE DAMSEL WHICH FELL SICK.
CHAPTER XXII. THE CATARACT.
CHAPTER XXIII. AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE GREAT MOGUL.
CHAPTER XXV. RICHARD HEYWOOD.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE WITCH'S COTTAGE.
CHAPTER XXVII. THE MOAT OF THE KEEP.
CHAPTER XXVIII. RAGLAN STABLES.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE APPARITION.
CHAPTER XXX. RICHARD ANDTHE MARQUIS.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE SLEEPLESS.
CHAPTER XXXII. THE TURRET CHAMBER.
CHAPTER XXXIII. JUDGE GOUT.
CHAPTER XXXIV. AN EVIL TIME.
CHAPTER XXXV. THE DELIVERER.
CHAPTER XXXVI. THE DISCOVERY.
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE HOROSCOPE.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE EXORCISM.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAPTER XXXIX. NEWBURY.
CHAPTER XL. DOROTHY AND ROWLAND.
CHAPTER XLI. GLAMORGAN.
CHAPTER XLII. A NEW SOLDIER.
CHAPTER XLIII. LADY AND BISHOP.
CHAPTER XLIV. THE KING.
CHAPTER XLV. THE SECRET INTERVIEW.
CHAPTER XLVI. GIFTS OF HEALING.
CHAPTER XLVII. THE POET-PHYSICIAN.
CHAPTER XLVIII. HONOURABLE DISGRACE.
CHAPTER XLIX. SIEGE.
CHAPTER L. A SALLY.
CHAPTER LI. UNDER THE MOAT.
CHAPTER LII. THE UNTOOTHSOME PLUM.
CHAPTER LIII. FAITHFUL FOES.
CHAPTER LIV. DOMUS DISSOLVITUR.
CHAPTER LV. R. I. P.
CHAPTER LVI. RICHARD AND CASPER.
CHAPTER LVII. THE SKELETON.
CHAPTER LVIII. LOVE AND NO LEASING.
CHAPTER LIX. AVE! VALE! SALVE!
ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL.
CHAPTER I.
DOROTHY AND RICHARD.
It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the
lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the
slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung
trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape
beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in
the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers
bordering the little lawn, or the honeysuckle covering the wide
porch, from which the slow rain dropped ceaselessly upon the
pebble-paving below, could not give--steepy slopes, hedge-divided
into small fields, some green and dotted with red cattle, others
crowded with shocks of bedraggled and drooping corn, which looked
suffering and patient.
The room to which the window having this prospect belonged was large
and low, with a dark floor of uncarpeted oak. It opened immediately
upon the porch, and although a good fire of logs blazed on the
hearth, was chilly to the sense of the old man, who, with his feet
on the skin of a fallow-deer, sat gazing sadly into the flames,
which shone rosy through the thin hands spread out before them. At
the opposite corner of the great low-arched chimney sat a lady past
the prime of life, but still beautiful, though the beauty was all
but merged in the loveliness that rises from the heart to the face
of such as have taken the greatest step in life--that is, as the
old proverb says, the step out of doors. She was plainly yet rather
richly dressed, in garments of an old-fashioned and well-preserved
look. Her hair was cut short above her forehead, and frizzed out in
bunches of little curls on each side. On her head was a covering of
dark stuff, like a nun's veil, which fell behind and on her
shoulders. Close round her neck was a string of amber beads, that
gave a soft harmonious light to her complexion. Her dark eyes looked
as if they found repose there, so quietly did they rest on the face
of the old man, who was plainly a clergyman. It was a small, pale,
thin, delicately and symmetrically formed face, yet not the less a
strong one, with endurance on the somewhat sad brow, and force in
the closed lips, while a good conscience looked clear out of the
grey eyes.
They had been talking about the fast-gathering tide of opinion
which, driven on by the wind of words, had already begun to beat so
furiously against the moles and ramparts of Church and kingdom. The
execution of lord Strafford was news that had not yet begun to 'hiss
the speaker.'
'It is indeed an evil time,' said the old man. 'The world has seldom
seen its like.'
'But tell me, master Herbert,' said the lady, 'why comes it in this
our day? For our sins or for the sins of our fathers?'
'Be it far from me to presume to set forth the ways of Providence!'
returned her guest. 'I meddle not, like some that should be wiser,
with the calling of the prophet. It is enough for me to know that
ever and again the pride of man will gather to "a mighty and a
fearful head," and, like a swollen mill-pond overfed of rains, burst
the banks that confine it, whether they be the laws of the land or
the ordinances of the church, usurping on the fruitful meadows, the
hope of life for man and beast. Alas!' he went on, with a new
suggestion from the image he had been using, 'if the beginning of
strife be as the letting out of water, what shall be the end of that
strife whose beginning is the letting out of blood?'
'Think you then, good sir, that thus it has always been? that such
times of fierce ungodly tempest must ever follow upon seasons of
peace and comfort?--even as your cousin of holy memory, in his
verses concerning the church militant, writes:
"Thus also sin and darkness follow still The church and sun, with
all their power and skill."'
'Truly it seems so. But I thank God the days of my pilgrimage are
nearly numbered. To judge by the tokens the wise man gives us, the
mourners are already going about my streets. The almond-tree
flourisheth at least.'
He smiled as he spoke, laying his hand on his grey head.
'But think of those whom we must leave behind us, master Herbert.
How will it fare with them?' said the lady in troubled tone, and
glancing in the direction of the window.
In the window sat a girl, gazing from it with the look of a child
who had uttered all her incantations, and could imagine no abatement
in the steady rain-pour.
'We shall leave behind us strong hearts and sound heads too,' said
Mr. Herbert. 'And I bethink me there will be none stronger or
sounder than those of your young cousins, my late pupils, of whom I
hear brave things from Oxford, and in whose affection my spirit
constantly rejoices.'
'You will be glad to hear such good news of your relatives,
Dorothy,' said the lady, addressing her daughter.
Even as she said the words, the setting sun broke through the mass
of grey cloud, and poured over the earth a level flood of radiance,
in which the red wheat glowed, and the drops that hung on every ear
flashed like diamonds. The girl's hair caught it as she turned her
face to answer her mother, and an aureole of brown-tinted gold
gleamed for a moment about her head.
'I am glad that you are pleased, madam, but you know I have never
seen them--or heard of them, except from master Herbert, who has,
indeed, often spoke rare things of them.'
'Mistress Dorothy will still know the reason why,' said the
clergyman, smiling, and the two resumed their conversation. But the
girl rose, and, turning again to the window, stood for a moment rapt
in the transfiguration passing upon the world. The vault of grey was
utterly shattered, but, gathering glory from ruin, was hurrying in
rosy masses away from under the loftier vault of blue. The ordered
shocks upon twenty fields sent their long purple shadows across the
flush; and the evening wind, like the sighing that follows departed
tears, was shaking the jewels from their feathery tops. The
sunflowers and hollyhocks no longer cowered under the tyranny of the
rain, but bowed beneath the weight of the gems that adorned them. A
flame burned as upon an altar on the top of every tree, and the very
pools that lay on the distant road had their message of light to
give to the hopeless earth. As she gazed, another hue than that of
the sunset, yet rosy too, gradually flushed the face of the maiden.
She turned suddenly from the window, and left the room, shaking a
shower of diamonds from the honeysuckle as she passed out through
the porch upon the gravel walk.
Possibly her elders found her departure a relief, for although they
took no notice of it, their talk became more confidential, and was
soon mingled with many names both of rank and note, with a
familiarity which to a stranger might have seemed out of keeping
with the humbler character of their surroundings.
But when Dorothy Vaughan had passed a corner of the house to another
garden more ancient in aspect, and in some things quaint even to
grotesqueness, she was in front of a portion of the house which
indicated a far statelier past--closed and done with, like the rooms
within those shuttered windows. The inhabited wing she had left
looked like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land; nor did
this appearance greatly belie the present position of the family.
For generations it had been slowly descending in the scale of
worldly account, and the small portion of the house occupied by the
widow and daughter of sir Ringwood Vaughan was larger than their
means could match with correspondent outlay. Such, however, was the
character of lady Vaughan, that, although she mingled little with
the great families in the neighbourhood, she was so much respected,
that she would have been a welcome visitor to most of them.
The reverend Mr. Matthew Herbert was a clergyman from the Welsh
border, a man of some note and influence, who had been the personal
friend both of his late relative George Herbert and of the famous
Dr. Donne. Strongly attached to the English church, and recoiling
with disgust from the practices of the puritans--as much, perhaps,
from refinement of taste as abhorrence of schism--he had never yet
fallen into such a passion for episcopacy as to feel any cordiality
towards the schemes of the archbishop. To those who knew him his
silence concerning it was a louder protest against the policy of
Laud than the fiercest denunciations of the puritans. Once only had
he been heard to utter himself unguardedly in respect of the
primate, and that was amongst friends, and after the second glass
permitted of his cousin George. 'Tut! laud me no Laud,' he said. 'A
skipping bishop is worse than a skipping king.' Once also he had
been overheard murmuring to himself by way of consolement, 'Bishops
pass; the church remains.' He had been a great friend of the late
sir Ringwood; and although the distance from his parish was too
great to be travelled often, he seldom let a year go by without
paying a visit to his friend's widow and daughter.
Turning her back on the cenotaph of their former greatness, Dorothy
dived into a long pleached alley, careless of the drip from
overhead, and hurrying through it came to a circular patch of thin
grass, rounded by a lofty hedge of yew-trees, in the midst of which
stood what had once been a sun-dial. It mattered little, however,
that only the stump of a gnomon was left, seeing the hedge around it
had grown to such a height in relation to the diameter of the
circle, that it was only for a very brief hour or so in the middle
of a summer's day, when, of all periods, the passage of Time seems
least to concern humanity, that it could have served to measure his
march. The spot had, indeed, a time-forsaken look, as if it lay
buried in the bosom of the past, and the present had forgotten it.
Before emerging from the alley, she slackened her pace,
half-stopped, and, stooping a little in her tucked-up skirt, threw a
bird-like glance around the opener space; then stepping into it, she
looked up to the little disc of sky, across which the clouds, their
roses already withered, sailed dim and grey once more, while behind
them the stars were beginning to recall their half-forgotten message
from regions unknown to men. A moment, and she went up to the dial,
stood there for another moment, and was on the point of turning to
leave the spot, when, as if with one great bound, a youth stood
between her and the entrance of the alley.
'Ah ha, mistress Dorothy, you do not escape me so!' he cried,
spreading out his arms as if to turn back some runaway creature.
But mistress Dorothy was startled, and mistress Dorothy did not
choose to be startled, and therefore mistress Dorothy was dignified,
if not angry.
'I do not like such behaviour, Richard,' she said. 'It ill suits
with the time. Why did you hide behind the hedge, and then leap
forth so rudely?'
'I thought you saw me,' answered the youth. 'Pardon my heedlessness,
Dorothy. I hope I have not startled you too much.'
As he spoke he stooped over the hand he had caught, and would have
carried it to his lips, but the girl, half-pettishly, snatched it
away, and, with a strange mixture of dignity, sadness, and annoyance
in her tone, said--
'There has been something too much of this, Richard, and I begin to
be ashamed of it.'
'Ashamed!' echoed the youth. 'Of what? There is nothing but me to be
ashamed of, and what can I have done since yesterday?'
'No, Richard; I am not ashamed of you, but I am ashamed of--of--this
way of meeting--and--and----'
'Surely that is strange, when we can no more remember the day in
which we have not met than that in which we met first! No, dear
Dorothy----'
'It is not our meeting, Richard; and if you would but think as
honestly as you speak, you would not require to lay upon me the
burden of explanation. It is this foolish way we have got into of
late--kissing hands--and--and--always meeting by the old sun-dial,
or in some other over-quiet spot. Why do you not come to the house?
My mother would give you the same welcome as any time these
last--how many years, Richard?'
'Are you quite sure of that, Dorothy?'
'Well--I did fancy she spoke with something more of ceremony the
last time you met. But, consider, she has seen so much less of you
of late. Yet I am sure she has all but a mother's love in her heart
towards you. For your mother was dear to her as her own soul.'
'I would it were so, Dorothy! For then, perhaps, your mother would
not shrink from being my mother too. When we are married, Dorothy--'
'Married!' exclaimed the girl. 'What of marrying, indeed!' And she
turned sideways from him with an indignant motion. 'Richard,' she
went on, after a marked and yet but momentary pause, for the youth
had not had time to say a word, 'it has been very wrong in me to
meet you after this fashion. I know it now, for see what such things
lead to! If you knew it, you have done me wrong.'
'Dearest Dorothy!' exclaimed the youth, taking her hand again, of
which this time she seemed hardly aware, 'did you not know from the
very vanished first that I loved you with all my heart, and that to
tell you so would have been to tell the sun that he shines warm at
noon in midsummer? And I did think you had a little--something for
me, Dorothy, your old playmate, that you did not give to every other
acquaintance. Think of the houses we have built and the caves we
have dug together--of our rabbits, and urchins, and pigeons, and
peacocks!'
'We are children no longer,' returned Dorothy. 'To behave as if we
were would be to keep our eyes shut after we are awake. I like you,
Richard, you know; but why this--where is the use of all this--new
sort of thing? Come up with me to the house, where master Herbert is
now talking to my mother in the large parlour. The good man will be
glad to see you.'
'I doubt it, Dorothy. He and my father, as I am given to understand,
think so differently in respect of affairs now pending betwixt the
parliament and the king, that--'
'It were more becoming, Richard, if the door of your lips opened to
the king first, and let the parliament follow.'
'Well said!' returned the youth with a smile. 'But let it be my
excuse that I speak as I am wont to hear.'
The girl's hand had lain quiet in that of the youth, but now it
started from it like a scared bird. She stepped two paces back, and
drew herself up.
'And you, Richard?' she said, interrogatively.
'What would you ask, Dorothy?' returned the youth, taking a step
nearer, to which she responded by another backward ere she replied.
'I would know whom you choose to serve--whether God or Satan;
whether you are of those who would set at nought the laws of the
land----'
'Insist on their fulfilment, they say, by king as well as people'
interrupted Richard.
'They would tear their mother in pieces----'
'Their mother!' repeated Richard, bewildered.
'Their mother, the church,' explained Dorothy.
'Oh!' said Richard. 'Nay, they would but cast out of her the wolves
in sheep's clothing that devour the lambs.'
The girl was silent. Anger glowed on her forehead and flashed from
her grey eyes. She stood one moment, then turned to leave him, but
half turned again to say scornfully--
'I must go at once to my mother! I knew not I had left her with such
a wolf as master Herbert is like to prove!'
'Master Herbert is no bishop, Dorothy!'
'The bishops, then, are the wolves, master Heywood?' said the girl,
with growing indignation.
'Dear Dorothy, I am but repeating what I hear. For my own part, I
know little of these matters. And what are they to us if we love one
another?'
'I tell you I am a child no longer,' flamed Dorothy.
'You were seventeen last St. George's Day, and I shall be nineteen
next St. Michael's.'
'St. George for merry England!' cried Dorothy.
'St. Michael for the Truth!' cried Richard.
'So be it. Good-bye, then,' said the girl, going.
'What DO you mean, Dorothy?' said Richard; and she stood to hear,
but with her back towards him, and, as it were, hovering midway in a
pace. 'Did not St. Michael also slay his dragon? Why should the
knights part company? Believe me, Dorothy, I care more for a smile
from you than for all the bishops in the church, or all the
presbyters out of it.'
'You take needless pains to prove yourself a foolish boy, Richard;
and if I go not to my mother at once, I fear I shall learn to
despise you--which I would not willingly.'
'Despise me! Do you take me for a coward then, Dorothy?'
'I say not that. I doubt not, for the matter of swords and pistols,
you are much like other male creatures; but I protest I could never
love a man who preferred my company to the service of his king.'
She glided into the alley and sped along its vaulted twilight, her
white dress gleaming and clouding by fits as she went.
The youth stood for a moment petrified, then started to overtake
her, but stood stock-still at the entrance of the alley, and
followed her only with his eyes as she went.
When Dorothy reached the house, she did not run up to her room that
she might weep unseen. She was still too much annoyed with Richard
to regret having taken such leave of him. She only swallowed down a
little balloonful of sobs, and went straight into the parlour, where
her mother and Mr. Herbert still sat, and resumed her seat in the
bay window. Her heightened colour, an occasional toss of her head
backwards, like that with which a horse seeks ease from the bearing-
rein, generally followed by a renewal of the attempt to swallow
something of upward tendency, were the only signs of her
discomposure, and none of them were observed by her mother or her
guest. Could she have known, however, what feelings had already
begun to rouse themselves in the mind of him whose boyishness was an
offence to her, she would have found it more difficult to keep such
composure.
Dorothy's was a face whose forms were already so decided that,
should no softening influences from the central regions gain the
ascendancy, beyond a doubt age must render it hard and unlovely. In
all the roundness and freshness of girlhood, it was handsome rather
than beautiful, beautiful rather than lovely. And yet it was
strongly attractive, for it bore clear indication of a nature to be
trusted. If her grey eyes were a little cold, they were honest eyes,
with a rare look of steadfastness; and if her lips were a little too
closely pressed, it was clearly from any cause rather than bad
temper. Neither head, hands, nor feet were small, but they were fine
in form and movement; and for the rest of her person, tall and
strong as Richard was, Dorothy looked further advanced in the
journey of life than he.
She needed hardly, however, have treated his indifference to the
politics of the time with so much severity, seeing her own
acquaintance with and interest in them dated from that same
afternoon, during which, from lack of other employment, and the
weariness of a long morning of slow, dismal rain, she had been
listening to Mr. Herbert as he dwelt feelingly on the arrogance of
puritan encroachment, and the grossness of presbyterian insolence
both to kingly prerogative and episcopal authority, and drew a
touching picture of the irritant thwartings and pitiful insults to
which the gentle monarch was exposed in his attempts to support the
dignity of his divine office, and to cast its protecting skirt over
the defenceless church; and if it was with less sympathy that he
spoke of the fears which haunted the captive metropolitan, Dorothy
at least could detect no hidden sarcasm in the tone in which he
expressed his hope that Laud's devotion to the beauty of holiness
might not result in the dignity of martyrdom, as might well be
feared by those who were assured that the whole guilt of Strafford
lay in his return to his duty, and his subsequent devotion to the
interests of his royal master: to all this the girl had listened,
and her still sufficiently uncertain knowledge of the affairs of the
nation had, ere the talk was over, blossomed in a vague sense of
partizanship. It was chiefly her desire after the communion of
sympathy with Richard that had led her into the mistake of such a
hasty disclosure of her new feelings.
But her following words had touched him--whether to fine issues or
not remained yet poised on the knife-edge of the balancing will. His
first emotion partook of anger. As soon as she was out of sight a
spell seemed broken, and words came.
'A boy, indeed, mistress Dorothy!' he said. 'If ever it come to what
certain persons prophesy, you may wish me in truth, and that for the
sake of your precious bishops, the boy you call me now. Yes, you are
right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so!
Boy indeed I am--or have been--without a thought in my head but of
her. The sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the
winnowing fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me
take a side, though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I
shall take the side that seems to me the right one, were all the
fair Dorothies of the universe on the other. In very truth I should
be somewhat sorry to find the king and the bishops in the right,
lest my lady should flatter herself and despise me that I had chosen
after her showing, forsooth! This is master Herbert's doing, for
never before did I hear her speak after such fashion.'
While he thus spoke with himself, he stood, like the genius of the
spot, a still dusky figure on the edge of the night, into which his
dress of brown velvet, rich and sombre at once in the sunlight, all
but merged. Nearly for the first time in his life he was
experiencing the difficulty of making up his mind, not, however,
upon any of the important questions, his inattention to which had
exposed him to such sudden and unexpected severity, but merely as to
whether he should seek her again in the company of her mother and
Mr. Herbert, or return home. The result of his deliberation,
springing partly, no doubt, from anger, but that of no very virulent
type, was, that he turned his back on the alley, passed through a
small opening in the yew hedge, crossed a neglected corner of
woodland, by ways better known to him than to any one else, and came
out upon the main road leading to the gates of his father's park.
CHAPTER II.
RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.
Richard Heywood, as to bodily fashion, was a tall and already
powerful youth. The clear brown of his complexion spoke of plentiful
sunshine and air. A merry sparkle in the depths of his hazel eyes
relieved the shadows of rather notably heavy lids, themselves
heavily overbrowed--with a suggestion of character which had not
yet asserted itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his
nose, although of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than
clearness of line or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness
along with a definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had
not yet begun to compress and straighten out. His chin was at least
large enough not to contradict the promise of his face; his
shoulders were square, and his chest and limbs well developed:
altogether it was at present a fair tabernacle--of whatever sort the
indwelling divinity might yet turn out, fashioning it further after
his own nature.
His father and he were the only male descendants of an old Monmouthshire
family, of neither Welsh nor Norman, but as pure Saxon blood as might be
had within the clip of the ocean. Roger, the father, had once only or
twice in his lifetime been heard boast, in humorous fashion, that
although but a simple squire, he could, on this side the fog of
tradition, which nearer or further shrouds all origin, count a longer
descent than any of the titled families in the county, not excluding the
earl of Worcester himself. His character also would have gone far to
support any assertion he might have chosen to make as to the purity of
his strain. A notable immobility of nature--his friends called it
firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others
might think of him; a certain sternness of manner--an unreadiness, as it
were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with
which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him,
when he seemed always to give heed to the looks rather than the words of
him who spoke; these peculiarities had combined to produce a certain awe
of him in his inferiors, and a dislike, not unavowed, in his equals.
With his superiors he came seldom in contact, and to them his behaviour
was still more distant and unbending. But, although from these causes he
was far from being a favourite in the county, he was a man of such known
and acknowledged probity that, until of late, when party spirit ran high
and drew almost everybody, whether of consequence or not, to one side or
the other, there was nobody who would not have trusted Roger Heywood to
the uttermost. Even now, foes as well as friends acknowledged that he
was to be depended upon; while his own son looked up to him with a
reverence that in some measure overshadowed his affection. Such a
character as this had necessarily been slow in formation, and the
opinions which had been modified by it and had reacted upon it, had been
as unalterably as deliberately adopted. But affairs had approached a
crisis between king and parliament before one of his friends knew that
there were in his mind any opinions upon them in process of
formation--so reserved and monosyllabic had been his share in any
conversation upon topics which had for a long time been growing every
hour of more and more absorbing interest to all men either of
consequence, intelligence, property, or adventure. At last, however, it
had become clear, to the great annoyance of not a few amongst his
neighbours, that Heywood's leanings were to the parliament. But he had
never yet sought to influence his son in regard to the great questions
at issue.
His house was one of those ancient dwellings which have grown under
the hands to fit the wants of successive generations, and look as if
they had never been other than old; two-storied at most, and
many-gabled, with marvellous accretions and projections, the haunts
of yet more wonderful shadows. There, in a room he called his study,
shabby and small, containing a library more notable for quality and
selection than size, Richard the next morning sought and found him.
'Father!' he said, entering with some haste after the usual request
for admission.
'I am here, my son,' answered Roger, without lifting his eyes from
the small folio in which he was reading.
'I want to know, father, whether, when men differ, a man is bound to
take a side.'
'Nay, Richard, but a man is bound NOT to take a side save upon
reasons well considered and found good.'
'It may be, father, if you had seen fit to send me to Oxford, I
should have been better able to judge now.'
'I had my reasons, son Richard. Readier, perhaps, you might have
been, but fitter--no. Tell me what points you have in question.'
'That I can hardly say, sir. I only know there are points at issue
betwixt king and parliament which men appear to consider of
mightiest consequence. Will you tell me, father, why you have never
instructed me in these affairs of church and state? I trust it is
not because you count me unworthy of your confidence.'
'Far from it, my son. My silence hath respect to thy hearing and to
the judgment yet unawakened in thee. Who would lay in the arms of a
child that which must crush him to the earth? Years did I take to
meditate ere I resolved, and I know not yet if thou hast in thee the
power of meditation.'
'At least, father, I could try to understand, if you would unfold
your mind.'
'When you know what the matters at issue are, my son,--that is, when
you are able to ask me questions worthy of answer, I shall be ready
to answer thee, so far as my judgment will reach.'
'I thank you, father, In the meantime I am as one who knocks, and
the door is not opened unto him.'
'Rather art thou as one who loiters on the door-step, and lifts up
neither ring nor voice.'
'Surely, sir, I must first know the news.'
'Thou hast ears; keep them open. But at least you know, my son, that
on the twelfth day of May last my lord of Strafford lost his head.'
'Who took it from him, sir? King or parliament?'
'Even that might be made a question; but I answer, the High Court of
Parliament, my son.'
'Was the judgment a right one or a wrong, sir? Did he deserve the
doom?'
'Ah, there you put a question indeed! Many men say RIGHT, and many
men say WRONG. One man, I doubt me much, was wrong in the share HE
bore therein.'
'Who was he, sir?'
'Nay, nay, I will not forestall thine own judgment. But, in good
sooth, I might be more ready to speak my mind, were it not that I
greatly doubt some of those who cry loudest for liberty. I fear that
had they once the power, they would be the first to trample her
under foot. Liberty with some men means MY liberty to do, and THINE
to suffer. But all in good time, my son! The dawn is nigh.'
'You will tell me at least, father, what is the bone of contention?'
'My son, where there is contention, a bone shall not fail. It is but
a leg-bone now; it will be a rib to-morrow, and by and by doubtless
it will be the skull itself.'
'If you care for none of these things, sir, will not master
Flowerdew have a hard name for you? I know not what it means, but it
sounds of the gallows,' said Richard, looking rather doubtful as to
how his father might take it.
'Possibly, my son, I care more for the contention than the bone, for
while thieves quarrel honest men go their own ways. But what
ignorance I have kept thee in, and yet left thee to bear the
reproach of a puritan!' said the father, smiling grimly. 'Thou
meanest master Flowerdew would call me a Gallio, and thou takest the
Roman proconsul for a gallows-bird! Verily thou art not destined to
prolong the renown of thy race for letters. I marvel what thy cousin
Thomas would say to the darkness of thy ignorance.'
'See what comes of not sending me to Oxford, sir: I know not who is
my cousin Thomas.'
'A man both of learning and wisdom, my son, though I fear me his
diet is too strong for the stomach of this degenerate age, while the
dressing of his dishes is, on the other hand, too cunningly devised
for their liking. But it is no marvel thou shouldest be ignorant of
him, being as yet no reader of books. Neither is he a close kinsman,
being of the Lincolnshire branch of the Heywoods.'
'Now I know whom you mean, sir; but I thought he was a writer of
stage plays, and such things as on all sides I hear called foolish,
and mummery.'
'There be among those who call themselves the godly, who will endure
no mummery but of their own inventing. Cousin Thomas hath written a
multitude of plays, but that he studied at Cambridge, and to good
purpose, this book, which I was reading when you entered, bears good
witness.'
'What is the book, father?'
'Stay, I will read thee a portion. The greater part is of learning
rather than wisdom--the gathered opinions of the wise and good
concerning things both high and strange; but I will read thee some
verses bearing his own mind, which is indeed worthy to be set down
with theirs.'
He read that wonderful poem ending the second Book of the Hierarchy,
and having finished it looked at his son.
'I do not understand it, sir,' said Richard.
'I did not expect you would,' returned his father. 'Here, take the
book, and read for thyself. If light should dawn upon the page, as
thou readest, perhaps thou wilt understand what I now say--that I
care but little for the bones concerning which king and parliament
contend, but I do care that men--thou and I, my son--should be free
to walk in any path whereon it may please God to draw us. Take the
book, my son, and read again. But read no farther save with caution,
for it dealeth with many things wherein old Thomas is too readily
satisfied with hearsay for testimony.'
Richard took the small folio and carried it to his own chamber,
where he read and partly understood the poem. But he was not ripe
enough either in philosophy or religion for such meditations. Having
executed his task, for as such he regarded it, he turned to look
through the strange mixture of wisdom and credulity composing the
volume. One tale after another, of witch, and demon, and magician,
firmly believed and honestly recorded by his worthy relative, drew
him on, until he sat forgetful of everything but the world of
marvels before him--to none of which, however, did he accord a
wider credence than sprung from the interest of the moment. He was
roused by a noise of quarrel in the farmyard, towards which his
window looked, and, laying aside reading, hastened out to learn the
cause.
CHAPTER III.
THE WITCH.
It was a bright Autumn morning. A dry wind had been blowing all
night through the shocks, and already some of the farmers had begun
to carry to their barns the sheaves which had stood hopelessly
dripping the day before. Ere Richard reached the yard, he saw, over
the top of the wall, the first load of wheat-sheaves from the
harvest-field, standing at the door of the barn, and high-uplifted
thereon the figure of Faithful Stopchase, one of the men, a
well-known frequenter of puritan assemblies all the country round,
who was holding forth, and that with much freedom, in tones that
sounded very like vituperation, if not malediction, against some one
invisible. He soon found that the object of his wrath was a certain
Welshwoman, named Rees, by her neighbours considered objectionable
on the ground of witchcraft, against whom this much could with truth
be urged, that she was so far from thinking it disreputable, that
she took no pains to repudiate the imputation of it. Her dress, had
it been judged by eyes of our day, would have been against her, but
it was only old-fashioned, not even antiquated: common in Queen
Elizabeth's time, it lingered still in remote country places--a gown
of dark stuff, made with a long waist and short skirt over a huge
farthingale; a ruff which stuck up and out, high and far, from her
throat; and a conical Welsh hat invading the heavens. Stopchase,
having descried her in the yard, had taken the opportunity of
breaking out upon her in language as far removed from that of
conventional politeness as his puritanical principles would permit.
Doubtless he considered it a rebuking of Satan, but forgot that,
although one of the godly, he could hardly on that ground lay claim
to larger privilege in the use of bad language than the archangel
Michael. For the old woman, although too prudent to reply, she
scorned to flee, and stood regarding him fixedly. Richard sought to
interfere and check the torrent of abuse, but it had already
gathered so much head, that the man seemed even unaware of his
attempt. Presently, however, he began to quail in the midst of his
storming. The green eyes of the old woman, fixed upon him, seemed to
be slowly fascinating him. At length, in the very midst of a volley
of scriptural epithets, he fell suddenly silent, turned from her,
and, with the fork on which he had been leaning, began to pitch the
sheaves into the barn. The moment he turned his back, Goody Rees
turned hers, and walked slowly away.
She had scarcely reached the yard gate, however, before the cow-boy,
a delighted spectator and auditor of the affair, had loosed the
fierce watch-dog, which flew after her. Fortunately Richard saw what
took place, but the animal, which was generally chained up, did not
heed his recall, and the poor woman had already felt his teeth, when
Richard got him by the throat. She looked pale and frightened, but
kept her composure wonderfully, and when Richard, who was prejudiced
in her favour from having once heard Dorothy speak friendlily to
her, expressed his great annoyance that she should have been so
insulted on his father's premises, received his apologies with
dignity and good faith. He dragged the dog back, rechained him, and
was in the act of administering sound and righteous chastisement to
the cow-boy, when Stopchase staggered, tumbled off the cart, and
falling upon his head, lay motionless. Richard hurried to him, and
finding his neck twisted and his head bent to one side, concluded he
was killed. The woman who had accompanied him from the field stood
for a moment uttering loud cries, then, suddenly bethinking herself,
sped after the witch. Richard was soon satisfied he could do nothing
for him.
Presently the woman came running back, followed at a more leisurely
pace by Goody Rees, whose countenance was grave, and, even to the
twitch about her mouth, inscrutable. She walked up to where the man
lay, looked at him for a moment or two as if considering his case,
then sat down on the ground beside him, and requested Richard to
move him so that his head should lie on her lap. This done, she laid
hold of it, with a hand on each ear, and pulled at his neck, at the
same time turning his head in the right direction. There came a
snap, and the neck was straight. She then began to stroke it with
gentle yet firm hand. In a few moments he began to breathe. As soon
as she saw his chest move, she called for a wisp of hay, and having
shaped it a little, drew herself from under his head, substituting
the hay. Then rising without a word she walked from the yard.
Stopchase lay for a while, gradually coming to himself, then
scrambled all at once to his feet, and staggered to his pitchfork,
which lay where it had fallen. 'It is of the mercy of the Lord that
I fell not upon the prongs of the pitchfork,' he said, as he slowly
stooped and lifted it. He had no notion that he had lain more than a
few seconds; and of the return of Goody Rees and her ministrations
he knew nothing; while such an awe of herself and her influences had
she left behind her, that neither the woman nor the cow-boy ventured
to allude to her, and even Richard, influenced partly, no doubt, by
late reading, was more inclined to think than speak about her. For
the man himself, little knowing how close death had come to him, but
inwardly reproached because of his passionate outbreak, he firmly
believed that he had had a narrow escape from the net of the great
fowler, whose decoy the old woman was, commissioned not only to
cause his bodily death, but to work in him first such a frame of
mind as should render his soul the lawful prey of the enemy.
CHAPTER IV.
A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.
The same afternoon, as it happened, a little company of rustics, who
had just issued from the low hatch-door of the village inn, stood
for a moment under the sign of the Crown and Mitre, which swung
huskily creaking from the bough of an ancient thorn tree, then
passed on to the road, and took their way together.
'Hope you then,' said one of them, as continuing their previous
conversation, 'that we shall escape unhurt? It is a parlous
business. Not as one of us is afeard as I knows on. But the old
earl, he do have a most unregenerate temper, and you had better look
to't, my masters.'
'I tell thee, master Upstill, it's not the old earl as I'm afeard
on, but the young lord. For thou knows as well as ere a one it be
not without cause that men do call him a wizard, for a wizard he be,
and that of the worst sort.'
'We shall be out again afore sundown, shannot we?' said another.
'That I trust.'
'Up to the which hour the High Court of Parliament assembled will
have power to protect its own--eh, John Croning?'
'Nay, that I cannot tell. It be a parlous job, and for mine own
part, whether for the love I bear to the truth, or the hatred I
cherish toward the scarlet Antichrist, with her seven tails--'
'Tush, tush, John! Seven heads, man, and ten horns. Those are the
numbers master Flowerdew read.'
'Nay, I know not for your horns; but for the rest I say seven tails.
Did not honest master Flowerdew set forth unto us last meeting that
the scarlet woman sat upon seven hills--eh? Have with you there,
master Sycamore!'
'Well, for the sake of sound argument, I grant you. But we ha'got to
do with no heads nor no tails, neither--save and except as you may
say the sting is in the tail; and then, or I greatly mistake, it's
not seven times seven as will serve to count the stings, come of the
tails what may.'
'Very true,' said another; 'it be the stings and not the tails we
want news of. But think you his lordship will yield them up without
gainsaying to us the messengers of the High Parliament now
assembled?'
'For mine own part,' said John Croning, 'though I fear it come of
the old Adam yet left in me, I do count it a sorrowful thing that
the earl should be such a vile recusant. He never fails with a
friendly word, or it may be a jest--a foolish jest--but honest, for
any one gentle or simple he may meet. More than once has he boarded
me in that fashion. What do you think he said to me, now, one day as
I was a mowin' of the grass in the court, close by the white horse
that spout up the water high as a house from his nose-drills? Says
he to me--for he come down the grand staircase, and steps out and
spies me at the work with my old scythe, and come across to me, and
says he, "Why, Thomas," says he, not knowin' of my name, "Why,
Thomas," says he, "you look like old Time himself a mowing of us all
down," says he. "For sure, my lord," says I, "your lordship reads it
aright, for all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the
flower of the field." He look humble at that, for, great man as he
be, his earthly tabernacle, though more than sizeable, is but a
frail one, and that he do know. And says he, "Where did you read
that, Thomas?" "I am not a larned man, please your lordship," says
I, "and I cannot honestly say I read it nowheres, but I heerd the
words from a book your lordship have had news of: they do call it
the Holy Bible. But they tell me that they of your lordship's
persuasion like it not." "You are very much mistaken there, Thomas,"
says he. "I read my Bible most days, only not the English Bible,
which is full of errors, but the Latin, which is all as God gave
it," says he. And thereby I had not where to answer withal.'
'I fear you proved a poor champion of the truth, master Croning.'
'Confess now, Cast-down Upstill, had he not both sun and wind of
me--standing, so to say, on his own hearth-stone? Had it not been
so, I could have called hard names with the best of you, though that
is by rights the gift of the preachers of the truth. See how the
good master Flowerdew excelleth therein, sprinkling them abroad from
the watering-pot of the gospel. Verily, when my mind is too feeble
to grasp his argument, my memory lays fast hold upon the hard names,
and while I hold by them, I have it all in a nutshell.'
Fortified occasionally by a pottle of ale, and keeping their spirits
constantly stirred by much talking, they had been all day occupied
in searching the Catholic houses of the neighbourhood for arms. What
authority they had for it never came to be clearly understood.
Plainly they believed themselves possessed of all that was needful,
or such men would never have dared it. As it was, they prosecuted it
with such a bold front, that not until they were gone did it occur
to some, who had yielded what arms they possessed, to question
whether they had done wisely in acknowledging such fellows as
parliamentary officials without demanding their warrant. Their day's
gleanings up to this point--of swords and pikes, guns and pistols,
they had left in charge of the host of the inn whence they had just
issued, and were now bent on crowning their day's triumph with a
supreme act of daring--the renown of which they enlarged in their
own imaginations, while undermining the courage needful for its
performance, by enhancing its terrors as they went.
At length two lofty hexagonal towers appeared, and the consciousness
that the final test of their resolution drew nigh took immediate
form in a fluttering at the heart, which, however, gave no outward
sign but that of silence; and indeed they were still too full of the
importance of unaccustomed authority to fear any contempt for it on
the part of others.
It happened that at this moment Raglan Castle was full of
merry-making upon occasion of the marriage of one of lady Herbert's
waiting-gentlewomen to an officer of the household; and in these
festivities the earl of Worcester and all his guests were taking a
part.
Among the numerous members of the household was one who, from being
a turnspit, had risen, chiefly in virtue of an immovably lugubrious
expression of countenance, to be the earl's fool. From this
peculiarity his fellow-servants had given him the nickname of The
Hangman; but the man himself had chosen the role of a puritan
parson, as affording the best ground-work for the display of a
humour suitable to the expression of countenance with which his
mother had endowed him. That mother was Goody Rees, concerning whom,
as already hinted, strange things were whispered. In the earlier
part of his career the fool had not unfrequently found his mother's
reputation a sufficient shelter from persecution; and indeed there
might have been reason to suppose that it was for her son's sake she
encouraged her own evil repute, a distinction involving considerable
risk, seeing the time had not yet arrived when the disbelief in such
powers was sufficiently advanced for the safety of those reported to
possess them. In her turn, however, she ran a risk somewhat less
than ordinary from the fact that her boy was a domestic in the
family of one whose eldest son, the heir to the earldom, lay under a
similar suspicion; for not a few of the household were far from
satisfied that lord Herbert's known occupations in the Yellow Tower
were not principally ostensible, and that he and his man had nothing
to do with the black art, or some other of the many regions of
occult science in which the ambition after unlawful power may
hopefully exercise itself.
Upon occasion of a family fete, merriment was in those days carried
further, on the part of both masters and servants, than in the
greatly altered relations and conditions of the present day would be
desirable, or, indeed, possible. In this instance, the fun broke out
in the arranging of a mock marriage between Thomas Rees, commonly
called Tom Fool, and a young girl who served under the cook. Half
the jest lay in the contrast between the long face of the
bridegroom, both congenitally and wilfully miserable, and that of
the bride, broad as a harvest moon, and rosy almost to purple. The
bridegroom never smiled, and spoke with his jaws rather than his
lips; while the bride seldom uttered a syllable without grinning
from ear to ear, and displaying a marvellous appointment of huge and
brilliant teeth. Entering solemnly into the joke, Tom expressed
himself willing to marry the girl, but represented, as an
insurmountable difficulty, that he had no clothes for the occasion.
Thereupon the earl, drawing from his pocket his bunch of keys,
directed him to go and take what he liked from his wardrobe. Now the
earl was a man of large circumference, and the fool as lank in
person as in countenance.
Tom took the keys and was some time gone, during which many
conjectures were hazarded as to the style in which he would choose
to appear. When he re-entered the great hall, where the company was
assembled, the roar of laughter which followed his appearance made
the glass of its great cupola ring again. For not merely was he
dressed in the earl's beaver hat and satin cloak, splendid with
plush and gold and silver lace, but he had indued a corresponding
suit of his clothes as well, even to his silk stockings, garters,
and roses, and with the help of many pillows and other such farcing,
so filled the garments which otherwise had hung upon him like a
shawl from a peg, and made of himself such a 'sweet creature of
bombast' that, with ludicrous unlikeness of countenance, he bore in
figure no distant resemblance to the earl himself.
Meantime lady Elizabeth had been busy with the scullery-maid, whom
she had attired in a splendid brocade of her grandmother's, with all
suitable belongings of ruff, high collar, and lace wings, such as
Queen Elizabeth is represented with in Oliver's portrait. Upon her
appearance, a few minutes after Tom's, the laughter broke out
afresh, in redoubled peals, and the merriment was at its height,
when the warder of one of the gates entered and whispered in his
master's ear the arrival of the bumpkins, and their mission
announced, he informed his lordship, with all the importance and
dignity they knew how to assume. The earl burst into a fresh laugh.
But presently it quavered a little and ceased, while over the
amusement still beaming on his countenance gathered a slight shade
of anxiety, for who could tell what tempest such a mere whirling of
straws might not forerun?
A few words of the warder's had reached Tom where he stood a little
aside, his solemn countenance radiating disapproval of the
tumultuous folly around him. He took three strides towards the earl.
'Wherein lieth the new jest?' he asked, with dignity.
'A set of country louts, my lord,' answered the earl, 'are at the
gate, affirming the right of search in this your lordship's house of
Raglan.'
'For what?'
'Arms, my lord.'
'And wherefore? On what ground?'
'On the ground that your lordship is a vile recusant--a papist, and
therefore a traitor, no doubt, although they use not the word,' said
the earl.
'I shall be round with them,' said Tom, embracing the assumed
proportions in front of him, and turning to the door.
Ere the earl had time to conceive his intent, he had hurried from
the hall, followed by fresh shouts of laughter. For he had forgotten
to stuff himself behind, and, when the company caught sight of his
back as he strode out, the tenuity of the foundation for such a
'huge hill of flesh' was absurd as Falstaff's ha'p'orth of bread to
the 'intolerable deal of sack.'
But the next moment the earl had caught the intended joke, and
although a trifle concerned about the affair, was of too
mirth-loving a nature to interfere with Tom's project, the result of
which would doubtless be highly satisfactory--at least to those not
primarily concerned. He instantly called for silence, and explained
to the assembly what he believed to be Tom Fool's intent, and as
there was nothing to be seen from the hall, the windows of which
were at a great height from the floor, and Tom's scheme would be
fatally imperilled by the visible presence of spectators, from some
at least of whom gravity of demeanour could not be expected, gave
hasty instructions to several of his sons and daughters to disperse
the company to upper windows having a view of one or the other
court, for no one could tell where the fool's humour might find its
principal arena. The next moment, in the plain dress of rough
brownish cloth, which he always wore except upon state occasions, he
followed the fool to the gate, where he found him talking through
the wicket-grating to the rustics, who, having passed drawbridge and
portcullises, of which neither the former had been raised nor the
latter lowered for many years, now stood on the other side of the
gate demanding admittance. In the parley, Tom Fool was imitating his
master's voice and every one of the peculiarities of his speech to
perfection, addressing them with extreme courtesy, as if he took
them for gentlemen of no ordinary consideration,--a point in his
conception of his part which he never forgot throughout the whole
business. To the dismay of his master he was even more than
admitting, almost boasting, that there was an enormous quantity of
weapons in the castle--sufficient at least to arm ten thousand
horsemen!--a prodigious statement, for, at the uttermost, there was
not more than the tenth part of that amount--still a somewhat larger
provision no doubt than the intruders had expected to find! The
pseudo-earl went on to say that the armoury consisted of one strong
room only, the door of which was so cunningly concealed and secured
that no one but himself knew where it was, or if found could open
it. But such he said was his respect to the will of the most august
parliament, that he would himself conduct them to the said armoury,
and deliver over upon the spot into their safe custody the whole
mass of weapons to carry away with them. And thereupon he proceeded
to open the gate.
By this time the door of the neighbouring guard-room was crowded
with the heads of eager listeners, but the presence of the earl kept
them quiet, and at a sign from him they drew back ere the men
entered. The earl himself took a position where he would be covered
by the opening wicket.
Tom received them into bodily presence with the notification that,
having suspected their object, he had sent all his people out of the
way, in order to avoid the least danger of a broil. Bowing to them
with the utmost politeness as they entered, he requested them to
step forward into the court while he closed the wicket behind them,
but took the opportunity of whispering to one of the men just inside
the door of the guardhouse, who, the moment Tom had led the rustics
away, approached the earl, and told him what he had said.
'What can the rascal mean?' said the earl to himself; but he told
the man to carry the fool's message exactly as he had received it,
and quietly followed Tom and his companions, some of whom,
conceiving fresh importance from the overstrained politeness with
which they had been received, were now attempting a transformation
of their usual loundering gait into a martial stride, with the
result of a foolish strut, very unlike the dignified progress of the
sham earl, whose weak back roused in them no suspicion, and who had
taken care they should not see his face. Across the paved court, and
through the hall to the inner court, Tom led them, and the earl
followed.
The twilight was falling. The hall was empty of life, and filled
with a sombre dusk, echoing to every step as they passed through it.
They did not see the flash of eyes and glimmer of smiles from the
minstrel's gallery, and the solitude, size, and gloom had, even on
their dull natures, a palpable influence. The whole castle seemed
deserted as they followed the false earl across the second
court--with the true one stealing after them like a knave--little
imagining that bright eyes were watching them from the curtains of
every window like stars from the clear spaces and cloudy edges of
heaven. To the north-west corner of the court he led them, and
through a sculptured doorway up the straight wide ascent of stone
called the grand staircase. At the top he turned to the right, along
a dim corridor, from which he entered a suite of bedrooms and
dressing-rooms, over whose black floors he led the trampling
hob-nailed shoes without pity either for their polish or the labour
of the housemaids in restoring it.
In this way he reached the stair in the bell-tower, ascending which
he brought them into a narrow dark passage ending again in a
downward stair, at the foot of which they found themselves in the
long picture-gallery, having entered it in the recess of one of its
large windows. At the other end of the gallery he crossed into the
dining-room, then through an ante-chamber entered the drawing-room,
where the ladies, apprised of their approach, kept still behind
curtains and high chairs, until they had passed through, on their
way to cross the archway of the main entrance, and through the
library gain the region of household economy and cookery. Thither I
will not drag my reader after them. Indeed the earl, who had been
dogging them like a Fate, ever emerging on their track but never
beheld, had already began to pay his part of the penalty of the joke
in fatigue, for he was not only unwieldy in person, but far from
robust, being very subject to gout. He owed his good spirits to a
noble nature, and not to animal well-being. When they crossed from
the picture-gallery to the dining-room, he went down the stair
between, and into the oak-parlour adjoining the great hall. There he
threw himself into an easy chair which always stood for him in the
great bay window, looking over the moat to the huge keep of the
castle, and commanding through its western light the stone bridge
which crossed it. There he lay back at his ease, and, instructed by
the message Tom had committed to the serjeant of the guard, waited
the result.
As for his double, he went stalking on in front of his victims,
never turning to show his face; he knew they would follow, were it
but for the fear of being left alone. Close behind him they kept,
scarce daring to whisper from growing awe of the vast place. The
fumes of the beer had by this time evaporated, and the heavy
obscurity which pervaded the whole building enhanced their growing
apprehensions. On and on the fool led them, up and down, going and
returning, but ever in new tracks, for the marvellous old place was
interminably burrowed with connecting passages and communications of
every sort--some of them the merest ducts which had to be all but
crept through, and which would have certainly arrested the progress
of the earl had he followed so far: no one about the place
understood its "crenkles" so well as Tom. For the greater part of an
hour he led them thus, until, having been on their legs the whole
day, they were thoroughly wearied as well as awe-struck. At length,
in a gloomy chamber, where one could not see the face of another,
the pseudo-earl turned full upon them, and said in his most solemn
tones:--
'Arrived thus far, my masters, it is borne in upon me with rebuke,
that before undertaking to guide you to the armoury, I should have
acquainted you with the strange fact that at times I am myself
unable to find the place of which we are in search; and I begin to
fear it is so now, and that we are at this moment the sport of a
certain member of my family of whom it may be your worships have
heard things not more strange than true. Against his machinations I
am powerless. All that is left us is to go to him and entreat him to
unsay his spells.'
A confused murmur of objections arose.
'Then your worships will remain here while I go to the Yellow Tower,
and come to you again?' said the mock earl, making as if he would
leave them.
But they crowded round him with earnest refusals to be abandoned;
for in their very souls they felt the fact that they were upon
enchanted ground--and in the dark.
'Then follow me,' he said, and conducted them into the open air of
the inner court, almost opposite the archway in its buildings
leading to the stone bridge, whose gothic structure bestrid the moat
of the keep.
For Raglan Castle had this peculiarity, that its keep was surrounded
by a moat of its own, separating it from the rest of the castle, so
that, save by bridge, no one within any more than without the walls
could reach it. On to the bridge Tom led the way, followed by his
dupes--now full in the view of the earl where he sat in his parlour
window. When they had reached the centre of it, however, and
glancing up at the awful bulk of stone towering above them, its
walls strangely dented and furrowed, so as to such as they, might
well suggest frightful means to wicked ends, they stood stock-still,
refusing to go a step further; while their chief speaker, Upstill,
emboldened by anger, fear, and the meek behaviour of the supposed
earl, broke out in a torrent of arrogance, wherein his intention was
to brandish the terrors of the High Parliament over the heads of his
lordship of Worcester and all recusants. He had not got far,
however, before a shrill whistle pierced the air, and the next
instant arose a chaos of horrible, appalling, and harrowing noises,
'such a roaring,' in the words of their own report of the matter to
the reverend master Flowerdew, 'as if the mouth of hell had been
wide open, and all the devils conjured up'--doubtless they meant by
the arts of the wizard whose dwelling was that same tower of fearful
fame before which they now stood. The skin-contracting chill of
terror uplifted their hair. The mystery that enveloped the origin of
the sounds gave them an unearthliness which froze the very fountains
of their life, and rendered them incapable even of motion. They
stared at each other with a ghastly observance, which descried no
comfort, only like images of horror. 'Man's hand is not able to
taste' how long they might have thus stood, nor 'his tongue to
conceive' what the consequences might have been, had not a more
healthy terror presently supervened. Across the tumult of sounds,
like a fiercer flash through the flames of a furnace, shot a
hideous, long-drawn yell, and the same instant came a man running at
full speed through the archway from the court, casting
terror-stricken glances behind him, and shouting with a voice
half-choked to a shriek--
'Look to yourselves, my masters; the lions are got loose!'
All the world knew that ever since King James had set the fashion by
taking so much pleasure in the lions at the Tower, strange beasts
had been kept in the castle of Raglan.
The new terror broke the spell of the old, and the parliamentary
commissioners fled. But which was the way from the castle? Which the
path to the lions' den? In an agony of horrible dread, they rushed
hither and thither about the court, where now the white horse, as
steady as marble, should be when first they crossed it, was, to
their excited vision, prancing wildly about the great basin from
whose charmed circle he could not break, foaming, at the mouth, and
casting huge water-jets from his nostrils into the perturbed air;
while from the surface of the moat a great column of water shot up
nearly as high as the citadel, whose return into the moat was like a
tempest, and with all the elemental tumult was mingled the howling
of wild beasts. The doors of the hall and the gates to the bowling
green being shut, the poor wretches could not find their way out of
the court, but ran from door to door like madmen, only to find all
closed against them. From every window around the court--from the
apartments of the waiting gentlewomen, from the picture-gallery,
from the officers' rooms, eager and merry eyes looked down on the
spot, themselves unseen and unsuspected, for all voices were hushed,
and for anything the bumpkins heard or saw they might have been in a
place deserted of men, and possessed only by evil spirits, whose
pranks were now tormenting them. At last Upstill, who had fallen on
the bridge at his first start, and had ever since been rushing about
with a limp and a leap alternated, managed to open the door of the
hall, and its eastern door having been left open, shot across and
into the outer court, where he made for the gate, followed at varied
distance by the rest of the routed commissioners of search, as each
had discovered the way his forerunner fled. With trembling hands
Upstill raised the latch of the wicket, and to his delight found it
unlocked. He darted through, passed the twin portcullises, and was
presently thundering over the draw-bridge, which, trembling under
his heavy steps, seemed on the point of rising to heave him back
into the jaws of the lion, or, worse still, the clutches of the
enchanter. Not one looked behind him, not even when, having passed
through the white stone gate, also purposely left open for their
escape, and rattled down the multitude of steps that told how deep
was the moat they had just crossed, where the last of them nearly
broke his neck by rolling almost from top to bottom, they reached
the outermost, the brick gate, and so left the awful region of
enchantment and feline fury commingled. Not until the castle was out
of sight, and their leader had sunk senseless on the turf by the
roadside, did they dare a backward look. The moment he came to
himself they started again for home, at what poor speed they could
make, and reached the Crown and Mitre in sad plight, where, however,
they found some compensation in the pleasure of setting forth their
adventures--with the heroic manner in which, although vanquished by
the irresistible force of enchantment, they had yet brought off
their forces without the loss of a single man. Their story spread
over the country, enlarged and embellished at every fresh stage in
its progress.
When the tale reached mother Rees, it filled her with fresh awe of
the great magician, the renowned lord Herbert. She little thought
the whole affair was a jest of her own son's. Firmly believing in
all kinds of magic and witchcraft, but as innocent of conscious
dealing with the powers of ill as the whitest-winged angel betwixt
earth's garret and heaven's threshold, she owed her evil repute
amongst her neighbours to a rare therapeutic faculty, accompanied by
a keen sympathetic instinct, which greatly sharpened her powers of
observation in the quest after what was amiss; while her touch was
so delicate, so informed with present mind, and came therefore into
such rapport with any living organism, the secret of whose suffering
it sought to discover, that sprained muscles, dislocated joints, and
broken bones seemed at its soft approach to re-arrange their
disturbed parts, and yield to the power of her composing will as to
a re-ordering harmony. Add to this, that she understood more of the
virtues of some herbs than any doctor in the parish, which, in the
condition of general practice at the time, is not perhaps to say
much, and that she firmly believed in the might of certain charms,
and occasionally used them--and I have given reason enough why,
while regarded by all with disapprobation--she should be by many
both courted and feared. For her own part she had a leaning to the
puritans, chiefly from respect to the memory of a good-hearted,
weak, but intellectually gifted, and, therefore, admired husband;
but the ridicule of her yet more gifted son had a good deal shaken
this predilection, so that she now spent what powers of
discrimination and choice she possessed solely upon persons,
heedless of principles in themselves, and regarding them only in
their vital results. Hence, it was a matter of absolute indifference
to her which of the parties now dividing the country was in the
right, or which should lose, which win, provided no personal evil
befel the men or women for whom she cherished a preference. Like
many another, she was hardly aware of the jurisdiction of
conscience, save in respect of immediate personal relations.
CHAPTER V.
ANIMADVERSIONS.
From the time when the conversation recorded had in some measure
dispelled the fog between them, Roger and Richard Heywood drew
rapidly nearer to each other. The father had been but waiting until
his son should begin to ask him questions, for watchfulness of
himself and others had taught him how useless information is to
those who have not first desired it, how poor in influence, how soon
forgotten; and now that the fitting condition had presented itself,
he was ready: with less of reserve than in the relation between them
was common amongst the puritans, he began to pour his very soul into
that of his son. All his influence went with that party which,
holding that the natural flow of the reformation of the church from
popery had stagnated in episcopacy, consisted chiefly of those who,
in demanding the overthrow of that form of church government, sought
to substitute for it what they called presbyterianism; but Mr.
Heywood belonged to another division of it which, although less
influential at present, was destined to come by and by to the front,
in the strength of the conviction that to stop with presbyterianism
was merely to change the name of the swamp--a party whose
distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which
indeed, degenerating into a passion among its inferior members,
broke out, upon occasion, in the wildest vagaries of speech and
doctrine, but on the other hand justified itself in its leaders,
chief amongst whom were Milton and Cromwell, inasmuch as they
accorded to the consciences of others the freedom they demanded for
their own--the love of liberty with them not meaning merely the love
of enjoying freedom, but that respect for the thing itself which
renders a man incapable of violating it in another.
Roger Heywood was, in fact, already a pupil of Milton, whose
anonymous pamphlet of 'Reformation touching Church Discipline' had
already reached him, and opened with him the way for all his
following works.
Richard, with whom my story has really to do, but for the
understanding of whom it is necessary that the character and mental
position of his father should in some measure be set forth, proved
an apt pupil, and was soon possessed with such a passion for justice
and liberty, as embodied in the political doctrines now presented
for his acceptance, that it was impossible for him to understand how
any honest man could be of a different mind. No youth, indeed, of
simple and noble nature, as yet unmarred by any dominant phase of
selfishness, could have failed to catch fire from the enthusiasm of
such a father, an enthusiasm glowing yet restrained, wherein party
spirit had a less share than principle--which, in relation to such a
time, is to say much. Richard's heart swelled within him at the
vistas of grandeur opened by his father's words, and swelled yet
higher when he read to him passages from the pamphlet to which I
have referred. It seemed to him, as to most young people under
mental excitement, that he had but to tell the facts of the case to
draw all men to his side, enlisting them in the army destined to
sweep every form of tyranny, and especially spiritual usurpation and
arrogance, from the face of the earth.
Being one who took everybody at the spoken word, Richard never
thought of seeking Dorothy again at their former place of meeting.
Nor, in the new enthusiasm born in him, did his thoughts for a good
many days turn to her so often, or dwell so much upon her, as to
cause any keen sense of their separation. The flood of new thoughts
and feelings had transported him beyond the ignorant present. In
truth, also, he was a little angry with Dorothy for showing a
foolish preference for the church party, so plainly in the wrong was
it! And what could SHE know about the question by his indifference
to which she had been so scandalised, but to which he had been
indifferent only until rightly informed thereon! If he had ever
given her just cause to think him childish, certainly she should
never apply the word to him again! If he could but see her, he would
soon convince her--indeed he MUST see her--for the truth was not
his to keep, but to share! It was his duty to acquaint her with the
fact that the parliament was the army of God, fighting the great red
dragon, one of whose seven heads was prelacy, the horn upon it the
king, and Laud its crown. He wanted a stroll--he would take the path
through the woods and the shrubbery to the old sun-dial. She would
not be there, of course, but he would walk up the pleached alley and
call at the house.
Reasoning thus within himself one day, he rose and went. But, as he
approached the wood, Dorothy's great mastiff, which she had reared
from a pup with her own hand, came leaping out to welcome him, and
he was prepared to find her not far off.
When he entered the yew-circle, there she stood leaning on the dial,
as if, like old Time, she too had gone to sleep there, and was
dreaming ancient dreams over again. She did not move at the first
sounds of his approach; and when at length, as he stood silent by
her side, she lifted her head, but without looking at him, he saw
the traces of tears on her cheeks. The heart of the youth smote him.
'Weeping, Dorothy?' he said.
'Yes,' she answered simply.
'I trust I am not the cause of your trouble, Dorothy?'
'You!' returned the girl quickly, and the colour rushed to her pale
cheeks. 'No, indeed. How should you trouble me? My mother is ill.'
Considering his age, Richard was not much given to vanity, and it
was something better that prevented him from feeling pleased at
being thus exonerated: she looked so sweet and sad that the love
which new interests had placed in abeyance returned in full tide.
Even when a child, he had scarcely ever seen her in tears; it was to
him a new aspect of her being.
'Dear Dorothy!' he said, 'I am very much grieved to learn this of
your beautiful mother.'
'She IS beautiful,' responded the girl, and her voice was softer
than he had ever heard it before; 'but she will die, and I shall be
left alone.'
'No, Dorothy! that you shall never be,' exclaimed Richard, with a
confidence bordering on presumption.
'Master Herbert is with her now,' resumed Dorothy, heedless of his
words.
'You do not mean her life is even now in danger?' said Richard, in a
tone of sudden awe.
'I hope not, but, indeed, I cannot tell. I left master Herbert
comforting her with the assurance that she was taken away from the
evil to come. "And I trust, madam," the dear old man went on to say,
"that my departure will not long be delayed, for darkness will cover
the earth, and gross darkness the people." Those were his very
words.'
'Nay, nay!' said Richard, hastily; 'the good man is deceived; the
people that sit in darkness shall see a great light.'
The girl looked at him with strange interrogation.
'Do not be angry, sweet Dorothy,' Richard went on. 'Old men may
mistake as well as youths. As for the realm of England, the sun of
righteousness will speedily arise thereon, for the dawn draws nigh;
and master Herbert may be just as far deceived concerning your
mother's condition, for she has been but sickly for a long time, and
yet has survived many winters.'
Dorothy looked at him still, and was silent. At length she spoke,
and her words came slowly and with weight.
'And what prophet's mantle, if I may make so bold, has fallen upon
Richard Heywood, that the word in his mouth should outweigh that of
an aged servant of the church? Can it be that the great light of
which he speaks is Richard Heywood himself?'
'As master Herbert is a good man and a servant of God,' said
Richard, coldly, stung by her sarcasm, but not choosing to reply to
it, 'his word weighs mightily; but as a servant of the church his
word is no weightier than my father's, who is also a minister of the
true tabernacle, that wherein all who are kings over themselves are
priests unto God--though truly he pretends to no prophecy beyond the
understanding of the signs of the times.'
Dorothy saw that a wonderful change, such as had been incredible
upon any but the witness of her own eyes and ears, had passed on her
old playmate. He was in truth a boy no longer. Their relative
position was no more what she had been of late accustomed to
consider it. But with the change a gulf had begun to yawn between
them.
'Alas, Richard!' she said, mistaking what he meant by the signs of
the times, 'those who arrogate the gift of the Holy Ghost, while
their sole inspiration is the presumption of their own hearts and an
overweening contempt of authority, may well mistake signs of their
own causing for signs from heaven. I but repeat the very words of
good master Herbert.'
'I thought such swelling words hardly sounded like your own,
Dorothy. But tell me, why should the persuasion of man or woman hang
upon the words of a fellow-mortal? Is not the gift of the Spirit
free to each who asks it? And are we not told that each must be
fully persuaded in his own mind?'
'Nay, Richard, now I have thee! Hang you not by the word of your
father, who is one, and despise the authority of the true church,
which is many?'
'The true church were indeed an authority, but where shall we find
it? Anyhow, the true church is one thing, and prelatical episcopacy
another. But I have yet to learn what authority even the true church
could have over a man's conscience.'
'You need to be reminded, Richard, that the Lord of the church gave
power to his apostles to bind or loose.'
'I do not need to be so reminded, Dorothy, but I do not need to be
shown first that that power was over men's consciences; and second,
that it was transmitted to others by the apostles waiving the
question as to the doubtful ordination of English prelates.'
Fire flashed from Dorothy's eyes.
'Richard Heywood,' she said, 'the demon of spiritual pride has
already entered into you, and blown you up with a self-sufficiency
which I never saw in you before, or I would never, never have
companied with you, as I am now ashamed to think I have done so
long, even to the danger of my soul's health.'
'In that case I may comfort myself, mistress Dorothy Vaughan,' said
Richard, 'that you will no longer count me a boy! But do you then no
longer desire that I should take one part OR the other and show
myself a man? Am I man enough yet for the woman thou art, Dorothy?
--But, Dorothy,' he added, with sudden change of tone, for she had
in anger turned to leave him, 'I love you dearly, and I am truly
sorry if I have spoken so as to offend you. I came hither eager to
share with you the great things I have learned since you left me
with just contempt a fortnight ago.'
'Then it is I whose foolish words have cast you into the seat of the
scorner! Alas! alas! my poor Richard! Never, never more, while you
thus rebel against authority and revile sacred things, will I hold
counsel with you.'
And again she turned to go.
'Dorothy!' cried the youth, turning pale with agony to find on the
brink of what an abyss of loss his zeal had set him, 'wilt thou,
then, never speak to me more, and I love thee as the daylight?'
'Never more till thou repent and turn. I will but give thee one
piece of counsel, and then leave thee--if for ever, that rests with
thee. There has lately appeared, like the frog out of the mouth of
the dragon, a certain tractate or treatise, small in bulk, but large
with the wind of evil doctrine. Doubtless it will reach your
father's house ere long, if it be not, as is more likely, already
there, for it is the vile work of one they call a puritan, though
where even the writer can vainly imagine the purity of such work to
lie, let the pamphlet itself raise the question. Read the evil
thing--or, I will not say read it, but glance the eye over it. It is
styled "Animadversions upon--." Truly, I cannot recall the
long-drawn title. It is filled, even as a toad with poison, so full
of evil and scurrilous sayings against good men, rating and abusing
them as the very off-scouring of the earth, that you cannot yet be
so far gone in evil as not to be reclaimed by seeing whither such
men and their inspiration would lead you. Farewell, Richard.'
With the words, and without a look, Dorothy, who had been standing
sideways in act to go, swept up the pleached alley, her step so
stately and her head so high that Richard, slowly as she walked
away, dared not follow her, but stood 'like one forbid.' When she
had vanished, and the light shone in full at the far end, he gave a
great sigh and turned away, and the old dial was forsaken.
The scrap of title Dorothy had given was enough to enable Richard to
recognise the pamphlet as one a copy of which his father had
received only a few days before, and over the reading of which they
had again and again laughed unrestrainedly. As he walked home he
sought in vain to recall anything in it deserving of such
reprobation as Dorothy had branded it withal. Had it been written on
the other side no search would have been necessary, for party spirit
(from which how could such a youth be free, when the greatest men of
his time were deeply tainted?), while it blinds the eyes in one
direction, makes them doubly keen in another. As it was, the abuse
in the pamphlet referred to, appeared to him only warrantable
indignation; and, the arrogance of an imperfect love leading him to
utter desertion of his newly-adopted principles, he scorned as
presumptuous that exercise of her own judgment on the part of
Dorothy which had led to their separation, bitterly resenting the
change in his playmate, who, now an angry woman, had decreed his
degradation from the commonest privileges of friendship, until such
time as he should abjure his convictions, become a renegade to the
truth, and abandon the hope of resulting freedom which the strife of
parties held out--an act of tyranny the reflection upon which raised
such a swelling in his throat as he had never felt but once before,
when a favourite foal got staked in trying to clear a fence. Having
neither friend nor sister to whom to confess that he was in
trouble--have confided it he could not in any case, seeing it
involved blame of the woman his love for whom now first, when on the
point of losing her for ever, threatened to overmaster him--he
wandered to the stables, which he found empty of men and nearly so
of horses, half-involuntarily sought the stall of the mare his
father had given him on his last birthday, laid his head on the neck
bent round to greet him, and sighed a sore response to her soft,
low, tremulous whinny.
As he stood thus, overcome by the bitter sense of wrong from the one
he loved best in the world, something darkened the stable-door, and
a voice he knew reached his ear. Mistaking the head she saw across
an empty stall for that of one of the farm-servants, Goody Rees was
calling aloud to know if he wanted a charm for the toothache.
Richard looked up.
'And what may your charm be, mistress Rees?' he asked.
'Aha! is it thou, young master?' returned the woman. 'Thou wilt
marvel to see me about the place so soon again, but verily desired
to know how that godly man, Faithful Stopchase, found himself after
his fall.'
'Nay, mistress Rees, make no apology for coming amongst thy friends.
I warrant thee against further rudeness of man or beast. I have
taken them to task, and truly I will break his head who wags tongue
against thee. As for Stopchase, he does well enough in all except
owing thee thanks which he declines to pay. But for thy charm, good
mistress Rees, what is it--tell me ?'
She took a step inside the door, sent her small eyes peering first
into every corner her sight could reach, and then said:
'Are we alone--we two, master Richard?'
'There's a cat in the next stall, mistress: if she can hear, she
can't speak.'
'Don't be too sure of that, master Richard. Be there no one else?'
'Not a body; soul there may be--who knows?'
'I know there is none. I will tell thee my charm, or what else I may
that thou would wish to know; for he is a true gentleman who will
help a woman because she is a woman, be she as old and ugly as Goody
Rees herself. Hearken, my pretty sir: it is the tooth of a corpse,
drawn after he hath lain a se'en-night in the mould: wilt buy, my
master? Or did not I see thee now asking comfort from thy horse for
the--'
She paused a moment, peered narrowly at him from under lowered
eyebrows, and went on:
'--heartache, eh, master Richard? Old eyes can see through velvet
doublets.'
'All the world knows yours can see farther than other people's,'
returned Richard. 'Heaven knows whence they have their sharpness.
But suppose it were a heartache now, have you got e'er a charm to
cure that?'
'The best of all charms, my young master, is a kiss from the maiden;
and what would thou give me for the spell that should set her by thy
side at the old dial, under a warm harvest moon, all the long hours
'twixt midnight and the crowing of the black cock--eh, my master?
What wilt thou give me?'
'Not a brass farthing, if she came not of her own good will,'
murmured Richard, turning towards his mare. 'But come, mistress
Rees, you know you couldn't do it, even if you were the black witch
the neighbours would have you--though I, for my part, will not hear
a word against you--never since you set my poor old dog upon his
legs again--though to be sure he will die one of these days, and
that no one can help--dogs have such short lives, poor fools!'
'Thou knows not what old mother Rees can do. Tell me, young master,
did she ever say and not do--eh, now?'
'You said you would cure my dog, and you did,' answered Richard.
'And I say now, if thou will, I will set thee and her together by
the old dial to-morrow night, and it shall be a warm and moonlit
night on purpose for ye, an ye will.'
'It were to no good purpose, mistress Rees, for we parted this
day--and that for ever, I much fear me,' said Richard with a deep
sigh, but getting some little comfort even out of a witch's
sympathy.
'Tut, tut, tut! Lovers' quarrels! Who knows not what they mean?
Crying and kissing--crying and kissing--that's what they mean. Come
now--what did thou and she quarrel about?'
The old woman, if not a witch, at least looked very like one, with
her two hands resting on the wide round ledge of her farthingale,
her head thrown back, and from under her peaked hat that pointed
away behind, her two greenish eyes peering with a half-coaxing, yet
sharp and probing gaze into those of the youth.
But how could he make a confidante of one like her? What could she
understand of such questions as had raised the wall of partition
betwixt him and Dorothy? Unwilling to offend her, however, he
hesitated to give her offer a plain refusal, and turning away in
silence, affected to have caught sight of something suspicious about
his mare's near hock.
'I see, I see!' said the old woman grimly, but not ill-naturedly,
and nodded her head, so that her hat described great arcs across the
sky; 'thou art ashamed to confess that thou lovest thy father's
whims more than thy lady's favours. Well, well! Such lovers are
hardly for my trouble!'
But here came the voice of Mr. Heywood, calling his groom. She
started, glanced around her as if seeking a covert, then peered from
the door, and glided noiselessly out.
CHAPTER VI.
PREPARATIONS.
Great was the merriment in Raglan Castle over the discomfiture of
the bumpkins, and many were the compliments Tom received in parlour,
nursery, kitchen, guard-room, everywhere, on the success of his
hastily-formed scheme for the chastisement of their presumption. The
household had looked for a merry time on the occasion of the
wedding, but had not expected such a full cup of delight as had been
pressed out for them betwixt the self-importance of the overweening
yokels and the inventive faculties of Tom Fool. All the evening, one
standing in any open spot of the castle might have heard, now on the
one, now on the other side, renewed bursts of merriment ripple the
air; but as the still autumn night crept on, the intervals between
grew longer and longer, until at length all sounds ceased, and
silence took up her ancient reign, broken only by the occasional
stamp of a horse or howl of a watch-dog.
But the earl, who, from simplicity of nature and peace of conscience
combined, was perhaps better fitted for the enjoyment of the joke,
in a time when such ludifications were not yet considered unsuitable
to the dignity of the highest position, than any other member of his
household, had, through it all, showed a countenance in which,
although eyes, lips, and voice shared in the laughter, there yet
lurked a thoughtful doubt concerning the result. For he knew that,
in some shape or other, and that certainly not the true one, the
affair would be spread over the country, where now prejudice against
the Catholics was strong and dangerous in proportion to the unreason
of those who cherished it. Now, also, it was becoming pretty plain
that except the king yielded every prerogative, and became the
puppet which the mingled pride and apprehension of the Parliament
would have him, their differences must ere long be referred to the
arbitration of the sword, in which case there was no shadow of doubt
in the mind of the earl as to the part befitting a peer of the
realm. The king was a protestant, but no less the king; and not this
man, but his parents, had sinned in forsaking the church--of which
sin their offspring had now to bear the penalty, reaping the
whirlwind sprung from the stormy seeds by them sown. For what were
the puritans but the lawfully-begotten children of the so called
reformation, whose spirit they inherited, and in whose footsteps
they so closely followed? In the midst of such reflections, dawned
slowly in the mind of the devout old man the enchanting hope that
perhaps he might be made the messenger of God to lead back to the
true fold the wandering feet of his king. But, fail or speed in any
result, so long as his castle held together, it should stand for the
king. Faithful catholic as he was, the brave old man was English to
the backbone.
And there was no time to lose. This visit of search, let it have
originated how it might, and be as despicable in itself as it was
ludicrous in its result, showed but too clearly how strong the
current of popular feeling was setting against all the mounds of
social distinction, and not kingly prerogative alone. What
preparations might be needful, must be prudent.
That same night, then, long after the rest of the household had
retired, three men took advantage of a fine half-moon to make a
circuit of the castle, first along the counterscarp of the moat, and
next along all accessible portions of the walls and battlements.
They halted often, and, with much observation of the defences, held
earnest talk together, sometimes eagerly contending rather than
disputing, but far more often mutually suggesting and agreeing. At
length one of them, whom the others called Caspar, retired, and the
earl was left with his son Edward, lord Herbert, the only person in
the castle who had gone to neither window nor door to delight
himself with the discomfiture of the parliamentary commissioners.
They entered the long picture gallery, faintly lighted from its
large windows to the court, but chiefly from the oriel which formed
the northern end of it, where they now sat down, the earl being, for
the second time that night, weary. Behind them was a long dim line
of portraits, broken only by the great chimney-piece supported by
human figures, all of carved stone, and before them, nearly as dim,
was the moon-massed landscape--a lovely view of the woodland,
pasture, and red tilth to the northward of the castle.
They sat silent for a while, and the younger said:
'I fear you are fatigued, my lord. It is late for you to be out of
bed; nature is mortal.'
'Thou sayest well; nature is mortal, my son. But therein lies the
comfort--it cannot last. It were hard to say whether of the two
houses stands the more in need of the hand of the maker.'
'Were it not for villanous saltpetre, my lord, the castle would hold
out well enough.'
'And were it not for villanous gout, which is a traitor within it, I
see not why this other should not hold out as long. Be sure,
Herbert, I shall not render the keep for the taking of the
outworks.'
'I fear,' said his son, wishing to change the subject, 'this part
where we now are is the most liable to hurt from artillery.'
'Yes, but the ground in front is not such as they would readiest
plant it upon,' said the earl. 'Do not let us forecast evil, only
prepare for it.'
'We shall do our best, my lord--with your lordship's good counsel to
guide us.'
'You shall lack nothing, Herbert, that either counsel or purse of
mine may reach unto.'
'I thank your lordship, for much depends upon both. And so I fear
will his majesty find--if it conies to the worst.'
A brief pause followed.
'Thinkest thou not, Herbert,' said the earl, slowly and
thoughtfully, 'it ill suits that a subject should have and to spare,
and his liege go begging?'
'My father is pleased to say so.'
'I am but evil pleased to say so. Bethink thee, son--what man can be
pleased to part with his money? And while my king is poor, I must be
rich for him. Thou wilt not accuse me, Herbert, after I am gone to
the rest, that I wasted thy substance, lad?'
'So long as you still keep wherewithal to give, I shall be content,
my lord.'
'Well, time will show. I but tell thee what runneth in my mind, for
thou and I, Herbert, have bosomed no secrets. I will to bed. We must
go the round again to-morrow--with the sun to hold as a candle.'
The next day the same party made a similar circuit three times--in
the morning, at noon, and in the evening--that the full light might
uncover what the shadows had hid, and that the shadows might show
what a perpendicular light could not reveal. There is all the
difference as to discovery whether a thing is lying under the shadow
of another, or casting one of its own.
After this came a review of the outer fortifications--if, indeed,
they were worthy of the name--enclosing the gardens, the old tilting
yard, now used as a bowling-green, the home-farmyard, and other such
outlying portions under the stewardship of sir Ralph Blackstone and
the governorship of Charles Somerset, the earl's youngest son. It
was here that the most was wanted; and the next few days were
chiefly spent in surveying these works, and drawing plans for their
extension, strengthening, and connection--especially about the
stables, armourer's shop, and smithy, where the building of new
defences was almost immediately set on foot.
A thorough examination of the machinery of the various portcullises
and drawbridges followed; next an overhauling of the bolts, chains,
and other defences of the gates. Then came an inspection of the
ordnance, from cannons down to drakes, through a gradation of names
as uncouth to our ears, and as unknown to the artillery descended
from them, as many of the Christian names of the puritans are to
their descendants of the present day. At length, to conclude the
inspection, lord Herbert and the master of the armoury held
consultation with the head armourer, and the mighty accumulation of
weapons of all sorts was passed under the most rigid scrutiny; many
of them were sent to the forge, and others carried to the
ground-floor of the keep.
Presently, things began to look busy in a quiet way about the place.
Men were at work blasting the rocks in a quarry not far off, whence
laden carts went creeping to the castle; but this was oftener in the
night. Some of them drove into the paved court, for here and there a
buttress was wanted inside, and of the battlements not a few were
weather-beaten and out of repair. These the earl would have let
alone, on the ground that they were no longer more than ornamental,
and therefore had better be repaired AFTER the siege, if such should
befall, for the big guns would knock them about like cards; but
Caspar reminded him that every time the ball from a cannon,
culvering, or saker missed the parapet, it remained a sufficient bar
to the bullet that might equally avail to carry off the defenceless
gunner. The earl, however, although he yielded, maintained that the
flying of the wall when struck was a more than counterbalancing
danger.
The stock of provisions began to increase. The dry larder, which lay
under the court, between the kitchen and buttery, was by degrees
filled with gammons and flitches of bacon, well dried and smoked.
Wheat, barley, oats, and pease were stored in the granary, and
potatoes in a pit dug in the orchard.
Strange faces in the guard-room caused wonderings and questions
amongst the women. The stables began to fill with horses, and 'more
man' to go about the farmyard and outhouses.
CHAPTER VII.
REFLECTIONS.
Left alone with Lady, his mare, Richard could not help
brooding--rather than pondering--over what the old woman had said.
Not that for a moment he contemplated as a possibility the
acceptance of the witch's offer. To come himself into any such close
relations with her as that would imply, was in repulsiveness second
only to the idea of subjecting Dorothy to her influences. For
something to occupy his hands, that his mind might be restless at
will, he gave his mare a careful currying, then an extra feed of
oats, and then a gallop; after which it was time to go to bed.
I doubt if anything but the consciousness of crime will keep healthy
youth awake, and as such consciousness is generally far from it,
youth seldom counts the watches of the night. Richard soon fell fast
asleep, and dreamed that his patron saint--alas for his
protestantism!--appeared to him, handed him a lance headed with a
single flashing diamond, and told him to go and therewith kill the
dragon. But just as he was asking the way to the dragon's den, that
he might perform his behest, the saint vanished, and feeling the
lance melting away in his grasp, he gradually woke to find it gone.
After a long talk with his father in the study, he was left to his
own resources for the remainder of the day; and as it passed and the
night drew on, the offer of the witch kept growing upon his
imagination, and his longing to see Dorothy became stronger and
stronger, until at last it was almost too intense to be borne. He
had never before known such a possession, and was more than half
inclined to attribute it to the arts of mother Rees.
His father was busy in his study below, writing letters--an
employment which now occupied much of his time; and Richard sat
alone in a chamber in the upper part of one of the many gables of
the house, which he had occupied longer than he could remember. Its
one small projecting lozenge-paned window looked towards Dorothy's
home. Some years ago he had been able to see her window, from it
through a gap in the trees, by favour of which, indeed, they had
indulged in a system of communications by means of coloured
flags--so satisfactory that Dorothy not only pressed into the
service all the old frocks she could find, but got into trouble by
cutting up one almost new for the enlargement of the somewhat
limited scope of their telegraphy. In this window he now sat,
sending his soul through the darkness, milky with the clouded light
of half an old moon, towards the ancient sun-dial, where Time stood
so still that sometimes Richard had known an hour there pass in a
moment.
Never until now had he felt enmity in space: it had been hitherto
rather as a bridge to bear him to Dorothy than a gulf to divide him
from her presence; but now, through the interpenetrative power of
feeling, their alienation had affected all around as well as within
him, and space appeared as a solid enemy, and darkness as an
unfriendly enchantress, each doing what it could to separate betwixt
him and the being to whom his soul was drawn as--no, there was no AS
for such drawing. No opposition of mere circumstances could have
created the feeling; it was the sense of an inward separation taking
form outwardly. For Richard was now but too well convinced that he
had no power of persuasion equal to the task of making Dorothy see
things as he saw them. The dividing influence of imperfect opposing
goods is potent as that of warring good and evil, with this
important difference, that the former is but for a season, and will
one day bind as strongly as it parted, while the latter is
essential, absolute, impassible, eternal.
To Dorothy, Richard seemed guilty of overweening arrogance and its
attendant, presumption; she could not see the form ethereal to which
he bowed. To Richard, Dorothy appeared the dupe of superstition; he
could not see the god that dwelt within the idol. To Dorothy,
Richard seemed to be one who gave the holy name of truth to nothing
but the offspring of his own vain fancy. To Richard, Dorothy
appeared one who so little loved the truth that she was ready to
accept anything presented to her as such, by those who themselves
loved the word more than the spirit, and the chrysalis of safety
better than the wings of power. But it is only for a time that any
good can to the good appear evil, and at this very moment, Nature,
who in her blindness is stronger to bind than the farthest-seeing
intellect to loose, was urging him into her presence; and the heart
of Dorothy, notwithstanding her initiative in the separation, was
leaning as lovingly, as sadly after the youth she had left alone
with the defaced sun-dial, the symbol of Time's weariness. Had they,
however, been permitted to meet as they would, the natural result of
ever-renewed dissension would have been a thorough separation in
heart, no heavenly twilights of loneliness giving time for the love
which grows like the grass to recover from the scorching heat of
intellectual jar and friction.
The waning moon at length peered warily from behind a bank of cloud,
and her dim light melting through the darkness filled the night with
a dream of the day. Richard was no more of a poet or dreamer of
dreams than is any honest youth so long as love holds the bandage of
custom away from his eyes. The poets are they who all their life
long contrive to see over or through the bandage; but they would, I
doubt, have but few readers, had not nature decreed that all youths
and maidens shall, for a period, be it long or short, become aware
that they too are of the race of the singers--shall, in the journey
of their life, at least pass through the zone of song: some of them
recognise it as the region of truth, and continue to believe in it
still when it seems to have vanished from around them; others scoff
as it disappears, and curse themselves for dupes. Through this zone
Richard was now passing. Hence the moon wore to him a sorrowful
face, and he felt a vague sympathy in her regard, that of one who
was herself in trouble, half the light of her lord's countenance
withdrawn. For science had not for him interfered with the shows of
things by a partial revelation of their realities. He had not
learned that the face of the moon is the face of a corpse-world;
that the sadness upon it is the sadness of utter loss; that her
light has in it no dissolved smile, is but the reflex from a
lifeless mirror; that of all the orbs we know best she can have
least to do with lovers' longings and losses, she alone having no
love left in her--the cold cinder of a quenched world. Not an
out-burnt cinder, though! she needs but to be cast again into the
furnace of the sun.
As it was, Richard had gazed at her hardly for a minute when he
found the tears running down his face, and starting up, ashamed of
the unmanly weakness, hardly knew what he was doing before he found
himself in the open air. From the hall clock came the first stroke
of twelve as he closed the door behind him. It was the hour at which
mother Rees had offered him a meeting with Dorothy; but it was
assuredly with no expectation of seeing her that he turned his steps
towards her dwelling.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN ADVENTURE.
When he reached the spot at which he usually turned off by a gap in
the hedge to NEEDLE his way through the unpathed wood, he yielded
to the impulses of memory and habit, and sought the yew-circle,
where for some moments he stood by the dumb, disfeatured stone,
which seemed to slumber in the moonlight, a monument slowly
vanishing from above a vanished grave. Indeed it might well have
been the grave of buried Time, for what fitter monument could he
have than a mutilated sun-dial, what better enclosure than such a
hedge of yews, and more suitable light than that of the dying moon?
Or was it but that the heart of the youth, receiving these things as
into a concave mirror, reprojected them into space, all shadowy with
its own ghostliness and gloom? Close by the dial, like the dark way
into regions where time is not, yawned the mouth of the pleached
alley. Beyond that was her window, on which the moon must now be
shining. He entered the alley, and walked softly towards the house.
Suddenly, down the dark tunnel came rushing upon him Dorothy's
mastiff, with a noise as of twenty soft feet, and a growl as if his
throat had been full of teeth--changing to a boisterous welcome
when he discovered who the stranger was. Fearful of disturbing the
household, Richard soon quieted the dog, which was in the habit of
obeying him almost as readily as his mistress, and, fearful of
disturbing sleepers or watchers, approached the house like a thief.
To gain a sight of Dorothy's window he had to pass that of the
parlour, and then the porch, which he did on the grass, that his
steps might be noiseless. But here the dog started from his heel,
and bounded into the porch, leading after him the eyes of Richard,
who thereupon saw what would have else remained undiscovered--two
figures, namely, standing in its deep shadow. Judging it his part,
as a friend of the family, to see who, at so late an hour, and so
near the house, seemed thus to avoid discovery, Richard drew nearer,
and the next moment saw that the door was open behind them, and that
they were Dorothy and a young man.
'The gates will be shut,' said Dorothy.
'It is no matter; old Eccles will open to me at any hour,' was the
answer.
'Still it were well you went without delay,' said Dorothy; and her
voice trembled a little, for she had caught sight of Richard.
Now not only are anger and stupidity near of kin, but when a man
whose mental movements are naturally deliberate, is suddenly
spurred, he is in great danger of acting like a fool, and Richard
did act like a fool. He strode up to the entrance of the porch, and
said,
'Do you not hear the lady, sir? She tells you to go.'
A voice as cool and self-possessed as the other was hasty and
perturbed, replied,
'I am much in the wrong, sir, if the lady do not turn the command
upon yourself. Until you have obeyed it, she may perhaps see reason
for withdrawing it in respect of me.'
Richard stepped into the porch, but Dorothy glided between them, and
gently pushed him out.
'Richard Heywood!' she said.
'Whew!' interjected the stranger, softly.
'You can claim no right,' she went on, 'to be here at this hour.
Pray go; you will disturb my mother.'
'Who is this man, then, whose right seems acknowledged?' asked
Richard, in ill-suppressed fury.
'When you address me like a gentleman, such as I used to believe
you--'
'May I presume to ask when you ceased to regard me as a gentleman,
mistress Dorothy?'
'As soon as I found that you had learned to despise law and
religion,' answered the girl. 'Such a one will hardly succeed in
acting the part of a gentleman, even had he the blood of the
Somersets in his veins.'
'I thank you, mistress Dorothy,' said the stranger, 'and will profit
by the plain hint. Once more tell me to go, and I will obey.'
'He must go first,' returned Dorothy.
Richard had been standing as if stunned, but now with an effort
recovered himself.
'I will wait for you,' he said, and turned away.
'For whom, sir?' asked Dorothy, indignantly.
'You have refused me the gentleman's name,' answered Richard:
'perhaps I may have the good fortune to persuade himself to be more
obliging.'
'I shall not keep you waiting long,' said the young man
significantly, as Richard walked away.
To do Richard justice, and greatly he needs it, I must make the
remark that such had been the intimacy betwixt him and Dorothy, that
he might well imagine himself acquainted with all the friends of her
house. But the intimacy had been confined to the children; the heads
of the two houses, although good neighbours, had not been drawn
towards each other, and their mutual respect had not ripened into
friendship. Hence many of the family and social relations of each
were unknown to the other; and indeed both families led such a
retired life that the children knew little of their own relatives
even, and seldom spoke of any.
Lady Scudamore, the mother of the stranger, was first cousin to lady
Vaughan. They had been very intimate as girls, but had not met for
years--hardly since the former married sir John, the son of one of
King James's carpet-knights. Hearing of her cousin's illness, she
had come to visit her at last, under the escort of her son. Taken
with his new cousin, the youth had lingered and lingered; and in
fact Dorothy had been unable to get rid of him before an hour
strange for leave-taking in such a quiet and yet hospitable
neighbourhood.
Richard took his stand on the side of the public road opposite the
gate; but just ere Scudamore came, which was hardly a minute after,
a cloud crept over the moon, and, as he happened to stand in a line
with the bole of a tree, Scudamore did not catch sight of him. When
he turned to walk along the road, Richard thought he avoided him,
and, making a great stride or two after him, called aloud--
'Stop, sir, stop. You forget your appointments over easily, I
think.'
'Oh, you ARE there!' said the youth, turning.
'I am glad you acknowledge my presence,' said Richard, not the
better pleased with his new acquaintance that his speech and
behaviour had an easy tone of superiority, which, if indefinably
felt by the home-bred lad, was not therefore to be willingly
accorded. His easy carriage, his light step, his still shoulders and
lithe spine, indicated both birth and training.
'Just the night for a serenade,' he went on, heedless of Richard's
remark, '--bright, but not too bright; cloudy, but not too cloudy.'
'Sir!' said Richard, amazed at his coolness.
'Oh, you want to quarrel with me!' returned the youth. 'But it takes
two to fight as well as to kiss, and I will not make one to-night. I
know who you are well enough, and have no quarrel with you, except
indeed it be true--as indeed it must, for Dorothy tells me so--that
you have turned roundhead as well as your father.'
'What right have you to speak so familiarly of mistress Dorothy?'
said Richard.
'It occurs to me,' replied Scudamore, airily, 'that I had better ask
you by what right you haunt her house at midnight. But I would not
willingly cross you in cold blood. I wish you good a night, and
better luck next time you go courting.'
The moon swam from behind a cloud, and her over ripe and fading
light seemed to the eyes of Richard to gather upon the figure before
him and there revive. The youth had on a doublet of some reddish
colour, ill brought out by the moonlight, but its silver lace and
the rapier hilt inlaid with silver shone the keener against it. A
short cloak hung from his left shoulder, trimmed also with silver
lace, and a little cataract of silver fringe fell from the edges of
his short trousers into the wide tops of his boots, which were
adorned with ruffles. He wore a large collar of lace, and cuffs of
the same were folded back from his bare hands. A broad-brimmed
beaver hat, its silver band fastened with a jewel holding a plume of
willowy feathers, completed his attire, which he wore with just the
slightest of a jaunty air. It was hardly the dress for a walk at
midnight, but he had come in his mother's carriage, and had to go
home without it.
Alas now for Richard's share in the freedom to which he had of late
imagined himself devoted! No sooner had the words last spoken
entered his ears than he was but a driven slave ready to rush into
any quarrel with the man who spoke them. Ere he had gone three paces
he had stepped in front of him.
'Whatever rights mistress Dorothy may have given you,' he said, 'she
had none to transfer in respect of my father. What do you mean by
calling him a roundhead?'
'Why, is he not one?' asked the youth, simply, keeping his ground,
in spite of the unpleasant proximity of Richard's person. 'I am
sorry to have wronged him, but I mistook him for a ringleader of the
same name. I heartily beg your pardon.'
'You did not mistake,' said Richard stupidly.
'Then I did him no wrong,' rejoined the youth, and once more would
have gone his way.
But Richard, angrier than ever at finding he had given him such an
easy advantage, moved with his movement, and kept rudely in front of
him, provoking a quarrel--in clownish fashion, it must be confessed.
'By heaven,' said Scudamore, 'if Dorothy had not begged me not to
fight with you--,' and as he spoke he slipped suddenly past his
antagonist, and walked swiftly away. Richard plunged after him, and
seized him roughly by the shoulder. Instantaneously he wheeled on
the very foot whence he was taking the next stride, and as he turned
his rapier gleamed in the moonlight. The same moment it left his
hand, he scarce knew how, and flew across the hedge. Richard, who
was unarmed, had seized the blade, and, almost by one and the same
movement of his wrist, wrenched the hilt from the grasp of his
adversary, and flung the thing from him. Then closing with the
cavalier, slighter and less skilled in such encounters, the
roundhead almost instantly threw him upon the turf that bordered the
road.
'Take that for drawing on an unarmed man,' he said.
No reply came. The youth lay stunned.
Then compassion woke in the heart of the angry Richard, and he
hastened to his help. Ere he reached him, however, he made an
attempt to rise, but only to stagger and fall again.
'Curse you for a roundhead!' he cried; 'you've twisted some of my
tackle. I can't stand.'
'I'm sorry,' returned Richard, 'but why did you bare bilbo on a
naked man? A right malignant you are !'
'Did I?' returned Scudamore. 'You laid hands on me so suddenly! I
ask your pardon.'
Accepting the offered aid of Richard, he rose; but his right knee
was so much hurt that he could not walk a step without great pain.
Full of regret for the suffering he had caused, Richard lifted him
in his arms, and seated him on a low wall of earth, which was all
that here inclosed lady Vaughan's shrubbery; then, breaking through
the hedge on the opposite side of the way, presently returned with
the rapier, and handed it to him. Scudamore accepted it courteously,
with difficulty replaced it in its sheath, rose, and once more
attempted to walk, but gave a groan, and would have fallen had not
Richard caught him.
'The devil is in it!' he cried, with more annoyance than anger. 'If
I am not in my place at my lord's breakfast to-morrow, there will be
questioning. That I had leave to accompany my mother makes the
mischief. If I had stole away, it would be another matter. It will
be hard to bear rebuke, and no frolic.'
'Come home with me,' said Richard. 'My father will do his best to
atone for the wrong done by his son.'
'Set foot across the threshold of a roundhead fanatic! In the way of
hospitality! Not if the choice lay betwixt that and my coffin!'
cried the cavalier.
'Then let me carry you back to lady Vaughan's,' said Richard, with a
torturing pang of jealousy, which only his sense of right, now
thoroughly roused, enabled him to defy.
'I dare not. I should terrify my mother, and perhaps kill my
cousin.'
'Your mother! your cousin!' cried Richard.
'Yes,' returned Scudamore; 'my mother is there, on a visit to her
cousin lady Vaughan.'
'Alas, I am more to blame than I knew!' said Richard.
'No,' Scudamore went on, heedless of Richard's lamentation. 'I must
crawl back to Raglan as I may. If I get there before the morning, I
shall be able to show reason why I should not wait upon my lord at
his breakfast.'
'You belong to the earl's household, then?' said Richard.
'Yes; and I fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything
else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would
he would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a
squire at least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned my spurs; but
his lordship will never be content without me to hand him his
buttered egg at breakfast, and fill his cup at dinner with his
favourite claret. And so I am neither more nor less than a page,
which rhymes with my age better than suits it. But the earl has a
will of his own. He is a master worth serving though. And there is
my lady Elizabeth and my lady Mary--not to mention my lord
Herbert!--But,' he concluded, rubbing his injured knee with both
hands, 'why do I prate of them to a roundhead?'
'Why indeed?' returned Richard. 'Are they not, the earl and all his
people, traitors, and that of the worst? Are they not the enemies of
the truth--worshippers of idols, bowing the knee to a woman, and
kissing the very toes of an old man so in love with ignorance, that
he tortures the philosopher who tells him the truth about the world
and its motions?'
'Go on, master Roundhead! I can chastise you, and that you know.
This cursed knee--'
'I will stand unarmed within your thrust, and never budge a foot,'
said Richard. 'But no,' he added, 'I dare not, lest I should further
injure one I have wronged already. Let there be a truce between us.'
'I am no papist,' returned Scudamore. 'I speak only as one of the
earl's household--true men all. For them I cast the word in your
teeth, you roundhead traitor! For myself I am of the English
church.'
'It is but the wolf and the wolf's cub,' said. Richard. 'Prelatical
episcopacy is but the old harlot veiled, or rather, forsooth, her
bloody scarlet blackened in the sulphur fumes of her coming
desolation.'
'Curse on, roundhead,' sighed the youth; 'I must crawl home.'
Once more he rose and made an effort to walk. But it was of no use:
walk he could not.
'I must wait till the morning,' he said, 'when some Christian
waggoner may be passing. Leave me in peace.'
'Nay, I am no such boor!' said Richard. 'Do you think you could
ride?'
'I could try.'
'I will bring you the best mare in Gwent. But tell me your name,
that I may know with whom I have the honour of a feud.'
'My name is Roland Scudamore,' answered the youth. 'Yours I know
already, and round-head as you are, you have some smatch of honour
in you.'
With an air of condescension he held out his hand, which his
adversary, oppressed with a sense of the injury he had done him, did
not refuse.
Richard hurried home, and to the stable, where he saddled his mare.
But his father, who was still in his study, heard the sound of her
hoofs in the paved yard, and met him as he led her out on the road,
with an inquiry as to his destination at such an hour. Richard told
him that he had had a quarrel with a certain young fellow of the
name of Scudamore, a page of the earl of Worcester, whom he had met
at lady Vaughan's: and recounted the result.
'Was your quarrel a just one, my son?'
'No sir. I was in the wrong.'
'Then you are so far in the right now. And you are going to help him
home?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Have you confessed yourself in the wrong?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then go, my son, but beware of private quarrel in such a season of
strife. This youth and thyself may meet some day in mortal conflict
on the battle-field; and for my part--I know not how it may be with
another--in such a case I would rather slay my friend than my
enemy.'
Enlightened by the inward experience of the moment, Richard was able
to understand and respond to the feeling. How different a sudden
action flashed off the surface of a man's nature may be from that
which, had time been given, would have unfolded itself from its
depths!
Bare-headed, Roger Heywood walked beside his son as he led the mare
to the spot where Scudamore perforce awaited his return. They found
him stretched on the roadside, plucking handfuls of grass, and
digging up the turf with his fingers, thus, and thus alone,
betraying that he suffered. Mr. Heywood at first refrained from any
offer of hospitality, believing he would be more inclined to accept
it after he had proved the difficulty of riding, in which case a
previous refusal might stand in the way. But although a slight groan
escaped as they lifted him to the saddle, he gathered up the reins
at once, and sat erect while they shortened the stirrup-leathers.
Lady seemed to know what was required of her, and stood as still as
a vaulting horse until Richard took the bridle to lead her away.
'I see!' said Scudamore; 'you can't trust me with your horse!'
'Not so, sir,' answered Mr. Heywood. 'We cannot trust the horse with
you. It is quite impossible for you to ride so far alone. If you
will go, you must submit to the attendance of my son, on which I am
sorry to think you have so good a claim. But will you not yet change
your mind and be our guest--for the night at least? We will send a
messenger to the castle at earliest dawn.'
Scudamore declined the invitation, but with perfect courtesy, for
there was that about Roger Heywood which rendered it impossible for
any man who was himself a gentleman, whatever his judgment of him
might be, to show him disrespect. And the moment the mare began to
move, he felt no further inclination to object to Richard's company
at her head, for he perceived that, should she prove in the least
troublesome, it would be impossible for him to keep his seat. He did
not suffer so much, however, as to lose all his good spirits, or
fail in his part of a conversation composed chiefly of what we now
call chaff, both of them for a time avoiding all such topics as
might lead to dispute, the one from a sense of wrong already done,
the other from a vague feeling that he was under the protection of
the foregone injury.
'Have you known my cousin Dorothy long?' asked Scudamore.
'Longer than I can remember,' answered Richard.
'Then you must be more like brother and sister than lovers.'
'That, I fear, is her feeling,' replied Richard, honestly.
'You need not think of me as a rival,' said Scudamore. 'I never saw
the young woman in my life before, and although anything of yours,
being a roundhead's, is fair game--'
'Your humble servant, sir Cavalier!' interjected Richard. 'Pray use
your pleasure.'
'I tell you plainly,' Scudamore went on, without heeding the
interruption, 'though I admire my cousin, as I do any young woman,
if she be but a shade beyond the passable--'
'The ape! The coxcomb!' said Richard to himself.
'I am not, therefore, dying for her love; and I give you this one
honest warning that, though I would rather see mistress Dorothy in
her winding-sheet than dame to a roundhead, I should be--yes, I MAY
be a more dangerous rival in respect of your mare, than of any lady
YOU are likely to set eyes upon.'
'What do you mean?' said Richard gruffly.
'I mean that, the king having at length resolved to be more of a
monarch and less of a saint--'
'A saint!' echoed Richard, but the echo was rather a loud one, for
it startled his mare and shook her rider.
'Don't shout like that!' cried the cavalier, with an oath. 'Saint or
sinner, I care not. He is my king, and I am his soldier. But with
this knee you have given me, I shall be fitter for garrison than
field-duty--damn it.'
'You do not mean that his majesty has declared open war against the
parliament?' exclaimed Richard.
'Faithless puritan, I do,' answered Scudamore. 'His majesty has at
length--with reluctance, I am sorry to hear--taken up arms against
his rebellious subjects. Land will be cheap by-and-by.'
'Many such rumours have reached us,' returned Richard, quietly. 'The
king spares no threats; but for blows--well!'
'Insolent fanatic!' shouted Vaughan, 'I tell you his majesty is on
his way from Scotland with an army of savages; and London has
declared for the king.'
Richard and his mare simultaneously quickened their pace.
'Then it is time you were in bed, Mr Scudamore, for my mare and I
will be wanted,' he cried. 'God be praised! I thank you for the good
news. It makes me young again to hear it.'
'What the devil do you mean by jerking this cursed knee of mine so?'
shouted Scudamore. 'Faith, you were young enough in all conscience
already, you fool! You want to keep me in bed, as well as send me
there! Well out of the way, you think! But I give you honest warning
to look after your mare, for I vow I have fallen in love with her.
She's worth three, at least, of your mistress Dorothies.'
'You talk like a Dutch boor,' said Richard.
'Saith an English lout,' retorted Scudamore. 'But, all things being
lawful in love and war, not to mention hate and rebellion, this
mare, if I am blessed with a chance, shall be--well, shall be
translated.'
'You mean from Redware to Raglan.'
'Where she shall be entertained in a manner worthy of her, which is
saying no little, if all her paces and points be equal to her walk
and her crest.'
'I trust you will be more pitiful to my poor Lady,' said Richard,
quietly. 'If all they say be true, Raglan stables are no place for a
mare of her breeding.'
'What do you mean, roundhead?'
'Folk say your stables at Raglan are like other some Raglan
matters--of the infernal sort.'
Scudamore was silent for a moment.
'Whether the stables be under the pavement or over the leads,' he
returned at last, 'there are not a few in them as good as she--of
which I hope to satisfy my Lady some day,' he added, patting the
mare's neck.
'Wert thou not hurt already, I would pitch thee out of the saddle,'
said Richard.
'Were I not hurt in the knee, thou couldst not,' said Scudamore.
'I need not lay hand upon thee. Wert thou as sound in limb as thou
art in wind, thou wouldst feel thyself on the road ere thou knewest
thou hadst taken leave of the saddle--did I but give the mare the
sign she knows.'
'By God's grace,' said the cavalier, 'she shall be mine, and teach
me the trick of it.'
Richard answered only with a grim laugh, and again, but more gently
this time, quickened the mare's pace. Little more had passed between
them when the six-sided towers of Raglan rose on their view.
Richard had, from childhood, been familiar with their aspect,
especially that of the huge one called the Yellow Tower, but he had
never yet been within the walls that encircled them. At any time
during his life, almost up to the present hour, he might have
entered without question, for the gates were seldom closed and never
locked, the portcullises, sheathed in the wall above, hung moveless
in their rusty chains, and the drawbridges spanned the moat from
scarp to counterscarp, as if from the first their beams had rested
there in solid masonry. And still, during the day, there was little
sign of change, beyond an indefinable presence of busier life, even
in the hush of the hot autumnal noon. But at night the drawbridges
rose and the portcullises descended--each with its own peculiar
creak, and jar, and scrape, setting the young rooks cawing in reply
from every pinnacle and tree-top--never later than the last moment
when the warder could see anything larger than a cat on the brow of
the road this side the village. For who could tell when, or with
what force at their command, the parliament might claim possession?
And now another of the frequent reports had arrived, that the king
had at length resorted to arms. It was altogether necessary for such
as occupied a stronghold, unless willing to yield it to the first
who demanded entrance, to keep watch and ward.
Admitted at the great brick gate, the outermost of all, and turning
aside from the steps leading up to the white stone gate and main
entrance beyond, with its drawbridge and double portcullis, Richard,
by his companion's directions, led his mare to the left, and,
rounding the moat of the citadel, sought the western gate of the
castle, which seemed to shelter itself under the great bulk of the
Yellow Tower, the cannon upon more than one of whose bastions
closely commanded it, and made up for its inferiority in defence of
its own.
Scudamore had scarcely called, ere the warder, who had been waked by
the sound of the horse's feet, began to set the machinery of the
portcullis in motion.
'What! wounded already, master Scudamore!' he cried, as they rode
under the archway.
'Yes, Eccles,' answered Scudamore, '--wounded and taken prisoner,
and brought home for ransom!'
As they spoke, Richard made use of his eyes, with a vague notion
that some knowledge of the place might one day or other be of
service, but it was little he could see. The moon was almost down,
and her low light, prolific of shadows, shone straight in through
the lifted portcullis, but in the gateway where they stood, there
was nothing for her to show but the groined vault, the massy walls,
and the huge iron-studded gate beyond.
'Curse you for a roundhead!' cried Scudamore, in the wrath
engendered of a fierce twinge, as Heywood sought to help his lamed
leg over the saddle.
'Dismount on this side then,' said Richard, regardless of the
insult.
But the warder had caught the word.
'Roundhead!' he exclaimed.
Scudamore did not answer until he found himself safe on his feet,
and by that time he had recovered his good manners.
'This is young Mr. Heywood of Redware,' he said, and moved towards
the wicket, leaning on Richard's arm.
But the old warder stepped in front, and stood between them and the
gate.
'Not a damned roundhead of the pack shall set foot across this
door-sill, so long as I hold the gate,' he cried, with a fierce
gesture of the right arm. And therewith he set his back to the
wicket.
'Tut, tut, Eccles !' returned Scudamore impatiently. 'Good words are
worth much, and cost little.'
'If the old dog bark, he gives counsel,' rejoined Eccles, immovable.
Heywood was amused, and stood silent, waiting the result. He had no
particular wish to enter, and yet would have liked to see what could
be seen of the court.
'Where the doorkeeper is a churl, what will folk say of the master
of the house?' said Scudamore.
'They may say as they list; it will neither hurt him nor me,' said
Eccles.
'Make haste, my good fellow, and let us through,' pleaded Scudamore.
'By Saint George! but my leg is in great pain. I fear the knee-cap
is broken, in which case I shall not trouble thee much for a week of
months.'
As he spoke, he stood leaning on Richard's arm, and behind them
stood Lady, still as a horse of bronze.
'I will but drop the portcullis,' said the warder, 'and then I will
carry thee to thy room in my arms. But not a cursed roundhead shall
enter here, I swear.'
'Let us through at once,' said Scudamore, trying the imperative.
'Not if the earl himself gave the order,' persisted the man.
'Ho! ho! what is that you say? Let the gentlemen through,' cried a
voice from somewhere.
The warder opened the wicket immediately, stepped inside, and held
it open while they entered, nor uttered another word. But as soon as
Richard had got Scudamore clear of the threshold, to which he lent
not a helping finger, he stepped quietly out again, closed the
wicket behind him, and taking Lady by the bridle, led her back over
the bridge towards the bowling-green.
Scudamore had just time to whisper to Heywood, 'It is my master, the
earl himself,' when the voice came again.
'What! wounded, Rowland? How is this? And who have you there?'
But that moment Richard heard the sound of his mare's hoofs on the
bridge, and leaving Scudamore to answer for them both, bounded back
to the wicket, darted through, and called her by name. Instantly she
stood stock still, notwithstanding a vicious kick in the ribs from
Eccles, not unseen of Heywood. Enraged at the fellow's insolence, he
dealt him a sudden blow that stretched him at the mare's feet,
vaulted into the saddle, and had reached the outer gate before he
had recovered himself. The sleepy porter had just let him through,
when the warder's signal to let no one out reached him. Richard
turned with a laugh.
'When next you catch a roundhead,' he said, 'keep him;' and giving
Lady the rein, galloped off, leaving the porter staring after him
through the bars like a half-roused wild beast.
Not doubting the rumour of open hostilities, the warder's design had
been to secure the mare, and pretend she had run away, for a good
horse was now more precious than ever.
The earl's study was over the gate, and as he suffered much from
gout and slept ill, he not unfrequently sought refuge in the
night-watches with his friends Chaucer, Gower, and Shakspere.
Richard drew rein at the last point whence the castle would have
been visible in the daytime. All he saw was a moving light. The
walls whence it shone were one day to be as the shell around the
kernel of his destiny.
CHAPTER IX.
LOVE AND WAR.
When Richard reached home and recounted the escape he had had, an
imprecation, the first he had ever heard him utter, broke from his
father's lips. With the indiscrimination of party spirit, he looked
upon the warder's insolence and attempted robbery as the spirit and
behaviour of his master, the earl being in fact as little capable of
such conduct as Mr. Heywood himself.
Immediately after their early breakfast the next morning, he led his
son to a chamber in the roof, of the very existence of which he had
been ignorant, and there discovered to him good store of such armour
of both kinds as was then in use, which for some years past he had
been quietly collecting in view of the time--which, in the light of
the last rumour, seemed to have at length arrived--when strength
would have to decide the antagonism of opposed claims. Probably also
it was in view of this time, seen from afar in silent approach,
that, from the very moment when he took his education into his own
hands, he had paid thorough attention to Richard's bodily as well as
mental accomplishment, encouraging him in all manly sports, such as
wrestling, boxing, and riding to hounds, with the more martial
training of sword-exercises, with and without the target, and
shooting with the carbine and the new-fashioned flint-lock pistols.
The rest of the morning Richard spent in choosing a headpiece, and
mail plates for breast, back, neck, shoulders, arms, and thighs. The
next thing was to set the village tailor at work upon a coat of that
thick strong leather, dressed soft and pliant, which they called
buff, to wear under his armour. After that came the proper equipment
of Lady, and that of the twenty men whom his father expected to
provide from amongst his own tenants, and for whom he had already a
full provision of clothing and armour; they had to be determined on,
conferred with, and fitted, one by one, so as to avoid drawing
attention to the proceeding. Hence both Mr. Heywood and Richard had
enough to do, and the more that Faithful Stopchase, on whom was
their chief dependence, had not yet recovered sufficiently from the
effects of his fall to be equal to the same exertion as formerly--of
which he was the more impatient that he firmly believed he had been
a special object of Satanic assault, because of the present value of
his counsels, and the coming weight of his deeds on the side of the
well-affected. Thus occupied, the weeks passed into months.
During this time Richard called again and again upon Dorothy,
ostensibly to inquire after her mother. Only once, however, did she
appear, when she gave him to understand she was so fully occupied,
that, although obliged by his attention, he must not expect to see
her again.
'But I will be honest, Richard,' she added, 'and let you know
plainly that, were it otherwise in respect of my mother, I yet
should not see you, for you and I have parted company, and are
already so far asunder on different roads that I must bid you
farewell at once while yet we can hear each other speak.'
There was no anger, only a cold sadness in her tone and manner,
while her bearing was stately as towards one with whom she had never
had intimacy. Even her sadness seemed to Richard to have respect to
the hopeless condition of her mother's health, and not at all to the
changed relation between him and her.
'I trust, at least, mistress Dorothy,' he said, with some
bitterness, 'you will grant me the justice that what I do, I do with
a good conscience. After all that has been betwixt us I ask for no
more.'
'What more could the best of men ask for?'
'I, who am far from making any claim to rank with such--'
'I am glad to know it,' interjected Dorothy.
'--am yet capable of hoping that an eye at once keener and kinder
than yours may see conscience at the very root of the actions which
you, Dorothy, will doubtless most condemn.'
Was this the boy she had despised for indifference?
'Was it conscience drove you to sprain my cousin Rowland's knee?'
she asked.
Richard was silent for a moment. The sting was too cruel.
'Pray hesitate not to say so, if such be your conviction,' added
Dorothy.
'No,' replied Richard, recovering himself. 'I trust it is not such a
serious matter as you say; but any how it was not conscience but
jealousy and anger that drove me to that wrong.'
'Did you see the action such at the time?'
'No, surely; else I would not have been guilty of that for which I
am truly sorry now.'
'Then, perhaps, the day will come when, looking back on what you do
now, you will regard it with the like disapprobation.--God grant it
may!' she added, with a deep sigh.
'That can hardly be, mistress Dorothy. I am, in the matters to which
you refer, under the influence of no passion, no jealousy, no self-
seeking, no--'
'Perhaps a deeper search might discover in you each and all of the
bosom-sins you so stoutly abjure,' interrupted Dorothy. 'But it is
needless for you to defend yourself to me; I am not your judge.'
'So much the better for me!' returned Richard; 'I should else have
an unjust as well as severe one. I, on my part, hope the day may
come when you will find something to repent of in such harshness
towards an old friend whom you choose to think in the wrong.'
'Richard Heywood, God is my witness it is no choice of mine. I have
no choice: what else is there to think? I know well enough what you
and your father are about. But there is nothing save my own
conscience and my mother's love I would not part with to be able to
believe you honourably right in your own eyes--not in mine--God
forbid! That can never be--not until fair is foul and foul is fair.'
So saying, she held out her hand.
'God be between thee and me, Dorothy!' said Richard, with solemnity,
as he took it in his.
He spoke with a voice that seemed to him far away and not his own.
Until now he had never realized the idea of a final separation
between him and Dorothy; and even now, he could hardly believe she
was in earnest, but felt, rather, like a child whose nurse threatens
to forsake him on the dark road, and who begins to weep only from
the pitiful imagination of the thing, and not any actual fear of her
carrying the threat into execution. The idea of retaining her love
by ceasing to act on his convictions--the very possibility of
it--had never crossed the horizon of his thoughts. Had it come to
him as the merest intellectual notion, he would have perceived at
once, of such a loyal stock did he come, and so loyal had he himself
been to truth all his days, that to act upon her convictions instead
of his own would have been to widen a gulf at least measurable, to
one infinite and impassable.
She withdrew the hand which had solemnly pressed his, and left the
room. For a moment he stood gazing after her. Even in that moment,
the vague fear that she would not come again grew to a plain
conviction, and forcibly repressing the misery that rose in bodily
presence from his heart to his throat, he left the house, hurried
down the pleached alley to the old sun-dial, threw himself on the
grass under the yews, and wept and longed for war.
But war was not to be just yet. Autumn withered and sank into
winter. The rain came down on the stubble, and the red cattle waded
through red mire to and from their pasture; the skies grew pale
above, and the earth grew bare beneath; the winds grew sharp and
seemed unfriendly; the brooks ran foaming to the rivers, and the
rivers ran roaring to the ocean. Then the earth dried a little, and
the frost came, and swelled and hardened it; the snow fell and lay,
vanished and came again. But even out of the depth of winter,
quivered airs and hints of spring, until at last the mighty weakling
was born. And all this time rumour beat the alarum of war, and men
were growing harder and more determined on both sides--some from
self-opinion, some from party spirit, some from prejudice,
antipathy, animosity, some from sense of duty, mingled more and less
with the alloys of impulse and advantage. But he who was most
earnest on the one side was least aware that he who was most earnest
on the other was honest as himself. To confess uprightness in one of
the opposite party, seemed to most men to involve treachery to their
own; or if they were driven to the confession, it was too often
followed with an attempt at discrediting the noblest of human
qualities.
The hearts of the two young people fared very much as the earth
under the altered skies of winter, and behaved much as the divided
nation. A sense of wrong endured kept both from feeling at first the
full sorrow of their separation; and by the time that the tide of
memory had flowed back and covered the rock of offence, they had got
a little used to the dulness of a day from which its brightest hour
had been blotted. Dorothy learned very soon to think of Richard as a
prodigal brother beyond seas, and when they chanced to meet, which
was but seldom, he was to her as a sad ghost in a dream. To Richard,
on the other hand, she looked a lovely but scarce worshipful
celestial, with merely might enough to hold his heart, swelling with
a sense of wrong, in her hand, and squeeze it very hard. His
consolation was that he suffered for the truth's sake, for to
decline action upon such insight as he had had, was a thing as
impossible as to alter the relations between the parts of a sphere.
Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens
of the church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about
the paled yard of obedience, picking up the barley of righteousness;
Richard longed for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her sons
together--to a war whose battles should never cease until men were
free to worship God after the light he had lighted within them, and
the dragon of priestly authority should breathe out his last fiery
breath, no more to drive the feebler brethren to seek refuge in the
house of hypocrisy.
At home Dorothy was under few influences except those of her mother,
and, through his letters, of Mr. Matthew Herbert. Upon the former a
lovely spiritual repose had long since descended. Her anxieties were
only for her daughter, her hopes only for the world beyond the
grave. The latter was a man of peace, who, having found in the
ordinances of his church everything to aid and nothing to retard his
spiritual development, had no conception of the nature of the
puritanical opposition to its government and rites. Through neither
could Dorothy come to any true idea of the questions which agitated
the politics of both church and state. To her, the king was a kind
of demigod, and every priest a fountain of truth. Her religion was
the sedate and dutiful acceptance of obedient innocence, a thing of
small account indeed where it is rooted only in sentiment and
customary preference, but of inestimable value in such cases as
hers, where action followed upon acceptance.
Richard, again, was under the quickening masterdom of a well-stored,
active mind, a strong will, a judgment that sought to keep its
balance even, and whose descended scale never rebounded, a
conscience which, through all the mists of human judgment, eyed ever
the blotted glimmer of some light beyond; and all these elements of
power were gathered in his own father, in whom the customary
sternness of the puritan parent had at length blossomed in
confidence, a phase of love which, to such a mind as Richard's, was
even more enchanting than tenderness. To be trusted by such a
father, to feel his mind and soul present with him, acknowledging
him a fit associate in great hopes and noble aims, was surely and
ought to be, whatever the sentimentalist may say, some comfort for
any sorrow a youth is capable of, such being in general only too
lightly remediable. I wonder if any mere youth ever suffered, from a
disappointment in love, half the sense of cureless pain which, with
one protracted pang, gnaws at the heart of the avaricious old man
who has dropt a sovereign into his draw-well.
But the relation of Dorothy and Richard, although ordinary in
outward appearance, was of no common kind; and while these two thus
fell apart from each other in their outer life, each judging the
other insensible to the call of highest rectitude, neither of them
knew how much his or her heart was confident of the other's
integrity. In respect of them, the lovely simile, in Christabel, of
the parted cliffs, may be carried a little farther, for, under the
dreary sea flowing between them, the rock was one still. Such a
faith may sometimes, perhaps often does, lie in the heart like a
seed buried beyond the reach of the sun, thoroughly alive though
giving no sign: to grow too soon might be to die. Things had indeed
gone farther with Dorothy and Richard, but the lobes of their loves
had never been fairly exposed to the sun and wind ere the swollen
clods of winter again covered them.
Once, in the cold noon of a lovely day of frost, when the lightest
step crackled with the breaking of multitudinous crystals, when the
trees were fringed with furry white, and the old spider-webs
glimmered like filigrane of fairy silver, they met on a lonely
country-road. The sun shone red through depths of half-frozen
vapour, and tinged the whiteness of death with a faint warmth of
feeling and hope. Along the rough lane Richard walked reading what
looked like a letter, but was a copy his father had procured of a
poem still only in manuscript--the Lycidas of Milton. In the glow to
which the alternating hot and cold winds of enthusiasm and
bereavement had fanned the fiery particle within him, Richard was
not only able to understand and enjoy the thought of which the poem
was built, but was borne aloft on its sad yet hopeful melodies as
upon wings of an upsoaring seraph. The flow of his feeling suddenly
broken by an almost fierce desire to share with Dorothy the
tenderness of the magic music of the stately monody, and then, ere
the answering waves of her emotion had subsided, to whisper to her
that the marvellous spell came from the heart of the same wonderful
man from whose brain had issued, like Pallas from Jove's,--
what?--Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against
Smectymnus, the pamphlet which had so roused all the abhorrence her
nature was capable of--he lifted his head and saw her but a few
paces from him. Dorothy caught a glimpse of a countenance radiant
with feeling, and eyes flashing through a watery film of delight;
her own eyes fell; she said, 'Good morning, Richard!' and passed him
without deflecting an inch. The bird of song folded its wings and
called in its shining; the sun lost half his red beams; the
sprinkled seed pearls vanished, and ashes covered the earth; he
folded the paper, laid it in the breast of his doublet, and walked
home through the glittering meadows with a fresh hurt in his heart.
Dorothy's time and thoughts were all but occupied with the nursing
of her mother, who, contrary to the expectation of her friends,
outlived the winter, and revived as the spring drew on. She read
much to her. Some of the best books had drifted into the house and
settled there, but, although English printing was now nearly two
centuries old, they were not many. We must not therefore imagine,
however, that the two ladies were ill supplied with spiritual
pabulum. There are few houses of the present day in which, though
there be ten times as many books, there is so much strong food; if
there was any lack, it was rather of diluents. Amongst those she
read were Queen Elizabeth's Homilies, Hooker's Politie, Donne's
Sermons, and George Herbert's Temple, to the dying lady only less
dear than her New Testament.
But even with this last, it was only through sympathy with her
mother that Dorothy could come into any contact. The gems of the
mind, which alone could catch and reflect such light, lay as yet
under the soil, and much ploughing and breaking of the clods was
needful ere they could come largely to the surface. But happily for
Dorothy, there were amongst the books a few of those precious little
quartos of Shakspere, the first three books of the Faerie Queene,
and the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, then much read, if we may
judge from the fact that, although it was not published till after
the death of Sidney, the eighth edition of it had now been nearly
ten years in lady Vaughan's possession.
Then there was in the drawing-room an old spinnet, sadly out of
tune, on which she would yet, in spite of the occasional jar and
shudder of respondent nerves, now and then play at a sitting all the
little music she had learned, and with whose help she had sometimes
even tried to find out an air for words that had taken her fancy.
Also, she had the house to look after, the live stock to see to, her
dog to play with and teach, a few sad thoughts and memories to
discipline, a call now and then from a neighbour, or a longer visit
from some old friend of her mother's to receive, and the few
cottagers on all that was left of the estate of Wyfern to care for;
so that her time was tolerably filled up, and she felt little need
of anything more to occupy at least her hours and days.
Meanwhile, through all nature's changes, through calm and tempest,
rain and snow, through dull refusing winter, and the first passing
visits of open-handed spring, the hearts of men were awaiting the
outburst of the thunder, the blue peaks of whose cloud-built cells
had long been visible on the horizon of the future. Every now and
then they would start and listen, and ask each other was it the
first growl of the storm, or but the rumbling of the wheels of the
government. To the dwellers in Raglan Castle it seemed at least a
stormy sign--of which the news reached them in the dull November
weather--that the parliament had set a guard upon Worcester House in
the Strand, and searched it for persons suspected of high
treason--lord Herbert, doubtless, first of all, the direction and
strength of whose political drift, suspicious from the first because
of his religious persuasion, could hardly be any longer doubtful to
the most liberal of its members.
The news of the terrible insurrection of the catholics in Ireland
followed.
Richard kept his armour bright, his mare in good fettle, himself and
his men in thorough exercise, read and talked with his father, and
waited, sometimes with patience, sometimes without.
At length, in the early spring, the king withdrew to York, and a
body-guard of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood gathered around
him. Richard renewed the flints of his carbine and pistols.
In April, the king, refused entrance into the town of Hull,
proclaimed the governor a traitor. The parliament declared the
proclamation a breach of its privileges. Richard got new girths.
The summer passed in various disputes. Towards its close the
governor of Portsmouth declined to act upon a commission to organize
the new levies of the parliament, and administered instead thereof
an oath of allegiance to the garrison and inhabitants. Thereupon the
place was besieged by Essex; the king proclaimed him a traitor, and
the parliament retorted by declaring the royal proclamation a libel.
Richard had his mare new-shod.
On a certain day in August, the royal standard, with the motto,
'Give to Caesar his due,' was set up at Nottingham. Richard mounted
his mare, and taking leave of his father, led Stopchase and nineteen
men more, all fairly mounted, to offer his services to the
parliament, as represented by the earl of Essex.
CHAPTER X.
DOROTHY'S REFUGE.
With the decay of summer, lady Vaughan began again to sink, and
became at length so weak that Dorothy rarely left her room. The
departure of Richard Heywood to join the rebels affected her deeply.
The report of the utter rout of the parliamentary forces at
Edgehill, lighted up her face for the last time with a glimmer of
earthly gladness, which the very different news that followed
speedily extinguished; and after that she declined more rapidly.
Mrs. Rees told Dorothy that she would yield to the first frost. But
she lingered many weeks. One morning she signed to her daughter to
come nearer that she might speak to her.
'Dorothy,' she whispered, 'I wish much to see good Mr. Herbert.
Prithee send for him. I know it is an evil time for him to travel,
being an old man and feeble, but he will do his endeavour to come to
me, I know, if but for my husband's sake, whom he loved like a
brother. I cannot die in peace without first taking counsel with him
how best to provide for the safety of my little ewe-lamb until these
storms are overblown. Alas! alas! I did look to Richard Heywood--'
She could say no more.
'Do not take thought about the morrow for me any more than you would
for yourself, madam,' said Dorothy. 'You know master Herbert says
the one is as the other.'
She kissed her mother's hand as she spoke, then hastened from the
room, and despatched a messenger to Llangattock.
Before the worthy man arrived, lady Vaughan was speechless. By signs
and looks, definite enough, and more eloquent than words, she
committed Dorothy to his protection, and died.
Dorothy behaved with much calmness. She would not, in her mother's
absence, act so as would have grieved her presence. Little passed
between her and Mr. Herbert until the funeral was over. Then they
talked of the future. Her guardian wished much to leave everything
in charge of the old bailiff, and take her with him to Llangattock;
but he hesitated a little because of the bad state of the roads in
winter, much because of their danger in the troubled condition of
affairs, and most of all because of the uncertain, indeed perilous
position of the Episcopalian clergy, who might soon find themselves
without a roof to shelter them. Fearing nothing for himself, he must
yet, in arranging for Dorothy, contemplate the worst of threatening
possibilities; and one thing was pretty certain, that matters must
grow far worse before they could even begin to mend.
But they had more time for deliberation given them than they would
willingly have taken. Mr. Herbert had caught cold while reading the
funeral service, and was compelled to delay his return. The cold
settled into a sort of low fever, and for many weeks he lay
helpless. During this time the sudden affair at Brentford took
place, after which the king, having lost by it far more than he had
gained, withdrew to Oxford, anxious to re-open the treaty which the
battle had closed.
The country was now in a sad state. Whichever party was uppermost in
any district, sought to ruin all of the opposite faction. Robbery
and plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies
or the route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere
marauders, taking up the cry of the faction that happened in any
neighbourhood to have the ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed
travellers, and were guilty of all sorts of violence. Hence it had
become as perilous to stay at home in an unfortified house as to
travel; and many were the terrors which during the winter tried the
courage of the girl, and checked the recovery of the old man. At
length one morning, after a midnight alarm, Mr. Herbert thus
addressed Dorothy, as she waited upon him with his breakfast:
'It fears me much, my dear Dorothy, that the time will be long ere
any but fortified places will be safe abodes. It is a question in my
mind whether it would not be better to seek refuge for you--. But
stay; let me suggest my proposal, rather than startle you with it in
sudden form complete. You are related to the Somersets, are you
not?'
'Yes--distantly.'
'Is the relationship recognized by them?'
'I cannot tell, sir. I do not even distinctly know what the
relationship is. And assuredly, sir, you mean not to propose that I
should seek safety from bodily peril with a household which is, to
say the least, so unfriendly to the doctrines you and my blessed
mother have always taught me! You cannot, or indeed, must you not
have forgotten that they are papists?'
Dorothy had been educated in such a fear of the catholics, and such
a profound disapproval of those of their doctrines rejected by the
reformers of the church of England, as was only surpassed in
intensity by her absolute abhorrence of the assumptions and
negations of the puritans. These indeed roused in her a certain
sense of disgust which she had never felt in respect of what were
considered by her teachers the most erroneous doctrines of the
catholics. But Mr. Herbert, although his prejudices were nearly as
strong, and his opinions, if not more indigenous at least far better
acclimatised than hers, had yet reaped this advantage of a longer
life, that he was better able to atone his dislike of certain
opinions with personal regard for those who held them, and therefore
did not, like Dorothy, recoil from the idea of obligation to one of
a different creed--provided always that creed was catholicism and
not puritanism. For to the church of England, the catholics, in the
presence of her more rampant foes, appeared harmless enough now.
He believed that the honourable feelings of lord Worcester and his
family would be hostile to any attempt to proselytize his ward. But
as far as she was herself concerned, he trusted more to the strength
of her prejudices than the rectitude of her convictions, honest as
the girl was, to prevent her from being over-influenced by the
change of spiritual atmosphere; for in proportion to the simplicity
of her goodness must be her capacity for recognizing the goodness of
others, catholics or not, and for being wrought upon by the virtue
that went out from them. His hope was, that England would have again
become the abode of peace, long ere any risk to her spiritual
well-being should have been incurred by this mode of securing her
bodily safety and comfort.
But there was another fact, in the absence of which he would have
had far more hesitation in seeking for his ewe-lamb the protection
of sheep, the guardians of whose spiritual fold had but too often
proved wolves in sheep-dogs' clothing: within the last few days the
news had reached him that an old friend named Bayly, a true man, a
priest of the English church and a doctor of divinity, had taken up
his abode in Raglan castle as one of the household--chaplain
indeed, as report would have it, though that was hard of belief,
save indeed it were for the sake of the protestants within its
walls. However that might be, there was a true shepherd to whose
care to entrust his lamb; and it was mainly on the strength of this
consideration that he had concluded to make his proposal to
Dorothy--namely, that she should seek shelter within the walls of
Raglan castle until the storm should be so far over-blown, as to
admit either of her going to Llangattock or returning to her own
home. He now discussed the matter with her in full, and,
notwithstanding her very natural repugnance to the scheme, such was
Dorothy's confidence in her friend that she was easily persuaded of
its wisdom. What the more inclined her to yield was, that Mr.
Heywood had written her a letter, hardly the less unwelcome for the
kindness of its tone, in which he offered her the shelter and
hospitality of Redware 'until better days.'
'Better days!' exclaimed Dorothy with contempt. 'If such days as he
would count better should ever arrive, his house is the last place
where I would have them find me!'
She wrote a polite but cold refusal, and rejoiced in the hope that
he would soon hear of her having sought and found refuge in Raglan
with the friends of the king.
Meanwhile Mr. Herbert had opened communication with Dr. Bayly, had
satisfied himself that he was still a true son of the church, and
had solicited his friendly mediation towards the receiving of
mistress Dorothy Vaughan into the family of the marquis of
Worcester, to the dignity of which title the earl had now been
raised--the parliament, to be sure, declining to acknowledge the
patent conferred by his majesty, but that was of no consequence in
the estimation of those chiefly concerned.
On a certain spring morning, then, the snow still lying in the
hollows of the hills, Thomas Bayly came to Wyfern to see his old
friend Matthew Herbert. He was a courteous little man, with a
courtesy librating on a knife-edge of deflection towards
obsequiousness on the one hand and condescension on the other, for
neither of which, however, was his friend Herbert an object. His eye
was keen, and his forehead good, but his carriage inclined to the
pompous, and his speech to the formal, ornate, and prolix. The shape
of his mouth was honest, but the closure of the lips indicated
self-importance. The greeting between them was simple and genuine,
and ere they parted, Bayly had promised to do his best in
representing the matter to the marquis, his daughter-in-law, lady
Margaret, the wife of lord Herbert, and his daughter, lady Anne,
who, although the most rigid catholic in the house, was already the
doctor's special friend.
It would have been greatly unlike the marquis or any of his family
to refuse such a prayer. Had not their house been for centuries the
abode of hospitality, the embodiment of shelter? On the mere
representation of Dr. Bayly, and the fact of the relationship,
which, although distant, was well enough known, within two days
mistress Dorothy Vaughan received an invitation to enter the family
of the marquis, as one of the gentlewomen of lady Margaret's suite.
It was of course gratefully accepted, and as soon as Mr. Herbert
thought himself sufficiently recovered to encounter the fatigues of
travelling, he urged on the somewhat laggard preparations of
Dorothy, that he might himself see her safely housed on his way to
Llangattock, whither he was most anxious to return.
It was a lovely spring morning when they set out together on
horseback for Raglan. The sun looked down like a young father upon
his earth-mothered children, peeping out of their beds to greet him
after the long winter night. The rooks were too busy to caw,
dibbling deep in the soft red earth with their great beaks. The red
cattle, flaked with white, spotted the clear fresh green of the
meadows. The bare trees had a kind of glory about them, like old men
waiting for their youth, which might come suddenly. A few slow
clouds were drifting across the pale sky. A gentle wind was blowing
over the wet fields, but when a cloud swept before the sun, it blew
cold. The roads were bad, but their horses were used to such, and
picked their way with the easy carefulness of experience. The winter
might yet return for a season, but this day was of the spring and
its promises. Earth and air, field and sky were full of peace. But
the heart of England was troubled--troubled with passions both good
and evil--with righteous indignation and unholy scorn, with the love
of liberty and the joy of license, with ambition and aspiration.
No honest heart could yield long to the comforting of the fair
world, knowing that some of her fairest fields would soon be
crimsoned afresh with the blood of her children. But Dorothy's
sadness was not all for her country in general. Had she put the
question honestly to her heart, she must have confessed that even
the loss of her mother had less to do with a certain weight upon it,
which the loveliness of the spring day seemed to render heavier,
than the rarely absent feeling rather than thought, that the
playmate of her childhood, and the offered lover of her youth, had
thrown himself with all the energy of dawning manhood into the
quarrel of the lawless and self-glorifying. Nor was she altogether
free from a sense of blame in the matter. Had she been less
imperative in her mood and bearing, more ready to give than to
require sympathy,--but ah! she could not change the past, and the
present was calling upon her.
At length the towers of Raglan appeared, and a pang of apprehension
shot through her bosom. She was approaching the unknown. Like one on
the verge of a second-sight, her history seemed for a moment about
to reveal itself--where it lay, like a bird in its egg, within those
massive walls, warded by those huge ascending towers. Brought up in
a retirement that some would have counted loneliness, and although
used to all gentle and refined ways, yet familiar with homeliness
and simplicity of mode and ministration, she could not help feeling
awed at the prospect of entering such a zone of rank and stateliness
and observance as the household of the marquis, who lived like a
prince in expenditure, attendance, and ceremony. She knew little of
the fashions of the day, and, like many modest young people, was
afraid she might be guilty of some solecism which would make her
appear ill-bred, or at least awkward. Since her mother left her, she
had become aware of a timidity to which she had hitherto been a
stranger. 'Ah!' she said to herself, 'if only my mother were with
me!'
At length they reached the brick gate, were admitted within the
outer wall, and following the course taken by Scudamore and Heywood,
skirted the moat which enringed the huge blind citadel or keep, and
arrived at the western gate. The portcullis rose to admit them, and
they rode into the echoes of the vaulted gateway. Turning to
congratulate Dorothy on their safe arrival, Mr. Herbert saw that she
was pale and agitated.
'What ails my child?' he said in a low voice, for the warder was
near.
'I feel as if entering a prison,' she replied, with a shiver.
'Is thy God the God of the grange and not of the castle?' returned
the old man.
'But, sir,' said Dorothy, 'I have been accustomed to a liberty such
as few have enjoyed, and these walls and towers--'
'Heed not the look of things,' interrupted her guardian. 'Believe in
the Will that with a thought can turn the shadow of death into the
morning, give gladness for weeping, and the garment of praise for
the spirit of heaviness.'
CHAPTER XI.
RAGLAN CASTLE.
While he yet spoke, their horses, of their own accord, passed
through the gate which Eccles had thrown wide to admit them, and
carried them into the Fountain court. Here, indeed, was a change of
aspect! All that Dorothy had hitherto contemplated was the side of
the fortress which faced the world--frowning and defiant, although
here and there on the point of breaking into a half smile, for the
grim, suspicious, altogether repellent look of the old feudal castle
had been gradually vanishing in the additions and alterations of
more civilised times. But now they were in the heart of the
building, and saw the face which the house of strength turned upon
its own people. The spring sunshine filled half the court; over the
rest lay the shadow of the huge keep, towering massive above the
three-storied line of building which formed the side next it. Here
was the true face of the Janus-building, full of eyes and mouths;
for many bright windows looked down into the court, in some of which
shone the smiling faces of children and ladies peeping out to see
the visitors, whose arrival had been announced by the creaking
chains of the portcullis; and by the doors issued and entered, here
a lady in rich attire, there a gentlemen half in armour, and here
again a serving man or maid. Nearly in the centre of the quadrangle,
just outside the shadow of the keep, stood the giant horse, rearing
in white marble, almost dazzling in the sunshine, from whose
nostrils spouted the jets of water which gave its name to the court.
Opposite the gate by which they entered was the little chapel, with
its triple lancet windows, over which lay the picture-gallery with
its large oriel lights. Far above their roof, ascended from behind
that of the great hall, with its fine lantern window seated on the
ridge. From the other court beyond the hall, that upon which the
main entrance opened, came the sounds of heavy feet in intermittent
but measured tread, the clanking of arms, and a returning voice of
loud command: the troops of the garrison were being exercised on the
slabs of the pitched court.
From each of the many doors opening into the court they had entered,
a path, paved with coloured tiles, led straight through the finest
of turf to the marble fountain in the centre, into whose shadowed
basin the falling water seemed to carry captive as into a prison the
sunlight it caught above. Its music as it fell made a lovely but
strange and sad contrast with the martial sounds from beyond.
It was but a moment they had to note these things; eyes and ears
gathered them all at once. Two of the warder's men already held
their horses, while two other men, responsive to the warder's
whistle, came running from the hall and helped them to dismount.
Hardly had they reached the ground ere a man-servant came, who led
the way to the left towards a porch of carved stone on the same side
of the court. The door stood open, revealing a flight of stairs,
rather steep, but wide and stately, going right up between two
straight walls. At the top stood lady Margaret's gentleman usher,
Mr. Harcourt by name, who received them with much courtesy, and
conducting them to a small room on the left of the landing, went to
announce their arrival to lady Margaret, to whose private parlour
this was the antechamber. Returning in a moment, he led them into
her presence.
She received them with a frankness which almost belied the
stateliness of her demeanour. Through the haze of that reserve which
a consciousness of dignity, whether true or false, so often
generates, the genial courtesy of her Irish nature, for she was an
O'Brien, daughter of the earl of Thomond, shone clear, and justified
her Celtic origin.
'Welcome, cousin!' she said, holding out her hand while yet distant
half the length of the room, across which, upborne on slow firm
foot, she advanced with even, stately motion, 'And you also,
reverend sir,' she went on, turning to Mr. Herbert. 'I am told we
are indebted to you for this welcome addition to our family--how
welcome none can tell but ladies shut up like ourselves.'
Dorothy was already almost at her ease, and the old clergyman soon
found lady Margaret so sensible and as well as courteous--prejudiced
yet further in her favour, it must be confessed, by the pleasant
pretence she made of claiming cousinship on the ground of the
identity of her husband's title with his surname--that, ere he left
the castle, liberal as he had believed himself, he was nevertheless
astonished to find how much of friendship had in that brief space
been engendered in his bosom towards a catholic lady whom he had
never before seen.
Since the time of Elizabeth, when the fear and repugnance of the
nation had been so greatly and justly excited by the apparent
probability of a marriage betwixt their queen and the detested
Philip of Spain, a considerable alteration had been gradually
wrought in the feelings of a large portion of it in respect of their
catholic countrymen--a fact which gave strength to the position of
the puritans in asserting the essential identity of episcopalian
with catholic politics. Almost forty years had elapsed since the
Gunpowder Plot; the queen was a catholic; the episcopalian party was
itself at length endangered by the extension and development of the
very principles on which they had themselves broken away from the
church of Rome; and the catholics were friendly to the government of
the king, under which their condition was one of comfort if not
influence, while under that of the parliament they had every reason
to anticipate a revival of persecution. Not a few of them doubtless
cherished the hope that this revelation of the true spirit of
dissent would result in driving the king and his party back into the
bosom of the church.
The king, on the other hand, while only too glad to receive what aid
he might from the loyal families of the old religion, yet saw that
much caution was necessary lest he should alienate the most earnest
of his protestant friends by giving ground for the suspicion that he
was inclined to purchase their co-operation by a return to the creed
of his Scottish grand-mother, Mary Stuart, and his English
great-great-grand-mother, Margaret Tudor.
On the part of the clergy there had been for some time a
considerable tendency, chiefly from the influence of Laud, to
cultivate the same spirit which actuated the larger portion of the
catholic priesthood; and although this had never led to retrograde
movement in regard to their politics, the fact that both were
accounted by a third party, and that far the most dangerous to
either of the other two, as in spirit and object one and the same,
naturally tended to produce a more indulgent regard of each other
than had hitherto prevailed. And hence, in part, it was that it had
become possible for episcopalian Dr. Bayly to be an inmate of Raglan
Castle, and for good, protestant Matthew Herbert to seek refuge for
his ward with good catholic lady Margaret.
Eager to return to the duties of his parish, through his illness so
long neglected, Mr. Herbert declined her ladyship's invitation to
dinner, which, she assured him, consulting a watch that she wore in
a ring on her little finger, must be all but ready, seeing it was
now a quarter to eleven, and took his leave, accompanied by
Dorothy's servant to bring back the horse--if indeed they should be
fortunate enough to escape the requisition of both horses by one
party or the other. At present, however, the king's affairs
continued rather on the ascendant, and the name of the marquis in
that country was as yet a tower of strength. Dorothy's horse was
included in the hospitality shown his mistress, and taken to the
stables--under the mid-day shadow of the Library Tower.
As soon as the parson was gone, lady Margaret touched a small silver
bell which hung in a stand on the table beside her.
'Conduct mistress Dorothy Vaughan to her room, wait upon her there,
and then attend her hither,' she said to the maid who answered it.
'I would request a little not unneedful haste, cousin,' she went on,
'for my lord of Worcester is very precise in all matters of
household order, and likes ill to see any one enter the dining-room
after he is seated. It is his desire that you should dine at his
table to-day. After this I must place you with the rest of my
ladies, who dine in the housekeeper's room.'
'As you think proper, madam,' returned Dorothy, a little
disappointed, but a little relieved also.
'The bell will ring presently,' said lady Margaret, 'and a quarter
of an hour thereafter we shall all be seated.'
She was herself already dressed--in a pale-blue satin, with full
skirt and close-fitting, long-peaked boddice, fastened in front by
several double clasps set with rubies; her shoulders were bare, and
her sleeves looped up with large round star-like studs, set with
diamonds, so that her arms also were bare to the elbows. Round her
neck was a short string of large pearls.
'You take no long time to attire yourself, cousin,' said her
ladyship, kindly, when Dorothy returned.
'Little time was needed, madam,' answered Dorothy; 'for me there is
but one colour. I fear I shall show but a dull bird amidst the gay
plumage of Raglan. But I could have better adorned myself had not I
heard the bell ere I had begun, and feared to lose your ladyship's
company, and in very deed make my first appearance before my lord as
a transgressor of the laws of his household.'
'You did well, cousin Dorothy; for everything goes by law and order
here. All is reason and rhyme too in this house. My lord's father,
although one of the best and kindest of men, is, as I said, somewhat
precise, and will, as he says himself, be king in his own kingdom--
thinking doubtless of one who is not such. I should not talk thus
with you, cousin, were you like some young ladies I know; but there
is that about you which pleases me greatly, and which I take to
indicate discretion. When first I came to the house, not having been
accustomed to so severe a punctuality, I gave my lord no little
annoyance; for, oftener than once or twice, I walked into his
dining-room not only after grace had been said, but after the first
course had been sent down to the hall-tables. My lord took his
revenge in calling me the wild Irish-woman.'
Here she laughed very sweetly.
'The only one,' she resumed, 'who does here as he will, is my
husband. Even lord Charles, who is governor of the castle, must be
in his place to the moment; but for my husband--.'
The bell rang a second time. Lady Margaret rose, and taking
Dorothy's arm, led her from the room into a long dim-lighted
corridor. Arrived at the end of it, where a second passage met it at
right angles, she stopped at a door facing them.
'I think we shall find my lord of Worcester here,' she said in a
whisper, as she knocked and waited a response. 'He is not here,' she
said. 'He expects me to call on him as I pass. We must make haste.'
The second passage, in which were several curves and sharp turns,
led them to a large room, nearly square, in which were two tables
covered for about thirty. By the door and along the sides of the
room were a good many gentlemen, some of them very plainly dressed,
and others in gayer attire, amongst whom Dorothy, as they passed
through, recognised her cousin Scudamore. Whether he saw and knew
her she could not tell. Crossing a small antechamber they entered
the drawing-room, where stood and sat talking a number of ladies and
gentlemen, to some of whom lady Margaret spoke and presented her
cousin, greeting others with a familiar nod or smile, and yet others
with a stately courtesy. Then she said,
'Ladies, I will lead the way to the dining-room. My lord marquis
would the less willingly have us late that something detains
himself.'
Those who dined in the marquis's room followed her. Scarcely had she
reached the upper end of the table when the marquis entered,
followed by all his gentlemen, some of whom withdrew, their service
over for the time, while others proceeded to wait upon him and his
family, with any of the nobility who happened to be his guests at
the first table.
'I am the laggard to-day, my lady,' he said, cheerily, as he bore
his heavy person up the room towards her. 'Ah!' he went on, as lady
Margaret stepped forward to meet him, leading Dorothy by the hand,
'who is this sober young damsel under my wild Irishwoman's wing? Our
young cousin Vaughan, doubtless, whose praises my worthy Dr. Bayly
has been sounding in my ears?'
He held out his hand to Dorothy, and bade her welcome to Raglan.
The marquis was a man of noble countenance, of the type we are ready
to imagine peculiar to the great men of the time of queen Elizabeth.
To this his unwieldy person did not correspond, although his
movements were still far from being despoiled of that charm which
naturally belonged to all that was his. Nor did his presence owe
anything to his dress, which was of that long-haired coarse woollen
stuff they called frieze, worn, probably, by not another nobleman in
the country, and regarded as fitter for a yeoman. His eyes, though
he was yet but sixty-five or so, were already hazy, and his voice
was husky and a little broken--results of the constantly poor health
and frequent suffering he had had for many years; but he carried it
all 'with'--to quote the prince of courtesy, sir Philip
Sydney--'with a right old man's grace, that will seem livelier than
his age will afford him.'
The moment he entered, the sewer in the antechamber at the other end
of the room had given a signal to one waiting at the head of the
stair leading down to the hall, and his lordship was hardly seated,
ere--although the kitchen was at the corner of the pitched court
diagonally opposite--he bore the first dish into the room, followed
by his assistants, laden each with another.
Lady Margaret made Dorothy sit down by her. A place on her other
side was vacant.
'Where is this truant husband of thine, my lady?' asked the marquis,
as soon as Dr. Bayly had said grace. 'Know you whether he eats at
all, or when, or where? It is now three days since he has filled his
place at thy side, yet is he in the castle. Thou knowest, my lady, I
deal not with him, who is so soon to sit in this chair, as with
another, but I like it not. Know you what occupies him to day?'
'I do not, my lord,' answered lady Margaret. 'I have had but one
glimpse of him since the morning, and if he looks now as he looked
then, I fear your lordship would be minded rather to drive him from
your table than welcome him to a seat beside you.'
As she spoke, lady Margaret caught a glimpse of a peculiar
expression on Scudamore's face, where he stood behind his master's
chair.
'Your page, my lord,' she said, 'seems to know something of him: if
it pleased you to put him to the question--'
'Hey, Scudamore!' said the marquis without turning his head; 'what
have you seen of my lord Herbert?'
'As much as could be seen of him, my lord,' answered Scudamore. 'He
was new from the powder-mill, and his face and hands were as he had
been blown three times up the hall chimney.'
'I would thou didst pay more heed to what is fitting, thou monkey,
and knewest either place or time for thy foolish jests! It will be
long ere thou soil one of thy white fingers for king or country,'
said the marquis, neither angrily nor merrily. 'Get another flask of
claret,' he added, 'and keep thy wit for thy mates, boy.'
Dorothy cast one involuntary glance at her cousin. His face was red
as fire, but, as it seemed to her, more with suppressed amusement
than shame. She had not been much longer in the castle before she
learned that, in the opinion of the household, the marquis did his
best, or worst rather, to ruin young Scudamore by indulgence. The
judgment, however, was partly the product of jealousy, although
doubtless the marquis had in his case a little too much relaxed the
bonds of discipline. The youth was bright and ready, and had as yet
been found trustworthy; his wit was tolerable, and a certain gay
naivete of speech and manner set off to the best advantage what
there was of it; but his laughter was sometimes mischievous, and on
the present occasion Dorothy could not rid herself of the suspicion
that he was laughing in his sleeve at his master, which caused her
to redden in her turn. Scudamore saw it, and had his own fancies
concerning the phenomenon.
CHAPTER XII.
THE TWO MARQUISES.
Dinner over, lady Margaret led Dorothy back to her parlour, and
there proceeded to discover what accomplishments and capabilities
she might possess. Finding she could embroider, play a little on the
spinnet, sing a song, and read aloud both intelligibly and
pleasantly, she came to the conclusion that the country-bred girl
was an acquisition destined to grow greatly in value, should the day
ever arrive--which heaven forbid!--when they would have to settle
down to the monotony of a protracted siege. Remarking, at length,
that she looked weary, she sent her away to be mistress of her time
till supper, at half-past five.
Weary in truth with her journey, but still more weary from the
multitude and variety of objects, the talk, and the constant demand
of the general strangeness upon her attention and one form or other
of suitable response, Dorothy sought her chamber. But she scarcely
remembered how to reach it. She knew it lay a floor higher, and
easily found the stair up which she had followed her attendant, for
it rose from the landing of the straight ascent by which she had
entered the house. She could hardly go wrong either as to the
passage at the top of it, leading back over the room she had just
left below, but she could not tell which was her own door. Fearing
to open the wrong one, she passed it and went on to the end of the
corridor, which was very dimly lighted. There she came to an open
door, through which she saw a small chamber, evidently not meant for
habitation. She entered. A little light came in through a crossed
loophole, sufficient to show her the bare walls, with the plaster
sticking out between the stones, the huge beams above, and in the
middle of the floor, opposite the loop-hole, a great arblast or
crossbow, with its strange machinery. She had never seen one before,
but she knew enough to guess at once what it was. Through the
loophole came a sweet breath of spring air, and she saw trees
bending in the wind, heard their faint far-off rustle, and saw the
green fields shining in the sun.
Partly from having been so much with Richard, her only playmate, who
was of an ingenious and practical turn, a certain degree of interest
in mechanical forms and modes had been developed in Dorothy,
sufficient at least to render her unable to encounter such an
implement without feeling a strong impulse to satisfy herself
concerning its mechanism, its motion, and its action. Approaching it
cautiously and curiously, as if it were a live thing, which might
start up and fly from, or perhaps at her, for what she knew, she
gazed at it for a few moments with eyes full of unuttered questions,
then ventured to lay gentle hold upon what looked like a handle. To
her dismay, a wheezy bang followed, which seemed to shake the tower.
Whether she had discharged an arrow, or an iron bolt, or a stone, or
indeed anything at all, she could not tell, for she had not got so
far in her observations as to perceive even that the bow was bent.
Her heart gave a scared flutter, and she started back, not merely
terrified, but ashamed also that she should initiate her life in the
castle with meddling and mischief, when a low gentle laugh behind
her startled her yet more, and looking round with her heart in her
throat, she perceived in the half-light of the place a man by the
wall behind the arblast watching her. Her first impulse was to run,
and the door was open; but she thought she owed an apology ere she
retreated. What sort of person he was she could not tell, for there
was not light enough to show a feature of his face.
'I ask your pardon,' she said; 'I fear I have done mischief.'
'Not the least,' returned the man, in a gentle voice, with a tone of
amusement in it.
'I had never seen a great cross-bow,' Dorothy went on, anxious to
excuse her meddling. 'I thought this must be one, but I was so
stupid as not to perceive it was bent, and that that was the--the
handle--or do you call it the trigger?--by which you let it go.'
The man, who had at first taken her for one of the maids, had by
this time discovered from her tone and speech that she was a lady.
'It is a clumsy old-fashioned thing,' he returned, 'but I shall not
remove it until I can put something better in its place; and it
would be a troublesome affair to get even a demiculverin up here,
not to mention the bad neighbour it would be to the ladies'chambers.
I was just making a small experiment with it on the force of
springs. I believe I shall yet prove that much may be done with
springs--more perhaps, and certainly at far less expense, than with
gunpowder, which costs greatly, is very troublesome to make,
occupies much space, and is always like an unstable, half-
treacherous friend within the gates--to say nothing of the expense
of cannon--ten times that of an engine of timber and springs. See
what a strong chain your shot has broken! Shall I show you how the
thing works?'
He spoke in a gentle, even rapid voice, a little hesitating now and
then, more, through the greater part of this long utterance, as if
he were thinking to himself than addressing another. Neither his
tone nor manner were those of an underling, but Dorothy's startled
nerves had communicated their tremor to her modesty, and with a
gentle 'No, sir, I thank you; I must be gone,' she hurried away.
Daring now a little more for fear of worse, the first door she tried
proved that of her own room, and it was with a considerable sense of
relief, as well as with weariness and tremor, that she nestled
herself into the high window-seat, and looked out into the
quadrangle. The shadow of the citadel had gone to pay its afternoon
visit to the other court, and that of the gateway was thrown upon
the chapel, partly shrouding the white horse, whose watery music was
now silent, but allowing one red ray, which entered by the iron
grating above the solid gates, to fall on his head, and warm its
cold whiteness with a tinge of delicate pink. The court was more
still and silent than in the morning; only now and then would a
figure pass from one door to another, along the side of the
buildings, or by one of the tiled paths dividing the turf. A large
peacock was slowly crossing the shadowed grass with a stately strut
and rhythmic thrust of his green neck. The moment he came out into
the sunlight, he spread his wheeled fan aloft, and slowly
pirouetting, if the word can be allowed where two legs are needful,
in the very acme of vanity, turned on all sides the quivering
splendour of its hundred eyes, where blue and green burst in the
ecstasy of their union into a vapour of gold, that the circle of the
universe might see. And truly the bird's vanity had not misled his
judgment: it was a sight to make the hearts of the angels throb out
a dainty phrase or two more in the song of their thanksgiving. Some
pigeons, white, and blue-grey, with a lovely mingling and interplay
of metallic lustres on their feathery throats, but with none of that
almost grotesque obtrusion of over-driven individuality of kind, in
which the graciousness of common beauty is now sacrificed to the
whim of the fashion the vulgar fancier initiates, picked up the
crumbs under the windows of lady Margaret's nursery, or flew hither
and thither among the roofs with wapping and whiffling wing.
But still from the next court came many and various mingling noises.
The sounds of drill had long ceased, but those of clanking hammers
were heard the more clearly, now one, now two, now several together.
The smaller, clearer one was that of the armourer, the others those
of the great smithy, where the horse-shoes were made, the horses
shod, the smaller pieces of ordnance repaired, locks and chains
mended, bolts forged, and, in brief, every piece of metal about the
castle, from the cook's skillet to the winches and chains of the
drawbridges, set right, renewed, or replaced. The forges were far
from where she sat, outside the farthest of the two courts, across
which, and the great hall dividing them, the clink, clink, the
clank, and the ringing clang, softened by distance and
interposition, came musical to her ear. The armourer's hammer was
the keener, the quicker, the less intermittent, and yet had the most
variations of time and note, as he shifted the piece on his anvil,
or changed breastplate for gorget, or greave for pauldron--or it
might be sword for pike-head or halbert. Mingled with it came now
and then the creak and squeak of the wooden wheel at the draw-well
near the hall-door in the farther court, and the muffled splash of
the bucket as it struck the water deep in the shaft. She even
thought she could hear the drops dripping back from it as it slowly
ascended, but that was fancy. Everywhere arose the auricular vapour,
as it were, of action, undefined and indefinable, the hum of the
human hive, compounded of all confluent noises--the chatter of the
servants' hall and the nursery, the stamping of horses, the ringing
of harness, the ripping of the chains of kenneled dogs, the hollow
stamping of heavy boots, the lowing of cattle, with sounds besides
so strange to the ears of Dorothy that they set her puzzling in vain
to account for them; not to mention the chaff of the guard-rooms by
the gates, and the scolding and clatter of the kitchen. This last,
indeed, was audible only when the doors were open, for the walls of
the kitchen, whether it was that the builders of it counted cookery
second only to life, or that this had been judged, from the nature
of the ground outside, the corner of all the enclosure most likely
to be attacked, were far thicker than those of any of the other
towers, with the one exception of the keep itself.
As she sat listening to these multitudinous exhalations of life
around her, yet with a feeling of loneliness and a dim sense of
captivity, from the consciousness that huge surrounding walls rose
between her and the green fields, of which, from earliest memory,
she had been as free as the birds and beetles, a white rabbit,
escaped from the arms of its owner, little Mary Somerset, lady
Margaret's only child, a merry but delicate girl not yet three years
old, suddenly darted like a flash of snow across the shadowy green,
followed in hot haste a moment after by a fine-looking boy of
thirteen and two younger girls, after whom toddled tiny Mary.
Dorothy sat watching the pursuit, accompanied with sweet outcry and
frolic laughter, when in a moment the sounds of their merriment
changed to shrieks of terror, and she saw a huge mastiff come
bounding she knew not whence, and rush straight at the rabbit,
fierce and fast. When the little creature saw him, struck with
terror it stopped dead, cowered on the sward, and was stock still.
But Henry Somerset, who was but a few paces from it, reached it
before the dog, and caught it up in his arms. The rush of the dog
threw him down, and they rolled over and over, Henry holding fast
the poor rabbit.
By this time Dorothy was half-way down the stair: the moment she
caught sight of the dog she had flown to the rescue. When she issued
from the porch at the foot of the grand staircase, Henry was up
again, and running for the house with the rabbit yet safe in his
arms, pursued by the mastiff. Evidently the dog had not harmed
him--but he might get angry. The next moment she saw, to her joy and
dismay both at once, that it was her own dog.
'Marquis! Marquis!' she cried, calling him by his name.
He abandoned the pursuit at once, and went bounding to her. She took
him by the back of the neck, and the displeasure manifest upon the
countenance of his mistress made him cower at her feet, and wince
from the open hand that threatened him. The same instant a lattice
window over the gateway was flung open, and a voice said--
'Here I am. Who called me?'
Dorothy looked up. The children had vanished with their rescued
darling. There was not a creature in the court but herself, and
there was the marquis, leaning half out of the window, and looking
about.
'Who called me?' he repeated--angrily, Dorothy thought.
All at once the meaning of it flashed upon her, and she was
confounded--ready to sink with annoyance. But she was not one to
hesitate when a thing HAD to be done. Keeping her hold of the dog's
neck, for his collar was gone, she dragged him half-way towards the
gate, then turning up to the marquis a face like a peony, replied--
'I am the culprit, my lord.'
'By St. George! you are a brave damsel, and there is no culpa that I
know of, except on the part of that intruding cur.'
'And the cur's mistress, my lord. But, indeed, he is no cur, but a
true mastiff.'
'What! is the animal thy property, fair cousin? He is more than I
bargained for.'
'He is mine, my lord, but I left him chained when I set out from
Wyfern this morning. That he got loose I confess I am not
astonished, neither that he tracked me hither, for he has the eyes
of a gaze-hound, and the nose of a bloodhound; but it amazes me to
find him in the castle.'
'That must be inquired into,' said the marquis.
'I am very sorry he has carried himself so ill, my lord. He has put
me to great shame. But he hath more in him than mere brute, and
understands when I beg you to pardon him. He misbehaved himself on
purpose to be taken to me, for at home no one ever dares punish him
but myself.'
The marquis laughed.
'If you are so completely his mistress then, why did you call on me
for help?'
'Pardon me, my lord; I did not so.'
'Why, I heard thee call me two or three times!'
'Alas, my lord! I called him Marquis when he was a pup. Everybody
about Redware knows Marquis.'
The animal cocked his ears and started each time his name was
uttered, and yet seemed to understand well enough that ALL the talk
was about him and his misdeeds.
'Ah! ha!' said his lordship, with a twinkle in his eye, 'that begets
complications. Two marquises in Raglan? Two kings in England! The
thing cannot be. What is to be done?'
'I must take him back, my lord! I cannot send him, for he would not
go. I dread they will not be able to hold him chained; in which evil
case I fear me I shall have to go, my lord, and take the perils of
the time as they come.'
'Not of necessity so, cousin, while you can choose between
us;--although I freely grant that a marquis with four legs is to be
preferred before a marquis with only two.--But what if you changed
his name?'
'I fear it could not be done, my lord. He has been Marquis all his
life.'
'And I have been marquis only six months! Clearly he hath the better
right--. But there would be constant mistakes between us, for I
cannot bring myself to lay aside the honour his majesty hath
conferred upon me, "which would be worn now in its newest gloss, not
cast aside so soon," as master Shakspere says. Besides, it would be
a slight to his majesty, and that must not be thought of--not for
all the dogs in parliament or out of it. No--it would breed factions
in the castle too. No; one of us two must die.'
'Then, indeed, I must go,' said Dorothy, her voice trembling as she
spoke; for although the words of the marquis were merry, she yet
feared for her friend.
'Tut! tut! let the older marquis die: he has enjoyed the title; I
have not. Give him to Tom Fool: he will drown him in the moat. He
shall be buried with honour--under his rival's favourite apple-tree
in the orchard. What more could dog desire?'
'No, my lord,' answered Dorothy. 'Will you allow me to take my
leave? If I only knew where to find my horse!'
'What! would you saddle him yourself, cousin Vaughan?'
'As well as e'er a knave in your lordship's stables. I am very sorry
to displease you, but to my dog's death I cannot and will not
consent. Pardon me, my lord.'
The last words brought with them a stifled sob, for she scarcely
doubted any more that he was in earnest.
'It is assuredly not gratifying to a marquis of the king's making to
have one of a damsel's dubbing take the precedence of him. I fear
you are a roundhead and hold by the parliament. But no--that cannot
be, for you are willing to forsake your new cousin for your old dog.
Nay, alas! it is your old cousin for your young dog. Puritan!
puritan! Well, it cannot be helped. But what! you would ride home
alone! Evil men are swarming, child. This sultry weather brings them
out like flies.'
'I shall not be alone, my lord. Marquis will take good care of me.'
'Indeed, my lord marquis will pledge himself to nothing outside his
own walls.'
'I meant the dog, my lord.'
'Ah! you see how awkward it is. However, as you will not choose
between us--and to tell the truth, I am not yet quite prepared to
die--we must needs encounter what is inevitable. I will send for
one of the keepers to take him to the smithy, and get him a proper
collar--one he can't slip like that he left at home--and a chain.'
'I must go with him myself, my lord. They will never manage him
else.'
'What a demon you have brought into my peaceable house! Go with him,
by all means. And mind you choose him a kennel yourself.--You do
not desire him in your chamber, do you, mistress?'
Dorothy secretly thought it would be the best place for him, but she
was only too glad to have his life spared.
'No, my lord, I thank you,' she said. '--I thank your lordship with
all my heart.'
The marquis disappeared from the window. Presently young Scudamore
came into the court from the staircase by the gate, and crossed to
the hall--in a few minutes returning with the keeper. The man would
have taken the dog by the neck to lead him away, but a certain form
of canine curse, not loud but deep, and a warning word from Dorothy,
made him withdraw his hand.
'Take care, Mr. Keeper,' she said, 'he is dangerous. I will go with
him myself, if thou wilt show me whither.'
'As it please you, mistress,' answered the keeper, and led the way
across the court.
'Have you not a word to throw at a poor cousin, mistress Dorothy?'
said Rowland, when the man was a pace or two in advance.
'No, Mr. Scudamore,' answered Dorothy; 'not until we have first
spoken in my lord Worcester's or my lady Margaret's presence.'
Scudamore fell behind, followed her a little way, and somewhere
vanished.
Dorothy followed the keeper across the hall, the size of which, its
height especially, and the splendour of its windows of stained
glass, almost awed her; then across the next court to the foot of
the Library Tower forming the south-east corner of it, near the two
towers flanking the main entrance. Here a stair led down, through
the wall, to a lower level outside, where were the carpenters' and
all other workshops, the forges, the stables, and the farmyard
buildings.
As it happened, when Dorothy entered the smithy, there was her own
little horse being shod, and Marquis and he interchanged a whine and
a whinny of salutation, while the men stared at the bright
apparition of a young lady in their dingy regions. Having heard her
business, the head-smith abandoned everything else to alter an iron
collar, of which there were several lying about, to fit the mastiff,
the presence of whose mistress proved entirely necessary. Dorothy
had indeed to put it on him with her own hands, for at the sound of
the chain attached to it he began to grow furious, growling
fiercely. When the chain had been made fast with a staple driven
into a strong kennel-post, and his mistress proceeded to take her
leave of him, his growling changed to the most piteous whining; but
when she actually left him there, he flew into a rage of indignant
affection. After trying the strength of his chain, however, by three
or four bounds, each so furious as to lay him sprawling on his back,
he yielded to the inevitable, and sullenly crept into his kennel,
while Dorothy walked back to the room which had already begun to
seem to her a cell.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.
Dorothy went straight to lady Margaret's parlour, and made her
humble apology for the trouble and alarm her dog had occasioned.
Lady Margaret assured her that the children were nothing the worse,
not having been even much terrified, for the dog had not gone a
hair's-breadth beyond rough play. Poor bunny was the only one
concerned who had not yet recovered his equanimity. He did not seem
positively hurt, she said, but as he would not eat the lovely clover
under his nose where he lay in Molly's crib, it was clear that the
circulation of his animal spirits had been too rudely checked.
Thereupon Dorothy begged to be taken to the nursery, for, being
familiar with all sorts of tame animals, she knew rabbits well. As
she stood with the little creature in her arms, gently stroking its
soft whiteness, the children gathered round her, and she bent
herself to initiate a friendship with them, while doing her best to
comfort and restore their favourite. Success in the latter object
she found the readiest way to the former. Under the sweet galvanism
of her stroking hand the rabbit was presently so much better that
when she offered him a blade of the neglected clover, the
equilateral triangle of his queer mouth was immediately set in
motion, the trefoil vanished, and when he was once more placed in
the crib he went on with his meal as if nothing had happened. The
children were in ecstasies, and cousin Dorothy was from that moment
popular and on the way to be something better.
When supper time came, lady Margaret took her again to the
dining-room, where there was much laughter over the story of the two
marquises, lord Worcester driving the joke in twenty different
directions, but so kindly that Dorothy, instead of being
disconcerted or even discomposed thereby, found herself emboldened
to take a share in the merriment. When the company rose, lady
Margaret once more led her to her own room, where, working at her
embroidery frame, she chatted with her pleasantly for some time.
Dorothy would have been glad if she had set her work also, for she
could ill brook doing nothing. Notwithstanding her quietness of
demeanour, amounting at times to an appearance of immobility, her
nature was really an active one, and it was hard for her to sit with
her hands in her lap. Lady Margaret at length perceived her
discomfort.
'I fear, my child, I am wearying you,' she said.
'It is only that I want something to do, madam,' said Dorothy.
'I have nothing at hand for you to-night,' returned lady Margaret.
'Suppose we go and find my lord;--I mean my own lord Herbert. I have
not seen him since we broke fast together, and you have not seen him
at all. I am afraid he must think of leaving home again soon, he
seems so anxious to get something or other finished.'
As she spoke, she pushed aside her frame, and telling Dorothy to go
and fetch herself a cloak, went into the next room, whence she
presently returned, wrapped in a hooded mantle. As soon as Dorothy
came, she led her along the corridor to a small lobby whence a stair
descended to the court, issuing close by the gate.
'I shall never learn my way about,' said Dorothy. 'If it were only
the staircases, they are more than my memory will hold.'
Lady Margaret gave a merry little laugh.
'Harry set himself to count them the other day,' she said. 'I do not
remember how many he made out altogether, but I know he said there
were at least thirty stone ones.'
Dorothy's answer was an exclamation.
But she was not in the mood to dwell upon the mere arithmetic of
vastness. Invaded by the vision of the mighty structure, its aspect
rendered yet more imposing by the time which now suited with it, she
forgot lady Margaret's presence, and stood still to gaze.
The twilight had deepened half-way into night. There was no moon,
and in the dusk the huge masses of building rose full of mystery and
awe. Above the rest, the great towers on all sides seemed by
indwelling might to soar into the regions of air. The pile stood
there, the epitome of the story of an ancient race, the precipitate
from its vanished life--a hard core that had gathered in the
vaporous mass of history--the all of solid that remained to witness
of the past.
She came again to herself with a start. Lady Margaret had stood
quietly waiting for her mood to change. Dorothy apologised, but her
mistress only smiled and said,
'I am in no haste, child. I like to see another impressed as I was
when first I stood just where you stand now. Come, then, I will show
you something different.'
She led the way along the southern side of the court until they came
to the end of the chapel, opposite which an archway pierced the line
of building, and revealed the mighty bulk of the citadel, the only
portion of the castle, except the kitchen-tower, continuing
impregnable to enlarged means of assault: gunpowder itself, as yet
far from perfect in composition and make, and conditioned by clumsy,
uncertain, and ill-adjustable artillery, was nearly powerless
against walls more than ten feet in thickness.
I have already mentioned that one peculiarity of Raglan was a
distinct moat surrounding its keep. Immediately from the outer end
of the archway, a Gothic bridge of stone led across this thirty-foot
moat to a narrow walk which encompassed the tower. The walk was
itself encompassed and divided from the moat by a wall with six
turrets at equal distances, surmounted by battlements. At one time
the sole entrance to the tower had been by a drawbridge dropping
across the walk to the end of the stone bridge, from an arched door
in the wall, whose threshold was some ten or twelve feet from the
ground; but another entrance had since been made on the level of the
walk, and by it the two ladies now entered. Passing the foot of a
great stone staircase, they came to the door of what had, before the
opening of the lower entrance, been a vaulted cellar, probably at
one time a dungeon, at a later period a place of storage, but now
put to a very different use, and wearing a stranger aspect than it
could ever have borne at any past period of its story--a look indeed
of mystery inexplicable.
When Dorothy entered she found herself in a large place, the form of
which she could ill distinguish in the dull light proceeding from
the chinks about the closed doors of a huge furnace. The air was
filled with gurglings and strange low groanings, as of some creature
in dire pain. Dorothy had as good nerves as ever woman, yet she
could not help some fright as she stood alone by the door and stared
into the gloomy twilight into which her companion had advanced. As
her eyes became used to the ruddy dusk, she could see better, but
everywhere they lighted on shapes inexplicable, whose forms to the
first questioning thought suggested instruments of torture; but
cruel as some of them looked, they were almost too strange,
contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the wood-cuts in a certain
book she had been familiar with in childhood, commonly called Fox's
Book of Martyrs, kept haunting her mind's eye--and were they not
Papists into whose hands she had fallen? she said to herself, amused
at the vagaries of her own involuntary suggestions.
Among the rest, one thing specially caught her attention, both from
its size and its complicated strangeness. It was a huge wheel
standing near the wall, supported between two strong uprights--some
twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, with about fifty spokes, from
every one of which hung a large weight. Its grotesque and threatful
character was greatly increased by the mingling of its one substance
with its many shadows on the wall behind it. So intent was she upon
it that she started when lady Margaret spoke.
'Why, mistress Dorothy!' she said, 'you look as if you had wandered
into St. Anthony's cave! Here is my lord Herbert to welcome his
cousin.'
Beside her stood a man rather under the middle stature, but as his
back was to the furnace this was about all Dorothy could discover of
his appearance, save that he was in the garb of a workman, with bare
head and arms, and held in his hand a long iron rod ending in a
hook.
'Welcome, indeed, cousin Vaughan!' he said heartily, but without
offering his hand, which in truth, although an honest, skilful, and
well-fashioned hand, was at the present moment far from fit for a
lady's touch.
There was something in his voice not altogether strange to Dorothy,
but she could not tell of whom or what it reminded her.
'Are you come to take another lesson on the cross-bow?' he asked
with a smile.
Then she knew he was the same she had met in the looped chamber
beside the arblast. An occasional slight halt, not impediment, in
his speech, was what had remained on her memory. Did he always dwell
only in the dusky borders of the light?
Dorothy uttered a little 'Oh!' of surprise, but immediately
recovering herself, said,
'I am sorry I did not know it was you, my lord. I might by this time
have been capable of discharging bolt or arrow with good aim in
defence of the castle.'
'It is not yet too late, I hope,' returned the workman-lord. 'I
confess I was disappointed to find your curiosity went no further. I
hoped I had at last found a lady capable of some interest in
pursuits like mine. For my lady Margaret here, she cares not a straw
for anything I do, and would rather have me keep my hands clean than
discover the mechanism of the primum mobile!
'Yes, in truth, Ned,' said his wife, 'I would rather have thee with
fair hands in my sweet parlour, than toiling and moiling in this
dirty dungeon, with no companion but that horrible fire-engine of
thine, grunting and roaring all night long.'
'Why, what do you make of Caspar Kaltoff, my lady?'
'I make not much of him.'
'You misjudge his goodfellowship then.'
'Truly, I think not well of him: he always hath secrets with thee,
and I like it not.'
'That they are secrets is thine own fault, Peggy. How can I teach
thee my secrets if thou wilt not open thine ears to hear them?'
'I would your lordship would teach me!' said Dorothy. 'I might not
be an apt pupil, but I should be both an eager and a humble one.'
'By St. Patrick! mistress Dorothy, but you go straight to steal my
husband's heart from me. "Humble," forsooth! and "eager" too! Nay!
nay! If I have no part in his brain, I can the less yield his
heart.'
'What would be gladly learned would be gladly taught, cousin,' said
lord Herbert.
'There! there!' exclaimed lady Margaret; 'I knew it would be so. You
discharge your poor dull apprentice the moment you find a clever
one!'
'And why not? I never was able to teach thee anything.'
'Ah, Ned, there you are unkind indeed!' said lady Margaret, with
something in her voice that suggested the water-springs were
swelling.
'My shamrock of four!' said her husband in the tenderest tone, 'I
but jested with thee. How shouldst thou be my pupil in anything I
can teach? I am yours in all that is noble and good. I did not mean
to vex you, sweet heart.'
''Tis gone again, Ned,' she answered, smiling. 'Give cousin Dorothy
her first lesson.'
'It shall be that, then, to which I sought in vain to make thee
listen this very morning--a certain great saying of my lord of
Verulam, mistress Dorothy. I had learnt it by heart that I might
repeat it word for word to my lady, but she would none of it.'
'May I not hear it, madam?' said Dorothy.
'We will both hear it, Herbert, if you will pardon your foolish wife
and admit her to grace.' And as she spoke she laid her hand on his
sooty arm.
He answered her only with a smile, but such a one as sufficed.
'Listen then, ladies both,' he said. 'My lord of Verulam, having
quoted the words of Solomon, "The glory of God is to conceal a
thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out," adds thus, of
his own thought concerning them,--"as if," says my lord, "according
to the innocent play of children, the divine majesty took delight to
hide his works, to the end to have them found out, and as if kings
could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in
that game, considering the great commandment of wits and means,
whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from them."'
'That was very well for my lord of--what did'st thou call him, Ned?'
'Francis Bacon, lord Verulam,' returned Herbert, with a queer smile.
'Very well for my lord of Veryflam!' resumed lady Margaret, with a
mock, yet bewitching affectation of innocence and ignorance; 'but
tell me had he?--nay, I am sure he had not a wild Irishwoman sitting
breaking her heart in her bower all day long for his company. He
could never else have had the heart to say it.--Mistress Dorothy,'
she went on, 'take the counsel of a forsaken wife, and lay it to thy
heart: never marry a man who loves lathes and pipes and wheels and
water and fire, and I know not what. But do come in ere bed-time,
Herbert, and I will sing thee the sweetest of English ditties, and
make thee such a sack-posset as never could be made out of old
Ireland any more than the song.'
But her husband that moment sprang from her side, and shouting
'Caspar! Caspar!' bounded to the furnace, reached up with his iron
rod into the darkness over his head, caught something with the
hooked end of it, and pulled hard. A man who from somewhere in the
gloomy place had responded like a greyhound to his master's call,
did the like on the other side. Instantly followed a fierce,
protracted, sustained hiss, and in a moment the place was filled
with a white cloud, whence issued still the hideous hiss, changing
at length to a roar. Lady Margaret turned in terror, ran out of the
keep, and fled across the bridge and through the archway before she
slackened her pace. Dorothy followed, but more composedly, led by
duty, not driven by terror, and indeed reluctantly forsaking a spot
where was so much she did not understand.
They had fled from the infant roar of the 'first stock-father' of
steam-engines, whose cradle was that feudal keep, eight centuries
old.
That night Dorothy lay down weary enough. It seemed a month since she
had been in her own bed at Wyfern, so many new and strange things had
crowded into her house, hitherto so still. Every now and then the
darkness heaved and rippled with some noise of the night. The stamping
of horses, and the ringing of their halter chains, seemed very near her.
She thought she heard the howl of Marquis from afar, and said to
herself, 'The poor fellow cannot sleep! I must get my lord to let me
have him in my chamber.' Then she listened a while to the sweet flow of
the water from the mouth of the white horse, which in general went on
all night long. Suddenly came an awful sound--like a howl also, but such
as never left the throat of dog. Again and again at intervals it came,
with others like it but not the same, torturing the dark with a dismal
fear. Dorothy had never heard the cry of a wild beast, but the
suggestion that these might be such cries, and the recollection that she
had heard such beasts were in Raglan Castle, came together to her mind.
She was so weary, however, that worse noises than these could hardly
have kept her awake; not even her weariness could prevent them from
following her into her dreams.
CHAPTER XIV
SEVERAL PEOPLE
Lord Worcester had taken such a liking to Dorothy, partly at first
because of the good store of merriment with which she and her
mastiff had provided him, that he was disappointed when he found her
place was not to be at his table but the housekeeper's. As he said
himself, however, he did not meddle with women's matters, and indeed
it would not do for lady Margaret to show her so much favour above
her other women, of whom at least one was her superior in rank, and
all were relatives as well as herself.
Dorothy did not much relish their society, but she had not much of
it except at meals, when, however, they always treated her as an
interloper. Every day she saw more or less of lady Margaret, and
found in her such sweetness, if not quite evenness of temper, as
well as gaiety of disposition, that she learned to admire as well as
love her. Sometimes she had her to read to her, sometimes to work
with her, and almost every day she made her practise a little on the
harpsichord. Hence she not only improved rapidly in performance, but
grew capable of receiving more and more delight from music. There
was a fine little organ in the chapel, on which blind young
Delaware, the son of the marquis's master of the horse, used to play
delightfully; and although she never entered the place, she would
stand outside listening to his music for an hour at a time in the
twilight, or sometimes even after dark. For as yet she indulged
without question all the habits of her hitherto free life, as far as
was possible within the castle walls, and the outermost of these
were of great circuit, enclosing lawns, shrubberies, wildernesses,
flower and kitchen gardens, orchards, great fish-ponds, little lakes
with fountains, islands, and summer-houses--not to mention the
farmyard, and indeed a little park, in which were some of the finest
trees upon the estate.
The gentlewomen with whom Dorothy was, by her position in the
household, associated, were three in number. One was a rather
elderly, rather plain, rather pious lady, who did not insist on her
pretensions to either of the epithets. The second was a short,
plump, round-faced, good-natured, smiling woman of sixty,--excelling
in fasts and mortifications, which somehow seemed to agree with her
body as well as her soul. The third was only two or three years
older than Dorothy, and was pretty, except when she began to speak,
and then for a moment there was a strange discord in her features.
She took a dislike to Dorothy, as she said herself, the instant she
cast her eyes upon her. She could not bear that prim, set face, she
said. The country-bred heifer evidently thought herself superior to
every one in the castle. She was persuaded the minx was a sly one,
and would carry tales. So judged mistress Amanda Serafina Fuller,
after her kind. Nor was it wonderful that, being such as she was,
she should recoil with antipathy from one whose nature had a
tendency to ripen over soon, and stunt its slow orbicular expansion
to the premature and false completeness of a narrow and
self-sufficing conscientiousness.
Doubtless if Dorothy had shown any marked acknowledgment of the
precedency of their rights--any eagerness to conciliate the
aborigines of the circle, the ladies would have been more friendly
inclined; but while capable of endless love and veneration, there
was little of the conciliatory in her nature. Hence Mrs. Doughty
looked upon her with a rather stately, indifference, my lady
Broughton with a mild wish to save her poor, proud, protestant soul,
and mistress Amanda Serafina said she hated her; but then ever since
the Fall there has been a disproportion betwixt the feelings of
young ladies and the language in which they represent them. Mrs.
Doughty neglected her, and Dorothy did not know it; lady Broughton
said solemn things to her, and she never saw the point of them; but
when mistress Amanda half closed her eyes and looked at her in
snake-Geraldine fashion, she met her with a full, wide-orbed,
questioning gaze, before which Amanda's eyes dropped, and she sank
full fathom five towards the abyss of real hatred.
During the dinner hour, the three generally talked together in an
impregnable manner--not that they were by any means bosom-friends,
for two of them had never before united in anything except despising
good, soft lady Broughton. When they were altogether in their
mistress's presence, they behaved to Dorothy and to each other with
studious politeness.
The ladies Elizabeth and Anne, had their gentlewomen also, in all
only three, however, who also ate at the housekeeper's table, but
kept somewhat apart from the rest--yet were, in a distant way,
friendly to Dorothy.
But hers, as we have seen, was a nature far more capable of
attaching itself to a few than of pleasing many; and her heart went
out to lady Margaret, whom she would have come ere long to regard as
a mother, had she not behaved to her more like an elder sister. Lady
Margaret's own genuine behaviour had indeed little of the matronly
in it; when her husband came into the room, she seemed to grow
instantly younger, and her manner changed almost to that of a
playful girl. It is true, Dorothy had been struck with the dignity
of her manner amid all the frankness of her reception, but she soon
found that, although her nature was full of all real dignities, that
which belonged to her carriage never appeared in the society of
those she loved, and was assumed only, like the thin shelter of a
veil, in the presence of those whom she either knew or trusted less.
Before her ladies, she never appeared without some
restraint--manifest in a certain measuredness of movement, slowness
of speech, and choice of phrase; but before a month was over,
Dorothy was delighted to find that the reserve instantly vanished
when she happened to be left alone with her.
She took an early opportunity of informing her mistress of the
relationship between herself and Scudamore, stating that she knew
little or nothing of him, having seen him only once before she came
to the castle. The youth on his part took the first fitting
opportunity of addressing her in lady Margaret's presence, and soon
they were known to be cousins all over the castle.
With lady Margaret's help, Dorothy came to a tolerable understanding
of Scudamore. Indeed her ladyship's judgment seemed but a
development of her own feeling concerning him.
'Rowland is not a bad fellow,' she said, 'but I cannot fully
understand whence he comes in such grace with my lord Worcester. If
it were my husband now, I should not marvel: he is so much occupied
with things and engines, that he has as little time as natural
inclination to doubt any one who will only speak largely enough to
satisfy his idea. But my lord of Worcester knows well enough that
seldom are two things more unlike than men and their words. Yet that
is not what I mean to say of your cousin: he is no hypocrite--means
not to be false, but has no rule of right in him so far as I can
find. He is pleasant company; his gaiety, his quips, his readiness
of retort, his courtesy and what not, make him a favourite; and my
lord hath in a manner reared him, which goes to explain much. He is
quick yet indolent, good-natured but selfish, generous but counting
enjoyment the first thing,--though, to speak truth of him, I have
never known him do a dishonourable action. But, in a word, the star
of duty has not yet appeared above his horizon. Pardon me, Dorothy,
if I am severe upon him. More or less I may misjudge him, but this
is how I read him; and if you wonder that I should be able so to
divide him, I have but to tell you that I should be unapt indeed if
I had not yet learned of my husband to look into the heart of both
men and things.'
'But, madam,' Dorothy ventured to say, 'have you not even now told
me that from very goodness my lord is easily betrayed?'
'Well replied, my child! It is true, but only while he has had no
reason to mistrust. Let him once perceive ground for dissatisfaction
or suspicion, and his eye is keen as light itself to penetrate and
unravel.'
Such good qualities as lady Margaret accorded her cousin were of a
sort more fitted to please a less sedate and sober-minded damsel
than Dorothy, who was fashioned rather after the model of a puritan
than a royalist maiden. Pleased with his address and his behaviour
to herself as she could hardly fail to be, she yet felt a lingering
mistrust of him, which sprang quite as much from the immediate
impression as from her mistress's judgment of him, for it always
gave her a sense of not coming near the real man in him. There is
one thing a hypocrite even can never do, and that is, hide the
natural signs of his hypocrisy; and Rowland, who was no hypocrite,
only a man not half so honourable as he chose to take himself for,
could not conceal his unreality from the eyes of his simple country
cousin. Little, however, did Dorothy herself suspect whence she had
the idea,--that it was her girlhood's converse with real, sturdy,
honest, straight-forward, simple manhood, in the person of the
youth of fiery temper, and obstinate, opinionated, sometimes even
rude behaviour, whom she had chastised with terms of contemptuous
rebuke, which had rendered her so soon capable of distinguishing
between a profound and a shallow, a genuine and an unreal nature,
even when the latter comprehended a certain power of fascination,
active enough to be recognisable by most of the women in the castle.
Concerning this matter, it will suffice to say that lord
Worcester--who ruled his household with such authoritative wisdom
that honest Dr. Bayly avers he never saw a better-ordered
family--never saw a man drunk or heard an oath amongst his servants,
all the time he was chaplain in the castle,--would have been
scandalized to know the freedoms his favourite indulged himself in,
and regarded as privileged familiarities.
There was much coming and going of visitors--more now upon state
business than matters of friendship or ceremony; and occasional
solemn conferences were held in the marquis's private room, at which
sometimes lord John, who was a personal friend of the king's, and
sometimes lord Charles, the governor of the castle, with perhaps
this or that officer of dignity in the household, would be present;
but whoever was or was not present, lord Herbert when at home was
always there, sometimes alone with his father and commissioners from
the king. His absences, however, had grown frequent now that his
majesty had appointed him general of South Wales, and he had
considerable forces under his command--mostly raised by himself,
and maintained at his own and his father's expense.
It was some time after Dorothy had twice in one day met him
darkling, before she saw him in the light, and was able to peruse
his countenance, which she did carefully, with the mingled instinct
and insight of curious and thoughtful girlhood. He had come home
from a journey, changed his clothes, and had some food; and now he
appeared in his wife's parlour--to sun himself a little, he said.
When he entered, Dorothy, who was seated at her mistress's
embroidery frame, while she was herself busy mending some Flanders
lace, rose to leave the room. But he prayed her to be seated, saying
gayly,
'I would have you see, cousin, that I am no beast of prey that loves
the darkness. I can endure the daylight. Come, my lady, have you
nothing to amuse your soldier with? No good news to tell him? How is
my little Molly?'
During the conjugal talk that followed, his cousin had good
opportunity of making her observations. First she saw a fair,
well-proportioned forehead, with eyes whose remarkable clearness
looked as if it owed itself to the mingling of manly confidence with
feminine trustfulness. They were dark, not very large, but rather
prominent, and full of light. His nose was a little aquiline, and
perfectly formed. A soft obedient moustache, brushed thoroughly
aside, revealed right generous lips, about which hovered a certain
sweetness ever ready to break into the blossom of a smile. That and
a small tuft below was all the hair he wore upon his face. Rare
conjunction, the whole of the countenance was remarkable both for
symmetry and expression--the latter mainly a bright intelligence;
and if, strangely enough, the predominant sweetness and delicacy at
first suggested genius unsupported by practical faculty, there was a
plentifulness and strength in the chin which helped to correct the
suggestion, and with the brightness and prominence of the eyes and
the radiance of the whole, to give a brave, almost bold look to a
face which could hardly fail to remind those who knew them of the
lovely verses of Matthew Raydon, describing that of sir Philip
Sidney:
A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospell-bookes;
I trowe that countenance cannot lie
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.
Notwithstanding the disadvantages of the fashion, in the mechanical
pursuits to which he had hitherto devoted his life, he wore, like
Milton's Adam, his wavy hair down to his shoulders. In his youth, it
had been thick and curling; now it was thinner and straighter, yet
curled where it lay. His hands were small, with the taper fingers
that indicate the artist, while his thumb was that of the artizan,
square at the tip, with the first joint curved a good deal back.
That they were hard and something discoloured was not for Dorothy to
wonder at, when she remembered what she had both heard and seen of
his occupations.
I may here mention that what aided Dorothy much in the
interpretation of lord Herbert's countenance and the understanding
of his character--for it was not on this first observation of him
that she could discover all I have now set down--and tended largely
to the development of the immense reverence she conceived for him,
was what she saw of his behaviour to his father one evening not long
after, when, having been invited to the marquis's table, she sat
nearly opposite him at supper. With a willing ear and ready smile
for every one who addressed him, notably courteous where all were
courteous, he gave chief observance, amounting to an almost tender
homage, to his father. His thoughts seemed to wait upon him with a
fearless devotion. He listened intently to all his jokes, and
laughed at them heartily, evidently enjoying them even when they
were not very good; spoke to him with profound though easy respect;
made haste to hand him whatever he seemed to want, preventing
Scudamore; and indeed conducted himself like a dutiful youth, rather
than a man over forty. Their confident behaviour, wherein the
authority of the one and the submission of the other were
acknowledged with co-relative love, was beautiful to behold.
When husband and wife had conferred for a while, the former
stretched on a settee embroidered by the skilful hands of the
latest-vanished countess, his mother, and the latter seated near him
on a narrow tall-backed chair, mending her lace, there came a pause
in their low-toned conversation, and his lordship looking up seemed
anew to become aware of the presence of Dorothy.
'Well, cousin,' he said, 'how have you fared since we half-saw each
other a fortnight ago?'
'I have fared well indeed, my lord, I thank you,' said Dorothy, 'as
your lordship may judge, knowing whom I serve. In two short weeks my
lady loads me with kindness enough to requite the loyalty of a
life.'
'Look you, cousin, that I should believe such laudation of any less
than an angel?' said his lordship with mock gravity.
'No, my lord,' answered Dorothy.
There was a moment's pause; then lord Herbert laughed aloud.
'Excellent well, mistress Dorothy!' he cried. 'Thank your cousin, my
lady, for a compliment worthy of an Irishwoman.'
'I thank you, Dorothy,' said her mistress; 'although, Irishwoman as
I am, my lord hath put me out of love with compliments.'
'When they are true and come unbidden, my lady,' said Dorothy.
'What! are there such compliments, cousin?' said lord Herbert.
'There are birds of Paradise, my lord, though rarely encountered.'
'Birds of Paradise indeed! they alight not in this world. Birds of
Paradise have no legs, they say.
'They need them not, my lord. Once alighted, they fly no more.'
'How is it then they alight so seldom?'
'Because men shoo them away. One flew now from my heart to seek my
lady's, but your lordship frighted it.'
'And so it flew back to Paradise--eh, mistress Dorothy?' said lord
Herbert, smiling archly.
The supper bell rang, and instead of replying, Dorothy looked up for
her dismissal.
'Go to supper, my lady,' said lord Herbert. 'I have but just dined,
and will see what Caspar is about.'
'I want no supper but my Herbert,' returned lady Margaret. 'Thou
wilt not go to that hateful workshop?'
'I have so little time at home now--'
'That you must spend it from your lady?--Go to supper, Dorothy.'
CHAPTER XV
HUSBAND AND WIFE
'What an old-fashioned damsel it is!' said lord Herbert when Dorothy
had left the room.
'She has led a lonely life,' answered lady Margaret, 'and has read a
many old-fashioned books.'
'She seems a right companion for thee, Peggy, and I am glad of it,
for I shall be much from thee--more and more, I fear, till this
bitter weather be gone by.'
'Alas, Ned! hast thou not been more than much from me already? Thou
wilt certainly be killed, though thou hast not yet a scratch on thy
blessed body. I would it were over and all well!'
'So would I--and heartily, dear heart! In very truth I love fighting
as little as thou. But it is a thing that hath to be done, though
small honour will ever be mine therefrom, I greatly fear me. It is
one of those affairs in which liking goes farther than goodwill, and
as I say, I love it not, only to do my duty. Hence doubtless it
comes that no luck attends me. God knows I fear nothing a man ought
not to fear--he is my witness--but what good service of arms have I
yet rendered my king? It is but thy face, Peggy, that draws the
smile from me. My heart is heavy. See how my rascally Welsh yielded
before Gloucester, when the rogue Waller stole a march upon
them--and I must be from thence! Had I but been there instead of at
Oxford, thinkest thou they would have laid down their arms nor
struck a single blow? I like not killing, but I can kill, and I can
be killed. Thou knowest, sweet wife, thy Ned would not run.'
'Holy mother!' exclaimed lady Margaret.
'But I have no good luck at fighting,' he went on. 'And how again at
Monmouth, the hare-hearts with which I had thought to garrison the
place fled at the bare advent of that same parliament beagle,
Waller! By St. George! it were easier to make an engine that should
mow down a thousand brave men with one sweep of a scythe-and I could
make it-than to put courage into the heart of one runaway rascal. It
makes me mad to think how they have disgraced me!'
'But Monmouth is thine own again, Herbert!'
'Yes-thanks to the love they bear my father, not to my generalship!
Thy husband is a poor soldier, Peggy: he cannot make soldiers.'
'Then why not leave the field to others, and labour at thy engines,
love? If thou wilt, I tell thee what-I will doff my gown, and in
wrapper and petticoat help thee, sweet. I will to it with bare arms
like thine own.'
'Thou wouldst like Una make a sunshine in the shady place, Margaret.
But no. Poor soldier as I am, I will do my best, even where good
fortune fails me, and glory awaits not my coming. Thou knowest that
at fourteen days' warning I brought four thousand foot and eight
hundred horse again to the siege of Gloucester. It would ill befit
my father's son to spare what he can when he is pouring out his
wealth like water at the feet of his king. No, wife; the king shall
not find me wanting, for in serving my king, I serve my God; and if
I should fail, it may hold that an honest failure comes nigh enough
a victory to be set down in the chronicles of the high countries.
But in truth it presses on me sorely, and I am troubled at heart
that I should be so given over to failure.'
'Never heed it, my lord. The sun comes out clear at last maugre all
the region fogs.'
'Thanks, sweet heart! Things do look up a little in the main, and if
the king had but a dozen more such friends as my lord marquis, they
would soon be well. Why, my dove of comfort, wouldst thou believe
it?-I did this day, as I rode home to seek thy fair face, I did
count up what sums he hath already spent for his liege; and indeed I
could not recollect them all, but I summed up, of pounds already
spent by him on his majesty's behalf, well towards a hundred and
fifty thousand! And thou knowest the good man, that while he giveth
generously like the great Giver, he giveth not carelessly, but hath
respect to what he spendeth.'
'Thy father, Ned, is loyalty and generosity incarnate. If thou be
but half so good a husband as thy father is a subject, I am a happy
woman.'
'What! know'st thou not yet thy husband, Peggy?'
'In good soberness, though, Ned, surely the saints in heaven will
never let such devotion fail of its end.'
'My father is but one, and the king's foes are many. So are his
friends-but they are lukewarm compared to my father-the rich ones of
them, I mean. Would to God I had not lost those seven great
troop-horses that the pudding-fisted clothiers of Gloucester did
rob me of! I need them sorely now. I bought them with mine own-or
rather with thine, sweet heart. I had been saving up the money for a
carcanet for thy fair neck.'
'So my neck be fair in thine eyes, my lord, it may go bare and be
well clad. I should, in sad earnest, be jealous of the pretty stones
didst thou give my neck one look the more for their presence. Here!
thou may'st sell these the next time thou goest London-wards.'
As she spoke, she put up her hand to unclasp her necklace of large
pearls, but he laid his hand upon it, saying,
'Nay, Margaret, there is no need. My father is like the father in
the parable: he hath enough and to spare. I did mean to have the
money of him again, only as the vaunted horses never came, but were
swallowed up of Gloucester, as Jonah of the whale, and have not yet
been cast up again, I could not bring my tongue to ask him for it;
and so thy neck is bare of emeralds, my dove.'
'Back and sides go bare, go bare,'
sang lady Margaret with a merry laugh;
'Both foot and hand go cold;'
here she paused for a moment, and looked down with a shining
thoughtfulness; then sang out clear and loud, with bold alteration
of bishop Stills' drinking song,
'But, heart, God send thee love enough,
Of the new that will never be old.'
'Amen, my dove!'said lord Herbert.
'Thou art in doleful dumps, Ned. If we had but a masque for thee, or
a play, or even some jugglers with their balls!'
'Puh, Peggy! thou art masque and play both in one; and for thy
jugglers, I trust I can juggle better at my own hand than any troop
of them from furthest India. Sing me a song, sweet heart.'
'I will, my love,' answered lady Margaret.
Rising, she went to the harpsichord, and sang, in sweet unaffected
style, one of the songs of her native country, a merry ditty, with a
breathing of sadness in the refrain of it, like a twilight wind in a
bed of bulrushes.
'Thanks, my love,' said lord Herbert, when she had finished. 'But I
would I could tell its hidden purport; for I am one of those who
think music none the worse for carrying with it an air of such sound
as speaks to the brain as well as the heart.'
Lady Margaret gave a playful sigh.
'Thou hast one fault, my Edward--thou art a stranger to the tongue
in which, through my old nurse's tales, I learned the language of
love. I cannot call it my mother-tongue, but it is my love-tongue.
Why, when thou art from me, I am loving thee in Irish all day long,
and thou never knowest what my heart says to thee! It is a sad lack
in thy all-completeness, dear heart. But, I bethink me, thy new
cousin did sing a fair song in thy own tongue the other day, the
which if thou canst understand one straw better than my Irish, I
will learn it for thy sake, though truly it is Greek to me. I will
send for her. Shall I?'
As she spoke she rose and rang the bell on the table, and a little
page, in waiting in the antechamber, appeared, whom she sent to
desire the attendance of mistress Dorothy Vaughan.
'Come, child,' said her mistress as she entered, 'I would have thee
sing to my lord the song that wandering harper taught thee.'
'Madam, I have learned of no wandering harper: your ladyship means
mistress Amanda's Welsh song! shall I call her?' said Dorothy,
disappointed.
'I mean thee, and thy song, thou green linnet!' rejoined lady
Margaret. 'What song was it of which I said to thee that the singer
deserved, for his very song's sake, that whereof he made his moan?
Whence thou hadst it, from harper or bagpiper, I care not.'
'Excuse me, madam, but why should I sing that you love not to hear?'
'It is not I would hear it, child, but I would have my lord hear it.
I would fain prove to him that there are songs in plain English, as
he calls it, that have as little import, even to an English ear, as
the plain truth-speaking Irish ditties which he will not understand.
I say "WILL not," because our bards tell us that Irish was the
language of Adam and Eve while yet in Paradise, and therefore he
could by instinct understand it an' he would, even as the chickens
understand their mother-tongue.'
'I will sing it at your desire, madam; but I fear the worse fault
will lie in the singing.'
She seated herself at the harpsichord, and sang the following song
with much feeling and simplicity. The refrain of the song, if it may
be so called, instead of closing each stanza, preluded it.
O fair, O sweet, when I do look on thee,
In whom all joys so well agree,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
This you hear is not my tongue,
Which once said what I conceived,
For it was of use bereaved,
With a cruel answer stung.
No, though tongue to roof be cleaved,
Fearing lest he chastis'd be,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
O fair, O sweet, &c.
Just accord all music makes:
In thee just accord excelleth,
Where each part in such peace dwelleth,
One of other beauty takes.
Since then truth to all minds telleth
That in thee lives harmony,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
O fair, O sweet, &c.
They that heaven have known, do say
That whoso that grace obtaineth
To see what fair sight there reigneth,
Forced is to sing alway;
So then, since that heaven remaineth
In thy face, I plainly see,
Heart and soul do sing in me.
O fair, O sweet, &c.
Sweet, think not I am at ease,
For because my chief part singeth;
This song from death's sorrow springeth,
As to Swan in last disease;
For no dumbness nor death bringeth
Stay to true love's melody:
Heart and soul do sing in me.
'There!' cried lady Margaret, with a merry laugh. 'What says the
English song to my English husband?'
'It says much, Margaret,' returned lord Herbert, who had been
listening intently; 'it tells me to love you for ever.-What poet is
he who wrote the song, mistress Dorothy? He is not of our day-that I
can tell but too plainly. It is a good song, and saith much.'
'I found it near the end of the book called "The Countess of
Pembroke's Arcadia,"' replied Dorothy.
'And I knew it not! Methought I had read all that man of men ever
wrote,' said lord Herbert. 'But I may have read it, and let it slip.
But now that, by the help of the music and thy singing, cousin
Dorothy, I am come to understand it, truly I shall forget it no
more. Where got'st thou the music, pray?'
'It says in the book it was fitted to a certain Spanish tune, the
name of which I knew not, and yet know not how to pronounce; but I
had the look of the words in my head, and when I came upon some
Spanish songs in an old chest at home, and, turning them over, saw
those words, I knew I had found the tune to sir Philip's verses.'
'Tell me then, my lord, why you are pleased with the song,' said
lady Margaret, very quietly.
'Come, mistress Dorothy,' said lord Herbert, 'repeat the song to my
lady, slowly, line by line, and she will want no exposition
thereon.'
When Dorothy had done as he requested, lady Margaret put her arm
round her husband's neck, laid her cheek to his, and said,
'I am a goose, Ned. It is a fair and sweet song. I thank you,
Dorothy. You shall sing it to me another time when my lord is away,
and I shall love to think my lord was ill content with me when I
called it a foolish thing. But my Irish was a good song too, my
lord.'
'Thy singing of it proves it, sweet heart.--But come, my fair
minstrel, thou hast earned a good guerdon: what shall I give thee in
return for thy song?'
'A boon, a boon, my lord!' cried Dorothy.
'It is thine ere thou ask it,' returned his lordship, merrily
following up the old-fashioned phrase with like formality.
'I must then tell my lord what hath been in my foolish mind ever
since my lady took me to the keep, and I saw his marvellous array of
engines. I would glady understand them, my lord. Who can fail to
delight in such inventions as bring about that which before seemed
impossible?'
Here came a little sigh with the thought of her old companion
Richard, and the things they had together contrived. Already, on the
mist of gathering time, a halo had begun to glimmer about his head,
puritan, fanatic, blasphemer even, as she had called him.
Lord Herbert marked the soundless sigh.
'You shall not sigh in vain, mistress Dorothy,' he said, 'for
anything I can give you. To one who loves inventions it is easy to
explain them. I hoped you had a hankering that way when I saw you
look so curiously at the cross-bow ere you discharged it.'
'Was it then charged, my lord?'
'Indeed, as it happened, it was. A great steel-headed arrow lay in
the groove. I ought to have taken that away when I bent it. Some
passing horseman may have carried it with him in the body of his
plunging steed.'
'Oh, my lord!' cried Dorothy, aghast.
'Pray, do not be alarmed, cousin: I but jested. Had anything
happened, we should have heard of it. It was not in the least
likely. You will not be long in this house before you learn that we
do not speak by the card here. We jest not a little. But in truth I
was disappointed when I found your curiosity so easily allayed.'
'Indeed, my lord, it was not allayed, and is still unsatisfied. But
I had no thought who it was offered me the knowledge I craved. Had I
known, I should never have refused the lesson so courteously
offered. But I was a stranger in the castle, and I thought-I feared
I'
'You did even as prudence required, cousin Dorothy. A young maiden
cannot be too chary of unbuckling her enchanted armour so long as
the country is unknown to her. But it would be hard if she were to
suffer for her modesty. You shall be welcome to my cave. I trust you
will not find it as the cave of Trophonius to you. If I am not
there-and it is not now as it has been, when you might have found me
in it every day, and almost every hour of the day; but if I be not
there, do not fear Caspar Kaltoff, who is a worthy man, and as my
right hand to do the things my brain deviseth. I will speak to him
of thee. He is full of trust and worthiness, and, although not of
gentle blood, is sprung from a long race of artificers, the cloak of
whose gathered skill seems to have fallen on him. He hath been in my
service now for many years, but you will be the first lady, gentle
cousin, who has ever in all that time wished us good speed in our
endeavours. How few know,' he went on thoughtfully, after a pause,
'what a joy lies in making things obey thoughts! in calling out of
the mind, as from the vasty-deep, and setting in visible presence
before the bodily eye, that which till then had neither local
habitation nor name! Some such marvels I have to show--for marvels I
must call them, although it is my voice they have obeyed to come;
and I never lose sight of the marvel even while amusing myself with
the merest toy of my own invention.'
He paused, and Dorothy ventured to speak.
'I thank you, my lord, with all my heart. When have I leave to visit
those marvels?'
'When you please. If I am not there, Caspar will be. If Caspar is
not there, you will find the door open, for to enter that chamber
without permission would be a breach of law such as not a soul in
Raglan would dare be guilty of. And were it not so, there are few
indeed in the place who would venture to set foot in it if I were
absent, for it is not outside the castle walls only that I am looked
upon as a magician. The armourer firmly believes that with a word
uttered in my den there, I could make the weakest wall of the castle
impregnable, but that it would be at too great a cost. If you come
to-morrow morning you will find me almost certainly. But in case you
should find neither of us--do not touch anything; be content with
looking--for fear of mischance. Engines are as tickle to meddle with
as incantations them selves.'
'If I know myself, you may trust me, my lord,' said Dorothy, to
which he replied with a smile of confidence.
CHAPTER XVI.
DOROTHY'S INITIATION.
There was much about the castle itself to interest Dorothy. She had
already begun the attempt to gather a clear notion of its many parts
and their relations, but the knowledge of the building could not
well advance more rapidly than her acquaintance with its inmates,
for little was to be done from the outside alone, and she could not
bear to be met in strange places by strange people. So that part of
her education-I use the word advisedly, for to know all about the
parts of an old building may do more for the education of minds of a
certain stamp than the severest course of logic-must wait upon time
and opportunity.
Every day, often twice, sometimes thrice, she would visit the
stable-yard, and have an interview first with the chained Marquis,
and then with her little horse. After that she would seldom miss
looking in at the armourer's shop, and spending a few minutes in
watching him at his work, so that she was soon familiar with all
sorts of armour favoured in the castle. The blacksmiths' and the
carpenters' shops were also an attraction to her, and it was not
long before she knew all the artisans about the place. There were
the farm and poultry yards too, with which kinds of place she was
familiar--especially with their animals and all their ways. The
very wild beasts in their dens in the solid basement of the kitchen
tower--a panther, two leopards, an ounce, and a toothless old lion
had already begun to know her a little, for she never went near
their cages without carrying them something to eat. For all these
visits there was plenty of room, lady Margaret never requiring much
of her time in the early part of the day, and finding the reports
she brought of what was going on always amusing. And now the
orchards and gardens would soon be inviting, for the heart of the
world was already sending up its blood to dye the apple blossoms.
But all the opportunities she yet had were less than was needful for
the development of such a mind as Dorothy's, which, powerful in
itself, needed to be roused, and was slow in its movements except
when excited by a quick succession of objects, or the contact of a
kindred but busier nature. It was lacking not only in generative,
but in self-moving energy. Of self-sustaining force she had
abundance.
There was a really fine library in the castle, to which she had free
access, and whence, now and then, lady Margaret would make her bring
a book from which to read aloud, while she and her other ladies were
at work; but books were not enough to rouse Dorothy, and when
inclined to read she would return too exclusively to what she
already knew, making little effort to extend her gleaning-ground.
From this fragment of analysis it will be seen that the new resource
thus opened to her might prove of more consequence than, great as
were her expectations from it, she was yet able to anticipate. But
infinitely greater good than any knowledge of his mechanical
triumphs could bring her, was on its way to Dorothy along the path
of growing acquaintance with the noble-minded inventor himself.
The next morning, then, she was up before the sun, and, sitting at
her window, awaited his arrival. The moment he shone upon the gilded
cock of the bell tower, she rose and hastened out, eager to taste of
the sweets promised her; stood a moment to gaze on the limpid stream
ever flowing from the mouth of the white horse, and wonder whence
that and the whale-spouts he so frequently sent aloft from his
nostrils came; then passing through the archway and over the bridge,
found herself at the magician's door. For a moment she hesitated:
from within came such a tumult of hammering, that plainly it was of
no use to knock, and she could not at once bring herself to enter
unannounced and uninvited. But confidence in lord Herbert soon
aroused her courage, and gently she opened the door and peeped in.
There he stood, in a linen frock that reached from his neck to his
knees, already hard at work at a small anvil on a bench, while
Caspar was still harder at work at a huge anvil on the ground in
front of a forge. This, with the mighty bellows attached to it,
occupied one of the six sides of the room, and the great roaring,
hissing thing that had so frightened lady Margaret, now silent and
cold, occupied another. Neither of the men saw her. So she entered,
closed the door, and approached lord Herbert, but he continued
unaware of her presence until she spoke. Then he ceased his
hammering, turned, and greeted her with his usual smile of sincerity
absolute.
'Are you always as true to your appointments, cousin?' he said, and
resumed his hammering.
'It was hardly an appointment, my lord, and yet here I am,' said
Dorothy.
'And you mean to infer that----?'
'An appointment is no slight matter, my lord, or one that admits of
breaking.'
'Right,' returned his lordship, still hammering at the thin plate of
whitish metal growing thinner and thinner under his blows. Dorothy
glanced around her for a moment.
'I would not be troublesome, my lord,' she said; 'but would you tell
me in a few words what it is you make here?'
'Had I three tongues, and thou three ears,' answered lord Herbert,
'I could not. But look round thee, cousin, and when thou spiest the
thing that draws thine eye more than another, ask me concerning
that, and I will tell thee.'
Hardly had Dorothy, in obedience, cast her eyes about the place, ere
they lighted on the same huge wheel which had before chiefly
attracted her notice.
'What is that great wheel for, with such a number of weights hung to
it?' she asked.
'For a memorial,' replied lord Herbert, 'of the folly of the man who
placeth his hopes in man. That wonderful engine; it is now nearly
three years since I showed it to his blessed majesty in the Tower of
London, also with him to the dukes of Richmond and Hamilton, and two
extraordinary ambassadors besides, but of them all no man hath ever
sought to look upon it again. It is a form of the Proteus-like
perpetuum mobile-a most incredible thing if not seen.'
He then proceeded to show her how, as every spoke passed the highest
point, the weight attached to it immediately hung a foot farther
from the centre of the wheel, and as every spoke passed the lowest
point, its weight returned a foot nearer to the centre, thus causing
the leverage to be greater always on one and the same side of the
wheel. Few of my readers will regret so much as myself that I am
unable to give them the constructive explanation his lordship gave
Dorothy as to the shifting of the weights. Whether she understood it
or not, I cannot tell either, but that is of less consequence.
Before she left the workshop that morning, she had learned that a
thousand knowledges are needed to build up the pyramid on whose top
alone will the bird of knowledge lay her new egg.
When he had finished his explanation, lord Herbert returned to his
work, leaving Dorothy again to her own observations. And now she
would gladly have questioned him about the huge mass of brick and
iron, which, now standing silent, cold, and motionless as death, had
that night seemed alive with the fierce energy of flame, and yet
sorely driven, sighing, and groaning, and furiously hissing; but as
it was not now at work, she thought it would be better to wait an
opportunity when it should be in the agony of its wrestle with
whatever unseen enemy it coped withal. She did not know that, the
first of its race, it was not quite equal to the task the magician
had imposed upon it, but that its descendants would at length become
capable of doing a thousand times as much, with the swinging joy of
conscious might, with the pant of the giant, not the groan of the
overtasked stripling urging his last effort.
She was standing by a chest, examining the strangely elaborate and
mysterious-looking scutcheon of its lock, when his lordship's
hammering ceased, and presently she found that he was by her side.
'That escutcheon is the best thing of the kind I have yet made,' he
said. 'A humour I have, never to be contented to produce any
invention the second time, without appearing refined. The lock and
key of this are in themselves a marvel, for the little triangle
screwed key weighs no more than a shilling, and yet it bolts and
unbolts an hundred bolts through fifty staples round about the
chest, and as many more from both sides and ends, and at the self-
same time shall fasten it to a place beyond a man's natural strength
to take it away. But the best thing is the escutcheon; for the owner
of it, though a woman, may with her own delicate hand vary the ways
of coming to open the lock ten millions of times, beyond the
knowledge of the smith that made it, or of me who invented it. If a
stranger open it, it setteth an alarm agoing, which the stranger
cannot stop from running out; and besides, though none should .be
within hearing, yet it catcheth his hand, as a trap doth a fox; and
though far from maiming him, yet it leaveth such a mark behind it,
as will discover him if suspected; the escutcheon or lock plainly
showing what moneys he hath taken out of the box to a farthing, and
how many times opened since the owner hath been at it.'
He then showed her how to set it, left the chest open, and gave her
the key off his bunch that she might use it more easily. Ere she
returned it, she had made herself mistress of the escutcheon as far
as the mere working of it was concerned, as she proved to the
satisfaction of the inventor.
Her docility and quickness greatly pleased him. He opened a cabinet,
and after a search in its drawers, took from it a little thing, in
form and colour like a plum, which he gave her, telling her to eat
it. She saw from his smile that there was something at the back of
the playful request, and for a moment hesitated, but reading in his
countenance that he wished her at least to make the attempt, she put
it in her mouth.
She was gagged. She could neither open nor shut her mouth a hair's
breadth, could neither laugh, cry out, nor make any noise beyond an
ugly one she would not make twice. The tears came into her eyes, for
her position was ludicrous, and she imagined that his lordship was
making game of her. A girl less serious or more merry would have
been moved only to laughter.
But lord Herbert hastened to relieve her. On the application of a
tiny key, fixed with a joint in a finger-ring, the little steel
bolts it had thrown out in every direction returned within the plum,
and he drew it from her mouth.
'You little fool!' he said, with indescribable sweetness, for he saw
the tears in her eyes; 'did you think I would hurt you? '
'No, my lord; but I did fear you were going to make game of me. I
could not have borne Caspar to see me so.'
'Alas, my poor child!' he rejoined, 'you have come to the wrong
house if you cannot put up with a little chafing. There!' he added,
putting the plum in her hand, 'it is an untoothsome thing, but the
moment may come when you will find it useful enough to repay you for
the annoyance of a smile that had in it ten times more friendship
than merriment.'
'I ask your pardon, my lord,' said Dorothy, by this time blushing
deep with shame of her mistrust and over-sensitiveness, and on the
point of crying downright. But his lordship smiled so kindly that
she took heart and smiled again.
He then showed her how to raise the key hid in the ring, and how to
unlock the plum.
'Do not try it on yourself,' he said, as he put the ring on her
finger; 'you might find that awkward.'
'Be sure I shall avoid it, my lord,' returned Dorothy.
'And do not let any one know you have such a thing,' he said, 'or
that there is a key in your ring.'
'I will try not, my lord.'
The breakfast bell rang.
'If you will come again after supper,' he said, as he pulled off his
linen frock, 'I will show you my fire-engine at work, and tell you
all that is needful to the understanding thereof;--only you must
not publish it to the world,' he added, 'for I mean to make much
gain by my invention.'
Dorothy promised, and they parted--lord Herbert for the marquis's
parlour, Dorothy for the housekeeper's room, and Caspar for the
third table in the great hall.
After breakfast Dorothy practised with her plum until she could
manage it with as much readiness as ease. She found that it was made
of steel, and that the bolts it threw out upon the slightest
pressure were so rounded and polished that they could not hurt,
while nothing but the key would reduce them again within their
former sheath.
END OF VOLUME I.
START OF VOLUME II
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FIRE-ENGINE.
As soon as supper was over in the housekeeper's room, Dorothy sped
to the keep, where she found Caspar at work.
'My lord is not yet from supper, mistress,' he said. 'Will it please
you wait while he comes?'
Had it been till midnight, so long as there was a chance of his
appearing, Dorothy would have waited. Caspar did his best to amuse
her, and succeeded,--showing her one curious thing after
another,--amongst the rest a watch that seemed to want no winding
after being once set agoing, but was in fact wound up a little by
every opening of the case to see the dial. All the while the
fire-engine was at work on its mysterious task, with but now and
then a moment's attention from Caspar, a billet of wood or a
shovelful of sea-coal on the fire, a pull at a cord, or a hint from
the hooked rod. The time went rapidly.
Twilight was over, Caspar had lighted his lamp, and the moon had
risen, before lord Herbert came.
'I am glad to find you have patience as well as punctuality in the
catalogue of your virtues, mistress Dorothy,' he said as he entered.
'I too am punctual, and am therefore sorry to have failed now, but
it is not my fault: I had to attend my father. For his sake pardon
me.'
'It were but a small matter, my lord, even had it been uncompelled,
to keep an idle girl waiting.'
'I think not so,' returned lord Herbert. 'But come now, I will
explain to you my wonderful fire-engine.'
As he spoke, he took her by the hand, and led her towards it. The
creature blazed, groaned, and puffed, but there was no motion to be
seen about it save that of the flames through the cracks in the door
of the furnace, neither was there any clanking noise of metal. A
great rushing sound somewhere in the distance, that seemed to belong
to it, yet appeared too far off to have any connection with it.
'It is a noisy thing,' he said, as they stood before it, 'but when I
make another, it shall do its work that thou wouldst not hear it
outside the door. Now listen to me for a moment, cousin. Should it
come to a siege and I not at Raglan--the wise man will always
provide for the worst--Caspar will be wanted everywhere. Now this
engine is essential to the health and comfort, if not to the
absolute life of the castle, and there is no one at present capable
of managing it save us two. A very little instruction, however,
would enable any one to do so: will you undertake it, cousin, in
case of need?'
'Make me assured that I can, and I will, my lord,' answered Dorothy.
'A good and sufficing answer,' returned his lordship, with a smile
of satisfaction. 'First then,' he went on, 'I will show you wherein
lies its necessity to the good of the castle. Come with me, cousin
Dorothy.'
He led the way from the room, and began to ascend the stair which
rose just outside it. Dorothy followed, winding up through the
thickness of the wall. And now she could not hear the engine. As she
went up, however, certain sounds of it came again, and grew louder
till they seemed close to her ears, then gradually died away and
once more ceased. But ever, as they ascended, the rushing sound
which had seemed connected with it, although so distant, drew nearer
and nearer, until, having surmounted three of the five lofty stories
of the building, they could scarcely hear each other speak for the
roar of water, falling in intermittent jets. At last they came out
on the top of the wall, with nothing between them and the moat below
but the battlemented parapet, and behold! the mighty tower was
roofed with water: a little tarn filled all the space within the
surrounding walk. It undulated in the moonlight like a subsiding
storm, and beat the encircling banks. For into its depths shot
rather than poured a great volume of water from a huge orifice in
the wall, and the roar and the rush were tremendous. It was like the
birth of a river, bounding at once from its mountain rock, and the
sound of its fall indicated the great depth of the water into which
it plunged. Solid indeed must be the walls that sustained the
outpush of such a weight of water!
'You see now, cousin, what yon fire-souled slave below is labouring
at,' said his lordship. 'His task is to fill this cistern, and that
he can in a few hours; and yet, such a slave is he, a child who
understands his fetters and the joints of his bones can guide him at
will.'
'But, my lord,' questioned Dorothy, 'is there not water here to
supply the castle for months? And there is the draw-well in the
pitched court besides.'
'Enough, I grant you,' he replied, 'for the mere necessities of
life. But what would come of its pleasures? Would not the
beleaguered ladies miss the bounty of the marble horse? Whence comes
the water he gives so freely that he needeth not to drink himself?
He would thirst indeed but for my water-commanding fiend below. Or
how would the birds fare, were the fountains on the islands dry in
the hot summer? And what would the children say if he ceased to
spout? And how would my lord's tables fare, with the armed men
besetting every gate, the fish-ponds dry, and the fish rotting in
the sun? See you, mistress Dorothy? And for the draw-well, know you
not wherein lies the good of a tower stronger than all the rest? Is
it not built for final retreat, the rest of the castle being at
length in the hands of the enemy? Where then is your draw-well?'
'But this tower, large as it is, could not receive those now within
the walls of the castle,' said Dorothy.
'They will be fewer ere its shelter is needful.'
It was his tone quite as much as the words that drove a sudden
sickness to the heart of the girl: for one moment she knew what
siege and battle meant. But she recovered herself with a strong
effort, and escaped from the thought by another question.
'And whence comes all this water, my lord?' she said, for she was
one who would ask until she knew all that concerned her.
'Have you not chanced to observe a well in my workshop below, on the
left-hand side of the door, not far from the great chest?'
'I have observed it, my lord.'
'That is a very deep well, with a powerful spring. Large pipes lead
from all but the very bottom of that to my fire-engine. The fuller
the well, the more rapid the flow into the cistern, for the
shallower the water, the more labour falls to my giant. He is
finding it harder work now. But you see the cistern is nearly full.'
'Forgive me, my lord, if I am troubling you,' said Dorothy, about to
ask another question.
'I delight in the questions of the docile,' said his lordship. 'They
are the little children of wisdom. There! that might be out of the
book of Ecclesiasticus,' he added, with a merry laugh. 'I might pass
that off on Dr. Bayly for my father's: he hath already begun to
gather my father's sayings into a book, as I have discovered. But,
prithee, cousin, let not my father know of it.'
'Fear not me, my lord,' returned Dorothy. 'Having no secrets of my
own to house, it were evil indeed to turn my friends' out of doors.'
'Why, that also would do for Dr. Bayly! Well said, Dorothy! Now for
thy next question.'
'It is this, my lord: having such a well in your foundations, whence
the need of such a cistern on your roof? I mean now as regards the
provision of the keep itself in case of ultimate resort.'
'In coming to deal with a place of such strength as this,' replied
his lordship, '--I mean the keep whereon we now stand, not the
castle, which, alas! hath many weak points--the enemy would
assuredly change the siege into a blockade; that is, he would try to
starve instead of fire us out; and, procuring information
sufficiently to the point, would be like enough to dig deep and cut
the water-veins which supply that well; and thereafter all would
depend on the cistern. From the moment therefore when the first
signs of siege appear, it will be wisdom and duty on the part of the
person in charge to keep it constantly full--full as a cup to the
health of the king. I trust however that such will be the good
success of his majesty's arms that the worst will only have to be
provided against, not encountered.--But there is more in it yet.
Come hither, cousin. Look down through this battlement upon the
moat. You see the moon in it? No? That is because it is covered so
thick with weeds. When you go down, mark how low it is. There is
little defence in the moat that a boy might wade through. I have
allowed it to get shallow in order to try upon its sides a new
cement I have lately discovered; but weeks and weeks have passed,
and I have never found the leisure, and now I am sure I never shall
until this rebellion is crushed. It is time I filled it. Pray look
down upon it, cousin. In summer it will be full of the loveliest
white water-lilies, though now you can see nothing but green weeds.'
He had left her side and gone a few paces away, but kept on
speaking.
'One strange thing I can tell you about them, cousin--the roots of
that whitest of flowers make a fine black dye! What apophthegm
founded upon that, thinkest thou, my father would drop for Dr
Bayly?'
'You perplex me much, my lord,' said Dorothy. 'I cannot at all
perceive your lordship's drift.'
'Lay a hand on each side of the battlement where you now stand; lean
through it and look down. Hold fast and fear nothing.' Dorothy did
as she was desired, and thus supported gazed upon the moat below,
where it lay a mere ditch at the foot of the lofty wall.
'My lord, I see nothing,' she said, turning to him, as she thought;
but he had vanished.
Again she looked at the moat, and then her eyes wandered away over
the castle. The two courts and their many roofs, even those of all
the towers, except only the lofty watch-tower on the western side,
lay bare beneath her, in bright moonlight, flecked and blotted with
shadows, all wondrous in shape and black as Erebus.
Suddenly, she knew not whence, arose a frightful roaring, a hollow
bellowing, a pent-up rumbling. Seized by a vague terror, she clung
to the parapet and trembled. But even the great wall beneath her,
solid as the earth itself, seemed to tremble under her feet, as with
some inward commotion or dismay. The next moment the water in the
moat appeared to rush swiftly upwards, in wild uproar, fiercely
confused, and covered with foam and spray. To her bewildered eyes,
it seemed to heap itself up, wave upon furious wave, to reach the
spot where she stood, greedy to engulf her. For an instant she
fancied the storming billows pouring over the edge of the
battlement, and started back in such momentary agony as we suffer in
dreams. Then, by a sudden rectification of her vision, she perceived
that what she saw was in reality a multitude of fountain jets
rushing high towards their parent-cistern, but far-failing ere they
reached it. The roar of their onset was mingled with the despairing
tumult of their defeat, and both with the deep tumble and wallowing
splash of the water from the fire-engine, which grew louder and
louder as the surface of the water in the reservoir sank. The uproar
ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, but the moat mirrored a
thousand moons in the agitated waters which had overwhelmed its
mantle of weeds.
'You see now,' said lord Herbert, rejoining her while still she
gazed, 'how necessary the cistern is to the keep? Without it, the
few poor springs in the moat would but sustain it as you saw it.
From here I can fill it to the brim.'
'I see,' answered Dorothy. 'But would not a simple overflow serve,
carried from the well through the wall?'
'It would, were there no other advantages with which this mode
harmonised. I must mention one thing more--which I was almost
forgetting, and which I cannot well show you to-night--namely, that
I can use this water not only as a means of defence in the moat, but
as an engine of offence also against any one setting unlawful or
hostile foot upon the stone bridge over it. I can, when I please,
turn that bridge, the same by which you cross to come here, into a
rushing aqueduct, and with a torrent of water sweep from it a whole
company of invaders.'
'But would they not have only to wait until the cistern was empty?'
'As soon and so long as the bridge is clear, the outflow ceases. One
sweep, and my water-broom would stop, and the rubbish lie sprawling
under the arch, or half-way over the court. And more still,' he
added with emphasis: 'I COULD make it boiling!'
'But your lordship would not?' faltered Dorothy.
'That might depend,' he answered with a smile. Then changing his
tone in absolute and impressive seriousness, 'But this is all
nothing but child's play,' he said, 'compared with what is involved
in the matter of this reservoir. The real origin of it was its
needfulness to the perfecting of my fire-engine.'
'Pardon me, my lord, but it seems to me that without the cistern
there would be no need for the engine. How should you want or how
could you use the unhandsome thing? Then how should the cistern be
necessary to the engine?'
'Handsome is that handsome does,' returned his lordship. 'Truly,
cousin Dorothy, you speak well, but you must learn to hear better. I
did not say that the cistern existed for the sake of the engine, but
for the sake of the perfecting of the engine. Cousin Dorothy, I will
give you the largest possible proof of my confidence in you, by not
only explaining to you the working of my fire-engine, but
acquainting you--only you must not betray me!'
'I, in my turn,' said Dorothy, 'will give your lordship, if not the
strongest, yet a very strong proof of my confidence: I promise to
keep your secret before knowing what it is.'
'Thanks, cousin. Listen then: That engine is a mingling of discovery
and invention such as hath never had its equal since first the
mechanical powers were brought to the light. For this shall be as a
soul to animate those, all and each--lever, screw, pulley, wheel,
and axle--what you will. No engine of mightiest force ever for
defence or assault invented, let it be by Archimedes himself, but
could by my fire-engine be rendered tenfold more mighty for safety
or for destruction, although as yet I have applied it only to the
blissful operation of lifting water, thus removing the curse of it
where it is a curse, and carrying it where the parched soil cries
for its help to unfold the treasures of its thirsty bosom. My
fire-engine shall yet uplift the nation of England above the heads
of all richest and most powerful nations on the face of the whole
earth. For when the troubles of this rebellion are over, which press
so heavily on his majesty and all loyal subjects, compelling even a
peaceful man like myself to forsake invention for war, and the
workman's frock which I love, for the armour which I love not, when
peace shall smile again on the country, and I shall have time to
perfect the work of my hands, I shall present it to my royal master,
a magical supremacy of power, which shall for ever raise him and his
royal progeny above all use or need of subsidies, ship-money,
benevolences, or taxes of whatever sort or name, to rule his kingdom
as independent of his subjects in reality as he is in right; for
this water-commanding engine, which God hath given me to make, shall
be the source of such wealth as no accountant can calculate. For
herewith may marsh-land be thoroughly drained, or dry land perfectly
watered; great cities kept sweet and wholesome; mines rid of the
water gathering from springs therein, so as he may enrich himself
withal; houses be served plentifully on every stage; and gardens in
the dryest summer beautified and comforted with fountains. Which
engine when I found that it was in the power of my hands to do, as
well as of my heart to conceive that it might be done, I did kneel
down and give humble thanks from the bottom of my heart to the
omnipotent God whose mercies are fathomless, for his vouchsafing me
an insight into so great a secret of nature and so beneficial to all
mankind as this my engine.'
With all her devotion to the king, and all her hatred and contempt
of the parliament and the puritans, Dorothy could not help a doubt
whether such independence might be altogether good either for the
king himself or the people thus subjected to his will. But the
farther doubt did not occur to her whether a pre-eminence gained
chiefly by wealth was one to be on any grounds desired for the
nation, or, setting that aside, was one which carried a single
element favourable to perpetuity.
All this time they had been standing on the top of the keep, with
the moonlight around them, and in their ears the noise of the water
flowing from the dungeon well into the sky-roofed cistern. But now
it came in diminished flow.
'It is the earth that fails in giving, not my engine in taking,'
said lord Herbert as he turned to lead the way down the winding
stair. Ever as they went, the noise of the water grew fainter and
the noise of the engine grew louder, but just as they stepped from
the stair, it gave a failing stroke or two, and ceased. A dense
white cloud met them as they entered the vault.
'Stopped for the night, Caspar?' said his lordship.
'Yes, my lord; the well is nearly out.'
'Let it sleep,' returned his master; 'like a man's heart it will
fill in the night. Thank God for the night and darkness and sleep,
in which good things draw nigh like God's thieves, and steal
themselves in--water into wells, and peace and hope and courage into
the minds of men. Is it not so, my cousin?'
Dorothy did not answer in words, but she looked up in his face with
a reverence in her eyes that showed she understood him. And this was
one of the idolatrous catholics! It was neither the first nor the
last of many lessons she had to receive, in order to learn that a
man may be right although the creed for which he is and ought to be
ready to die, may contain much that is wrong. Alas! that so few,
even of such men, ever reflect, that it is the element common to all
the creeds which gives its central value to each.
'I cannot show you the working of the engine to-night,' said lord
Herbert. 'Caspar has decreed otherwise.'
'I can soon set her agoing again, my lord,' said Caspar.
'No, no. We must to the powder-mill, Caspar. Mistress Dorothy will
come again to-morrow, and you must yourself explain to her the
working and management of it, for I shall be away. And do not fear
to trust my cousin, Caspar, although she be a soft-handed lady. Let
her have the brute's halter in her own hold.'
Filled with gratitude for the trust he reposed in her, Dorothy took
her leave, and the two workmen immediately abandoned their shop for
the night, leaving the door wide open behind them to let out the
vapours of the fire-engine, in the confidence that no unlicensed
foot would dare to cross the threshold, and betook themselves to the
powder-mill, where they continued at work the greater part of the
night.
His lordship was unfavourable to the storing of powder because of
the danger, seeing they could, on his calculation, from the
materials lying ready for mixing, in one week prepare enough to keep
all the ordnance on the castle walls busy for two. But indeed he had
not such a high opinion of gunpowder but that he believed engines
for projection, more powerful as well as less expensive, could be
constructed, after the fashion of ballista or catapult, by the use
of a mode he had discovered of immeasurably increasing the strength
of springs, so that stones of a hundredweight might be thrown into a
city from a quarter of a mile's distance without any noise audible
to those within. It was this device he was brooding over when
Dorothy came upon him by the arblast. Nor did the conviction arise
from any prejudice against fire-arms, for he had, among many other
wonderful things of the sort, in cannons, sakers, harquebusses,
muskets, musquetoons, and all kinds, invented a pistol to discharge
a dozen times with one loading, and without so much as new priming
being once requisite, or the possessor having to change it out of
one hand into the other, or stop his horse.
One who had happened to see lord Herbert as he went about within his
father's walls, busy yet unhasting, earnest yet cheerful, rapid in
all his movements yet perfectly composed, would hardly have imagined
that a day at a time, or perhaps two, was all he was now able to
spend there, days which were to him as breathing-holes in the ice
to the wintered fishes. For not merely did he give himself to the
enlisting of large numbers of men, but commanded both horse and
foot, meeting all expenses from his own pocket, or with the
assistance of his father. A few months before the period at which my
story has arrived, he had in eight days raised six regiments,
fortified Monmouth and Chepstow, and garrisoned half-a-dozen smaller
but yet important places. About a hundred noblemen and gentlemen
whom he had enrolled as a troop of life-guards, he furnished with
the horses and arms which they were unable to provide with
sufficient haste for themselves. So prominenf indeed were his
services on behalf of the king, that his father was uneasy because
of the jealousy and hate it would certainly rouse in the minds of
some of his majesty's well-wishers--a just presentiment, as his son
had too good reason to acknowledge after he had spent a million of
money, besides the labour and thought and dangerous endeavour of
years, in the king's service.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOSSOMS.
The next morning, immediately after breakfast, lord Herbert set out
for Chepstow first and then Monmouth, both which places belonged to
his father, and were principal sources of his great wealth.
Still, amid the rush of the changeful tides of war around them, and
the rumour of battle filling the air, all was peaceful within the
defences of Raglan, and its towers looked abroad over a quiet
country, where the cattle fed and the green wheat grew. On the far
outskirts of vision, indeed, a smoke might be seen at times from the
watch-tower, and across the air would come the dull boom of a great
gun from one of the fortresses, at which lady Margaret's cheek would
turn pale; but, although every day something was done to strengthen
the castle, although masons were at work here and there about the
walls like bees, and Caspar Kaltoff was busy in all directions, now
mounting fresh guns, now repairing steel cross-bows, now getting out
of the armoury the queerest oldest-fashioned engines to place
wherever available points could be found, there was no hurry and no
confusion, and indeed so little appearance of unusual activity, that
an unmilitary stranger might have passed a week in the castle
without discovering that preparations for defence were actively
going on. All around them the buds were creeping out, uncurling,
spreading abroad, straightening themselves, smoothing out the
creases of their unfolding, and breathing the air of heaven--in some
way very pleasant to creatures with roots as well as to creatures
with legs. The apple-blossoms came out, and the orchard was lovely
as with an upward-driven storm of roseate snow. Ladies were oftener
seen passing through the gates and walking in the gardens--where
the fountains had begun to play, and the swans and ducks on the
lakes felt the return of spring in every fibre of their webby feet
and cold scaly legs.
And Dorothy sat as it were at the spring-head of the waters, for,
through her dominion over the fire-engine, she had become the naiad
of Raglan. The same hour in which lord Herbert departed she went to
Kaltoff, and was by him instructed in its mysteries. On the third
day after, so entirely was the Dutchman satisfied with her
understanding and management of it, that he gave up to her the whole
water-business. And now, as I say, she sat at the source of all the
streams and fountains of the place, and governed them all. The horse
of marble spouted and ceased at her will, but in general she let the
stream from his mouth flow all day long. Every water-cock on the
great tower was subject to her. From the urn of her pleasure the
cistern was daily filled, and from the summit of defence her flood
went pouring into the moat around its feet, until it mantled to the
brim, turning the weeds into a cold shadowy pavement of green for a
foil to its pellucid depth. She understood all the secrets of the
aqueous catapult, at which its contriver had little more than hinted
on that memorable night when he disclosed so much, and believed she
could arrange it for action without assistance. At the same time her
new responsibilities required but a portion of her leisure, and lady
Margaret was not the less pleased with the wise-headed girl, whose
manners and mental ways were such a contrast to her own, that her
husband considered her fit to be put in charge of his darling
invention. But Dorothy kept silence concerning the trust to all but
her mistress, who, on her part, was prudent enough to avoid any
allusion which might raise yet higher the jealousy of her
associates, by whom she was already regarded as supplanting them in
the favour of their mistress.
One lovely evening in May, the moon at the full, the air warm yet
fresh, the apple-blossoms at their largest, with as yet no spot upon
their fair skin, and the nightingales singing out of their very
bones, the season, the hour, the blossoms, and the moon had invaded
every chamber in the castle, seized every heart of both man and
beast, and turned all into one congregation of which the
nightingales were the priests. The cocks were crowing as if it had
been the dawn itself instead of its ghost they saw; the dogs were
howling, but whether that was from love or hate of the moon, I
cannot tell; the pigeons were cooing; the peacock had turned his
train into a paralune, understanding well that the carnival could
not be complete without him and his; and the wild beasts were
restless, uttering a short yell now and then, at least aware that
something was going on. All the inhabitants of the castle were out
of doors, the ladies and gentlemen in groups here and there about
the gardens and lawns and islands, and the domestics, and such of
the garrison as were not on duty, wandering hither and thither where
they pleased, careful only not to intrude on their superiors.
Lady Margaret was walking with her step-son Henry on a lawn under
the northern window of the picture-gallery, and there the ladies
Elizabeth and Anne joined them--the former a cheerful woman, endowed
with a large share of her father's genial temperament; joke or jest
would moult no feather in lady Elizabeth's keeping; the latter
quiet, sincere, and reverent. The marquis himself, notwithstanding a
slight attack of the gout, had hobbled on his stick to a chair set
for him on the same lawn. Beside him sat lady Mary, younger than the
other two, and specially devoted to her father.
Their gentlewomen were also out, flitting in groups that now and
then mingled and changed. Rowland Scudamore joined lady Margaret's
people, and in a moment lady Broughton was laughing merrily. But
mistress Doughty walked on with straight neck, as if there were
nobody but herself in heaven or on the earth, although mortals were
merry by her side, and nightingales singing themselves to death over
her head. Behind them came Amanda Serafina, with her eyes on her
feet, and the corners of her pretty mouth drawn down in contempt of
nobody in particular. Now and then Scudamore, when satisfied with
his own pretty wit, would throw a glance behind him, and she,
somehow or other, would, without change of muscle, let him know that
she had heard him. This group sauntered into the orchard.
After them came Dorothy with Dr Bayly, talking of their common
friend Mr. Matthew Herbert, and following them into the orchard,
wandered about among the trees, under the curdled moonlight of the
apple-blossoms, amid the challenges and responses of five or six
nightingales, that sang as if their bodies had dwindled under the
sublimating influences of music, until, with more than cherubic
denudation, their sum of being was reduced to a soul and a throat.
Moonlight, apple-blossoms, nightingales, with the souls of men and
women for mirrors and reflectors! The picture is for the musician
not the painter, either him of words or him of colours. It was like
a lovely show in the land of dreams, even to the living souls that
moved in and made part of it. The earth is older now, colder at the
heart, a little nearer to the fate of cold-hearted things, which is
to be slaves and serve without love; but she has still the same
moonlight, the same apple-blossoms, the same nightingales, and we
have the same hearts, and so can understand it. But, alas! how
differently should we come in amongst the accessories of such a
picture! For we men at least are all but given over to ugliness,
and, artistically considered, even vulgarity, in the matter of
dress, wherein they, of all generations of English men and women,
were too easily supreme both as to form and colour. Hence, while
they are an admiration to us, we shall be but a laughter to those
that come behind us, and that whether their fashions be better than
ours or no, for nothing is so ridiculous as ugliness out of date.
The glimmer of gold and silver, the glitter of polished steel, the
flashing of jewels, and the flowing of plumes, went well. But, so
canopied with loveliness, so besung with winged passion, so clothed
that even with the heavenly delicacies enrounding them they blended
harmoniously, their moonlit orchard was an island beat by the waves
of war, its air would quiver and throb by fits, shaken with the roar
of cannon, and might soon gleam around them with the whirring sweep
of the troopers' broad blades; while all throughout the land, the
hateful demon of party spirit tore wide into gashes the wounds first
made by conscience in the best, and by prejudice in the good.
The elder ladies had floated away together between the mossy stems,
under the canopies of blossoms; Rowland had fallen behind and joined
the waiting Amanda, and the two were now flitting about like moths
in the moonshine; Dorothy and Dr. Bayly had halted in an open spot,
like a moonlight impluvium, the divine talking eagerly to the
maiden, and the maiden looking up at the moon, and heeding the
nightingales more than the divine.
'CAN they be English nightingales?' said Dorothy thoughtfully.
The doctor was bewildered for a moment. He had been talking about
himself, not the nightingales, but he recovered himself like a
gentleman.
'Assuredly, mistress Dorothy,' he replied; 'this is the land of
their birth. Hither they come again when the winter is over.'
'Yes; they take no part in our troubles. They will not sing to
comfort our hearts in the cold; but give them warmth enough, and
they sing as careless of battle-fields and dead men as if they were
but moonlight and apple-blossoms.'
'Is it not better so?' returned the divine after a moment's thought.
'How would it be if everything in nature but re-echoed our moan?'
Dorothy looked at the little man, and was in her turn a moment
silent.
'Then,' she said, 'we must see in these birds and blossoms, and that
great blossom in the sky, so many prophets of a peaceful time and a
better country, sent to remind us that we pass away and go to them.'
'Nay, my dear mistress Dorothy!' returned the all but obsequious
doctor; 'such thoughts do not well befit your age, or rather, I
would say, your youth. Life is before you, and life is good. These
evil times will go by, the king shall have his own again, the
fanatics will be scourged as they deserve, and the church will rise
like the phoenix from the ashes of her purification.'
'But how many will lie out in the fields all the year long, yet
never see blossoms or hear nightingales more!' said Dorothy.
'Such will have died martyrs,' rejoined the doctor.
'On both sides?' suggested Dorothy.
Again for a moment the good man stood checked. He had not even
thought of the dead on the other side.
'That cannot be,' he said. And Dorothy looked up again at the moon.
But she listened no more to the songs of the nightingales, and they
left the orchard together in silence.
'Come, Rowland, we must not be found here alone,' said Amanda, who
saw them go. 'But tell me one thing first: is mistress Dorothy
Vaughan indeed your cousin?'
'She is indeed. Her mother and mine were cousins german--sisters'
children.'
'I thought it could not be a near cousinship. You are not alike at
all. Hear me, Rowland, but let it die in your ear--I love not
mistress Dorothy.'
'And the reason, lovely hater? "Is not the maiden fair to see?" as
the old song says. I do not mean that she is fair as some are fair,
but she will pass; she offends not.'
'She is fair enough--not beautiful, not even pleasing; but, to be
just, the demure look she puts on may bear the fault of that.
Rowland, I would not speak evil of any one, but your cousin is a
hypocrite. She is false at heart, and she hates me. Trust me, she
but bides her time to let me know it--and you too, my Rowland.'
'I am sure you mistake her, Amanda,' said Scudamore. 'Her looks are
but modest, and her words but shy, for she came hither from a lonely
house. I believe she is honest and good.'
'Seest thou not then how that she makes friends with none but her
betters? Already hath she wound herself around my lady's heart,
forsooth! and now she pays her court to the puffing chaplain! Hast
thou never observed, my Rowland, how oft she crosses the bridge to
the yellow tower? What seeks she there? Old Kaltoff, the Dutchman,
it can hardly be. I know she thinks to curry with my lord by
pretending to love locks and screws and pistols and such like. "But
why should she haunt the place when my lord is not there?" you will
ask. Her pretence will hold the better for it, no doubt, and Caspar
will report concerning her. And if she pleases my lord well, who
knows but he may give her a pair of watches to hang at her ears, or
a box that Paracelsus himself could not open without the secret as
well as the key? I have heard of both such. They say my lord hath
twenty cartloads of quite as wonderful things in that vault he calls
his workshop. Hast thou never marked the huge cabinet of black
inlaid with silver, that stands by the wall--fitter indeed for my
lady's chamber than such a foul place?'
'I have seen it,' answered Scudamore.
'I warrant me it hath store of gewgaws fit for a duchess.'
'Like enough,' assented Rowland.
'If mistress Dorothy were to find the way through my lord's favour
into that cabinet--truly it were nothing to thee or me, Rowland.'
'Assuredly not. It would be my lord's own business.'
'Once upon a time I was sent to carry my young lady Raven
thither--to see my lord earn his bread, as said my lady: and what
should my lord but give her no less than a ball of silver which,
thrown into a vessel of water at any moment would plainly tell by
how much it rose above the top, the very hour and minute of the day
or night, as well and truly as the castle-clock itself. Tell me
not, Rowland, that the damsel hath no design in it. Her looks
betoken a better wisdom. Doth she not, I ask your honesty, far more
resemble a nose-pinched puritan than a loyal maiden?'
Thus amongst the apple-blossoms talked Amanda Serafina.
'Prithee, be not too severe with my cousin, Amanda,' pleaded
Scudamore. 'She is much too sober to please my fancy, but wherefore
should I for that hate her? And if she hath something the look of a
long-faced fanatic, thou must think, she hath but now, as it were,
lost her mother.'
'But now! And I never knew mine! Ah, Rowland, how lonely is the
world!'
'Lovely Amanda!' said Rowland.
So they passed from the orchard and parted, fearful of being missed.
How should such a pair do, but after its kind? Life was dull without
love-making, so they made it. And the more they made, the more they
wanted to make, until casual encounters would no longer serve their
turn.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ENCHANTED CHAIR.
In the castle things went on much the same, nor did the gathering
tumult without wake more than an echo within. Yet a cloud slowly
deepened upon the brow of the marquis, and a look of disquiet, to be
explained neither by the more frequent returns of his gout, nor by
the more lengthened absences of his favourite son. In his judgment
the king was losing ground, not only in England but in the deeper
England of its men. Lady Margaret also, for all her natural good
spirits and light-heartedness, showed a more continuous anxiety
than was to be accounted for by her lord's absences and the dangers
he had to encounter: little Molly, the treasure of her heart next to
her lord, had never been other than a delicate child, but now had
begun to show signs of worse than weakness of constitution, and the
heart of the mother was perpetually brooding over the ever-present
idea of her sickly darling.
But she always did her endeavour to clear the sky of her countenance
before sitting down with her father-in-law at the dinner-table,
where still the marquis had his jest almost as regularly as his
claret, although varying more in quality and quantity both--now
teasing his son Charles about the holes in his pasteboard, as he
styled the castle walls; now his daughter Anne about a design, he
and no one else attributed to her, of turning protestant and
marrying Dr. Bayly; now Dr. Bayly about his having been discovered
blowing the organ in the chapel at high mass, as he said; for when
no new joke was at hand he was fain to content himself with falling
back upon old ones. The first of these mentioned was founded on the
fact, as undeniable as deplorable, of the weakness of many portions
of the defences, to remedy which, as far as might be, was for the
present lord Charles's chief endeavour, wherein he had the best
possible adviser, engineer, superintendent, and workman, all in the
person of Caspar Kaltoff. The second jest of the marquis was a pure
invention upon the liking of lady Anne for the company and
conversation of the worthy chaplain. The last mentioned was but an
exaggeration of the following fact.
One evening the doctor came upon young Delaware, loitering about the
door of the chapel, with as disconsolate a look as his lovely
sightless face was ever seen to wear, and, inquiring what was amiss
with him, learned that he could find no one to blow the organ
bellows for him. The youth had for years, boy as he still was, found
the main solace of his blindness in the chapel-organ, upon which he
would have played from morning to night could he have got any one to
blow as long. The doctor, then, finding the poor boy panting for
music like the hart for the water-brooks, but with no Jacob to roll
the stone from the well's mouth that he might water the flocks of
his thirsty thoughts, made willing proffer of his own exertions to
blow the bellows of the organ, so long as the somewhat wheezy
bellows of his body would submit to the task.
By degrees however the good doctor had become so absorbed in the
sounds that rushed, now wailing, now jubilant, now tender as a
twilight wind, now imperious as the voice of the war-tempest, from
the fingers of the raptured boy, that the reading of the first
vesper-psalm had commenced while he was yet watching the slow rising
index, in the expectation that the organist was about to resume. The
voice of his Irish brother-chaplain, Sir Toby Mathews, roused him
from his reverie of delight, and as one ashamed he stole away
through the door that led from the little organ loft into the
minstrel's gallery in the great hall, and so escaped the catholic
service, but not the marquis's roasting. Whether the music had any
share in the fact that the good man died a good catholic at last, I
leave to the speculation of who list.
Lady Margaret continued unchangingly kind to Dorothy; and the
tireless efforts of the girl to amuse and please poor little Molly,
whom the growing warmth of the season seemed to have no power to
revive, awoke the deep gratitude of a mother. This, as well as her
husband's absences, may have had something to do with the interest
she began to take in the engine of which Dorothy had assumed the
charge, for which she had always hitherto expressed a special
dislike, professing to regard it as her rival in the affections of
her husband, but after which she would now inquire as Dorothy's
baby, and even listen with patience to her expositions of its
wonderful construction and capabilities. Ere long Dorothy had a tale
to tell her in connection with the engine, which, although simple
and uneventful enough, she yet found considerably more interesting,
as involving a good deal of at least mental adventure on the part of
her young cousin.
One evening, after playing with little Molly for an hour, then
putting her to bed and standing by her crib until she fell asleep,
Dorothy ran to see to her other baby; for the cistern had fallen
rather lower than she thought well, and she was going to fill it.
She found Caspar had lighted the furnace as she had requested; she
set the engine going, and it soon warmed to its work.
The place was hot, and Dorothy was tired. But where in that wide and
not over-clean place should she find anything fitter than a
grindstone to sit upon? Never yet, through all her acquaintance with
the workshop, had she once seated herself in it. Looking about,
however, she soon espied, almost hidden in the corner of a recess
behind the furnace, what seemed an ordinary chair, such as stood in
the great hall for the use of the family when anything special was
going on there. With some trouble she got it out, dusted it, and set
it as far from the furnace as might be, consistently with watching
the motions of the engine. But the moment she sat down in it, she
was caught and pinned so fast that she could scarcely stir hand or
foot, and could no more leave it again than if she had been
paralyzed in every limb. One scream she uttered of mingled
indignation and terror, fancying herself seized by human arms; but
when she found herself only in the power of one of her cousin's
curiosities, she speedily quieted herself and rested in peace, for
Caspar always paid a visit to the workshop the last thing before
going to bed. The pressure of the springs that had closed the trap
did not hurt her in the least--she was indeed hardly sensible of it;
but when she made the least attempt to stir, the thing showed itself
immovably locked, and she had too much confidence in the workmanship
of her cousin and Caspar to dream of attempting to open it: that she
knew must be impossible. The worst that threatened her was that the
engine might require some attention before the hour, or perhaps two,
which must elapse ere Caspar came would be over, and she did not
know what the consequences might be.
As it happened, however, something either in the powder-mill or
about the defences detained Caspar far beyond his usual hour for
retiring, and the sultriness of the weather having caused him a
headache, he represented to himself that, with mistress Dorothy
tending the engine, who knew where and would be sure to find him
upon the least occasion, there could be no harm in his going to bed
without paying his usual precautionary visit to the keep.
So Dorothy sat, and waited in vain. The last drops of the day
trickled down the side of the world, the night filled the crystal
globe from its bottom of rock to its cover of blue aether, and the
red glow of the furnace was all that lighted the place. She waited
and waited in her mind; but Caspar did not come. She began to feel
miserable. The furnace fire sank, and the rush of the water grew
slower and slower, and ceased. Caspar did not come. The fire sank
lower and lower, its red eye dimmed, darkened, went out. Still
Caspar did not come. Faint fears began to gather about poor
Dorothy's heart. It was clear at last that there she must be all the
night long, and who could tell how far into the morning? It was good
the night was warm, but it would be very dreary. And then to be
fixed in one position for so long! The thought of it grew in misery
faster than the thing itself. The greater torment lies always in the
foreboding. She felt almost as if she were buried alive. Having
their hands tied even, is enough to drive strong men almost crazy.
Nor, firm of heart as she was, did no evils of a more undefined and
less resistible character claim a share in her fast-rising
apprehensions; she began to discover that she too was assailable by
the terror of the night, although she had not hitherto been aware of
it, no one knowing what may lie unhatched in his mind, waiting the
concurrence of vital conditions.
But Dorothy was better able to bear up under such assaults than
thousands who believe nothing of many a hideous marvel commonly
accepted in her day; and anyhow the unavoidable must be encountered,
if not with indifference, yet with what courage may be found
responsive to the call of the will. So, with all her energy, a
larger store than she knew, she braced herself to endure. As to any
attempt to make herself heard, she knew from the first that was of
doubtful result, and now must certainly be of no avail when all but
the warders were asleep. But to spend the night thus was a far less
evil than to be discovered by the staring domestics, and exposed to
the open merriment of her friends, and the hidden mockery of her
enemies. As to Caspar, she was certain of his silence. So she sat
on, like the lady in Comus, 'in stony fetters fixed and motionless;'
only, as she said to herself, there was no attendant spirit to
summon Caspar, who alone could take the part of Sabrina, and 'unlock
the clasping charm.' Little did Dorothy think, as in her dreary
imprisonment she recalled that marvellous embodiment of unified
strength and tenderness, as yet unacknowledged of its author, that
it was the work of the same detestable fanatic who wrote those
appalling 'Animadversions, &c.'
She grew chilly and cramped. The night passed very slowly. She dozed
and woke, and dozed again. At last, from very weariness of both soul
and body, she fell into a troubled sleep, from which she woke
suddenly with the sound in her ears of voices whispering. The
confidence of lord Herbert, both in the evil renown of his wizard
cave and the character of his father's household, seemed mistaken.
Still the subdued manner of their conversation appeared to indicate
it was not without some awe that the speakers, whoever they were,
had ventured within the forbidden precincts; their whispers, indeed,
were so low that she could not say of either voice whether it
belonged to man or woman. Her first idea was to deliver herself from
the unpleasantness of her enforced espial by the utterance of some
frightful cry such as would at the same time punish with the pains
of terror their fool-hardy intrusion. But the spur of the moment was
seldom indeed so sharp with Dorothy as to drive her to act without
reflection, and a moment showed her that such persons being in the
marquis's household as would meet in the middle of the night, and on
prohibited ground, apparently for the sake of avoiding discovery,
and even then talked in whispers, he had a right to know who they
were: to act from her own feelings merely would be to fail in
loyalty to the head of the house. Who could tell what might not be
involved in it? For was it not thus that conspiracy and treason
walked? And any alarm given them now might destroy every chance of
their discovery. She compelled herself therefore to absolute
stillness, immeasurably wretched, with but one comfort--no small
one, however, although negative--that their words continued
inaudible, a fact which doubtless saved much dispute betwixt her
propriety and her loyalty.
Long time their talk lasted. Every now and then they would start and
listen--so Dorothy interpreted sudden silence and broken renewals.
The genius of the place, although braved, had yet his terrors. At
length she heard something like a half-conquered yawn, and soon
after the voices ceased.
Again a weary time, and once more she fell asleep. She woke in the
grey of the morning, and after yet two long hours, but of more
hopeful waiting, she heard Caspar's welcome footsteps, and summoned
all her strength to avoid breaking down on his entrance. His first
look of amazement she tried to answer with a smile, but at the
expression of pitiful dismay which followed when another glance had
revealed the cause of her presence, she burst into tears. The honest
man was full of compunctious distress at the sight of the suffering
his breach of custom had so cruelly prolonged.
'And I haf bin slap in mine bed!' he exclaimed with horror at the
contrast.
Had she been his daughter and his mistress both in one, he could not
have treated her with greater respect or tenderness. Of course he
set about relieving her at once, but this was by no means such an
easy matter as Dorothy had expected. For the key of the chair was in
the black cabinet; the black cabinet was secured with one of lord
Herbert's marvellous locks; the key of that lock was in lord
Herbert's pocket, and lord Herbert was either in bed at Chepstow or
Monmouth or Usk or Caerlyon, or on horseback somewhere else, nobody
in Raglan knew where. But Caspar lost no time in unavailing moan. He
proceeded at once to light a fire on his forge hearth, and in the
course of a few minutes had fashioned a pick-lock, by means of
which, after several trials and alterations, at length came the
welcome sound of the yielding bolts, and Dorothy rose from the
terrible chair. But so benumbed were all her limbs that she escaped
being relocked in it only by the quick interposition of Caspar's
arms. He led her about like a child, until at length she found them
sufficiently restored to adventure the journey to her chamber, and
thither she slowly crept. Few of the household were yet astir, and
she met no one. When she was covered up in bed, then first she knew
how cold she was, and felt as if she should never be warm again.
At last she fell asleep, and slept long and soundly. Her maid went
to call her, but finding it difficult to wake her, left her asleep,
and did not return until breakfast was over. Then finding her still
asleep she became a little anxious, and meeting mistress Amanda,
told her she was afraid mistress Dorothy was ill. But mistress
Amanda was herself sleepy and cross, and gave her a sharp answer,
whereupon the girl went to lady Broughton. She, however, being on
her way to morning mass, for it was Sunday, told her to let mistress
Dorothy have her sleep out.
The noise of horses' hoofs upon the paving of the stone court roused
her, and then in came the sounds of the organ from the chapel. She
rose confounded, and hurrying to the window drew back the curtain.
The same moment lord Herbert walked from the hall into the
fountain-court in riding dress, followed by some forty or fifty
officers, the noise of whose armour and feet and voices dispelled at
once the dim Sabbath feeling that hung vapour-like about the place.
They gathered around the white horse, leaning or sitting on the
marble basin, some talking in eager groups, others folding their
arms in silence, listening, or lost heedless in their own thoughts,
while their leader entered the staircase door at the right-hand
corner of the western gate, the nearest way to his wife's apartment
of the building.
Now Dorothy had gone to sleep in perplexity, and all through her
dreams had been trying to answer the question what course she should
take with regard to the nocturnal intrusion. If she told lady
Margaret she could but go with it to the marquis, and he was but
just recovering from an attack of the gout, and ought not to be
troubled except it were absolutely necessary. Was it, or was it not,
necessary? Or was there no one else to whom she might with propriety
betake herself in her doubt--lord Charles or Dr. Bayly? But here now
was lord Herbert come back, and doubt there was none any more. She
dressed herself in tremulous haste, and hurried to lady Margaret's
room, where she hoped to see him. No one was there, and she tried
the nursery, but finding only Molly and her attendant, returned to
the parlour, and there seated herself to wait, supposing lady
Margaret and he had gone together to morning service.
They had really gone to the oak parlour, whither the marquis
generally made his first move after an attack that had confined him
to his room; for in the large window of that parlour, occupying
nearly the whole side of it towards the moat, he generally sat when
well enough to be about and take cognizance of what wa's going on;
and there they now found him.
'Welcome home, Herbert!' he said, kindly, holding out his hand. 'And
how does my wild Irishwoman this morning? Crying her eyes out
because her husband is come back, eh?--But, Herbert, lad, whence is
all that noise of spurs and scabbards--and in the fountain court,
too? I heard them go clanking and clattering through the hall like a
torrent of steel! Here I sit, a poor gouty old man, deserted of my
children and servants--all gone to church--to serve a better
Master--not a page or a maid left me to send out to see and bring me
word what is the occasion thereof! I was on the point of hobbling to
the door myself when you came.'
'Being on my way to the forest of Dean, my lord, and coming round by
Raglan to inquire after you and my lady, I did bring with me some of
my officers to dine and drink your lordship's health on our way.'
'You shall all be welcome, though I fear I shall not make one,' said
the marquis, with a grimace, for just then he had a twinge of the
gout.
'I am sorry to see you suffer, sir,' said his son.
'Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,' returned the
marquis, giving a kick with the leg which contained his inheritance;
and then came a pause, during which lady Margaret left the room.
'My lord,' said Herbert at length, with embarrassment, and forcing
himself to speak, 'I am sorry to trouble you again, after all the
money, enough to build this castle from the foundations--'
'Ah! ha!' interjected the marquis, but lord Herbert went on--
'which you have already spent on behalf of the king, my master,
but--'
'YOUR master, Herbert!' said the marquis, testily. 'Well?'
'I must have some more money for his pressing necessities.' In his
self-compulsion he had stumbled upon the wrong word.
'MUST you?' cried the marquis angrily. 'Pray take it.'
And drawing the keys of his treasury from the pocket of his frieze
coat, he threw them down on the table before him. Lord Herbert
reddened like a girl, and looked as much abashed as if he had been
caught in something of which he was ashamed. One moment he stood
thus, then said,
'Sir, the word was out before I was aware. I do not intend to put it
into force. I pray will you put up your key again?'
'Truly, son,' replied the marquis, still testily, but in a milder
tone, 'I shall think my keys not safe in my pocket whilst you have
so many swords by your side; nor that I have the command of my house
whilst you have so many officers in it; nor that I am at my own
disposal, whilst you have so many commanders.'
'My lord,' replied Herbert, 'I do not intend that they shall stay in
the castle; I mean they shall be gone.'
'I pray, let them. And have care that MUST do not stay behind,' said
the marquis. 'But let them have their dinner first, lad.'
Lord Herbert bowed, and left the room. Thereupon, in the presence of
lady Margaret, who just then re-entered, good Dr. Bayly, who,
unperceived by lord Herbert in his pre-occupation, had been present
during the interview, stepped up to the marquis and said:
'My good lord, the honourable confidence your lordship has reposed
in me boldens me to do my duty as, in part at least, your lordship's
humble spiritual adviser.'
'Thou shouldst want no boldening to do thy duty, doctor,' said the
marquis, making a wry face.
'May I then beg of your lordship to consider whether you have not
been more severe with your noble son than the occasion demanded,
seeing not only was the word uttered by a lapse of the tongue, but
yourself heard my lord express much sorrow for the overslip?'
'What!' said lady Herbert, something merrily, but looking in the
face of her father-in-law with a little anxious questioning in her
eyes, 'has my lord been falling out with my Ned?'
'Hark ye, daughter!' answered the marquis, his face beaming with
restored good-humour, for the twinge in his toe had abated, 'and you
too, my good chaplain!--if my son be dejected, I can raise him when
I please; but it is a question, if he should once take a head,
whether I could bring him lower when I list. Ned was not wont to use
such courtship to me, and I believe he intended a better word for
his father; but MUST was for the king.'
Returning to her own room, lady Margaret found Dorothy waiting for
her.
'Well, my little lig-a-bed!' she said sweetly, 'what is amiss with
thee? Thou lookest but soberly.'
'I am well, madam; and that I look soberly,' said Dorothy, 'you will
not wonder when I tell you wherefore. But first, if it please you, I
would pray for my lord's presence, that he too may know all.'
'Holy mother! what is the matter, child?' cried lady Margaret, of
late easily fluttered. 'Is it my lord Herbert you mean, or my lord
of Worcester?'
'My lord Herbert, my lady. I dread lest he should be gone ere I have
found a time to tell him.'
'He rides again after dinner,' said lady Margaret.
'Then, dear my lady, if you would keep me from great doubt and
disquiet, let me have the ear of my lord for a few moments.'
Lady Margaret rang for her page, and sent him to find his master and
request his presence in her parlour.
Within five minutes lord Herbert was with them, and within five
more, Dorothy had ended her tale of the night, uninterrupted save by
lady Margaret's exclamations of sympathy.
'And now, my lord, what am I to do?' she asked in conclusion.
Lord Herbert made no answer for a few moments, but walked up and
down the room. Dorothy thought he looked angry as well as troubled.
He burst at length into a laugh, however, and said merrily,
'I have it, ladies! I see how we may save my father much annoyance
without concealment, for nothing must be concealed from him that in
any way concerns the house. But the annoyance arising from any
direct attempt at discovering the wrongdoers would be endless, and
its failure almost certain. But now, as I would plan it, instead of
trouble my father shall have laughter, and instead of annoyance such
a jest as may make him good amends for the wrong done him by the
breach of his household laws. Caspar has explained to you all
concerning the water-works, I believe, cousin?'
'All, my lord. I may without presumption affirm that I can, so long
as there arises no mishap, with my own hand govern them all. Caspar
has for many weeks left everything to me, save indeed the lighting
of the furnace-fire.'
'That is as I would have it, cousin. So soon then as it is dark this
evening, you will together, you and Caspar, set the springs which
lie under the first stone of the paving of the bridge. Thereafter,
as you know, the first foot set upon it will drop the drawbridge to
the stone bridge, and the same instant convert the two into an
aqueduct, filled with a rushing torrent from the reservoir, which
will sweep the intruders away. Before they shall have either
gathered their discomfited wits or raised their prostrate bones, my
father will be out upon them, nor shall they find shelter for their
shame ere every soul in the castle has witnessed their disgrace.'
'I had thought of the plan, my lord; but I dreaded the punishment
might be too severe, not knowing what the water might do upon them.'
'There will be no danger to life, and little to limb,' said his
lordship. 'The torrent will cease flowing the moment they are swept
from the bridge. But they shall be both bruised and shamed; and,'
added his lordship, with an oath such as seldom crossed his lips,
'in such times as these, they will well deserve what shall befall
them. Intruding hounds!--But you must take heed, cousin Dorothy,
that you forget not that you have yourself done. Should you have
occasion to go on the bridge after setting your vermin-trap, you
must not omit to place your feet precisely where Caspar will show
you, else you will have to ride a watery horse half-way, mayhap to
the marble one--except indeed he throw you from his back against
the chapel-door.'
When her husband talked in long sentences, as he was not
unfrequently given to do, lady Margaret, even when their sequences
were not very clear, seldom interrupted him: she had learned that
she gained more by letting him talk on; for however circuitous the
route he might take, he never forgot where he was going. He might
obscure his object, but there it always was. He was now again
walking up and down the room, and, perceiving that he had not yet
arranged all to his satisfaction, she watched him with merriment in
her Irish eyes, and waited.
'I have it!' he cried again. 'It shall be so, and my father shall
thus have immediate notice. The nights are weekly growing warmer,
and he will not therein be tempted to his hurt. Our trusty and
well-beloved cousin Dorothy, we herewith, in presence of our liege
and lovely lady, appoint thee our deputy during our absence. No one
but thyself hath a right to cross the bridge after dark, save Caspar
and the governor, whom with my father I shall inform and warn
concerning what is to be done. But I will myself adjust the escape,
so that the torrent shall not fall too powerful; Caspar must connect
it with the drawbridge, whose fall will then open it. And pray
remind him to see first that all the hinges and joints concerned be
well greased, that it may fall instantly.'
So saying, he left the room, and sought out Caspar, with whom he
contrived the ringing of a bell in the marquis's chamber by the
drawbridge in its fall, the arrangement for which Caspar was to
carry out that same evening after dark. He next sought his father,
and told him and his brother Charles the whole story; nor did he
find himself wrong in his expectation that the prospect of so good a
jest would go far to console the marquis for the annoyance of
finding that his household was not quite such a pattern one as he
had supposed. That there was anything of conspiracy or treachery
involved, he did not for a moment believe.
After dinner, while the horses were brought out, lord Herbert went
again to his wife's room. There was little Molly waiting to bid him
good-bye, and she sat upon his knee until it was time for him to go.
The child's looks made his heart sad, and his wife could not
restrain her tears when she saw him gaze upon her so mournfully. It
was with a heavy heart that, when the moment of departure came, he
rose, gave her into her mother's arms, clasped them both in one
embrace, and hurried from the room. He ought to be a noble king for
whom such men and women make such sacrifices.
To witness such devotion on the part of personages to whom she
looked up with such respect and confidence, would have been in
itself more than sufficient to secure for its object the
unquestioning partisanship of Dorothy; partisan already, it raised
her prejudice to a degree of worship which greatly narrowed what she
took for one of the widest gulfs separating her from the creed of
her friends. The favourite dogma of the school-master-king, the
offspring of his pride and weakness, had found fitting soil in
Dorothy. When, in the natural growth of the confidence reposed in
her by her protectors, she came to have some idea of the immensity
of the sums spent by them on behalf of his son, had, indeed, ere the
close of another year read the king's own handwriting and signature
in acknowledgment of a debt of a quarter of a million, she took it
only as an additional sign--for additional proof there was no
room--of their ever admirable devotion to his divine right. That the
marquis and his son were catholics served but to glorify the right
to which a hostile faith yielded such practical homage.
Immediately after nightfall she repaired to Caspar, and between them
everything was speedily arranged for the carrying out of lord
Herbert's counter-plot.
But night after night passed, and the bell in the marquis's room
remained voiceless.
CHAPTER XX.
MOLLY AND THE WHITE HORSE.
Meantime lord Herbert came and went. There was fighting here and
fighting there, castles taken, defended, re-taken, here a little
success and there a worse loss, now on this side and now on that;
but still, to say the best, the king's affairs made little progress;
and for Mary Somerset, her body and soul made progress in opposite
directions.
There was a strange pleasant mixture of sweet fretfulness and
trusting appeal in her. Children suffer less because they feel that
all is right when father or mother is with them; grown people from
whom this faith has vanished ere it has led them to its original
fact, may well be miserable in their sicknesses.
She lay moaning one night in her crib, when suddenly she opened her
eyes and saw her mother's hand pressed to her forehead. She was
imitative, like most children, and had some very old-fashioned ways
of speech.
'Have you got a headache, madam?' she asked.
'Yes, my Molly,' answered her mother.
'Then you will go to mother Mary. She will take you on her knee,
madam. Mothers is for headaches. Oh me! my headache, madam!'
The poor mother turned away. It was more than she could bear alone.
Dorothy entered the room, and she rose and left it, that she might
go to mother Mary as the child had said.
Dorothy's cares were divided between the duties of naiad and
nursemaid, for the child clung to her as to no one else except her
mother. The thing that pleased her best was to see the two
whale-like spouts rise suddenly from the nostrils of the great white
horse, curve away from each other aloft in the air, and fall back
into the basin on each side of him. 'See horse spout,' she would say
moanfully; and that instant, if Dorothy was not present, a messenger
would be despatched to her. On a bright day this would happen
repeatedly. For the sake of renewing her delight, the instant she
turned from it, satisfied for the moment, the fountain ceased to
play, and the horse remained spoutless, awaiting the revival of the
darling's desire; for she was not content to see him spouting: she
must see him spout. Then again she would be carried forth to the
verge of the marble basin, and gazing up at the rearing animal would
say, in a tone daintily wavering betwixt entreaty and command,
'Spout, horse, spout,' and Dorothy, looking down from the far-off
summit of the tower, and distinguishing by the attitude of the child
the moment when she uttered her desire, would instantly, with one
turn of her hand, send the captive water shooting down its dark
channel to reascend in sunny freedom.
If little Mary Somerset was counted a strange child, the wisdom with
which she was wise is no more unnatural because few possess it, than
the death of such is premature because they are yet children. They
are small fruits whose ripening has outstripped their growth. Of
such there are some who, by the hot-house assiduities of their
friends, heating them with sulphurous stoves, and watering them with
subacid solutions, ripen into insufferable prigs. For them and for
their families it is well that Death the gardener should speedily
remove them into the open air. But there are others who, ripening
from natural, that is divine causes and influences, are the
daintiest little men and women, gentle in the utmost peevishness of
their lassitude, generous to share the gifts they most prize, and
divinely childlike in their repentances. Their falling from the
stalk is but the passing from the arms of their mothers into those
of--God knows whom--which is more than enough.
The chief part of little Molly's religious lessons, I do not mean
training, consisted in a prayer or two in rhyme, and a few verses of
the kind then in use among catholics. Here is a prayer which her
nurse taught her, as old, I take it, as Chaucer's time at least:--
Hail be thou, Mary, that high sittest in throne!
I beseech thee, sweet lady, grant me my boon--
Jesus to love and dread, and my life to amend soon,
And bring me to that bliss that never shall be done.
And here are some verses quite as old, which her mother taught her.
I give them believing that in understanding and coming nearer to our
fathers and mothers who are dead, we understand and come nearer to
our brothers and sisters who are alive. I change nothing but the
spelling, and a few of the forms of the words.
Jesu, Lord, that madest me,
And with thy blessed blood hast bought,
Forgive that I have grieved thee
With word, with will, and eke with thought.
Jesu, for thy wounds' smart,
On feet and on thine hands two,
Make me meek and low of heart,
And thee to love as I should do.
Jesu, grant me mine asking,
Perfect patience in my disease,
And never may I do that thing
That should thee in any wise displease.
Jesu, most comfort for to see
Of thy saints every one,
Comfort them that careful be,
And help them that be woe-begone.
Jesu, keep them that be good,
And amend them that have grieved thee,
And send them fruits of early food,
As each man needeth in his degree.
Jesu, that art, without lies,
Almighty God in trinity,
Cease these wars, and send us peace
With lasting love and charity.
Jesu, that art the ghostly stone
Of all holy church in middle-earth,
Bring thy folds and flocks in one,
And rule them rightly with one herd.
Jesu, for thy blissful blood,
Bring, if thou wilt, those souls to bliss
From whom I have had any good,
And spare that they have done amiss.
This old-fashioned hymn lady Margaret had learned from her
grandmother, who was an Englishwoman of the pale. She also had
learned it from her grandmother.
One day, by some accident, Dorothy had not reached her post of naiad
before Molly arrived in presence of her idol, the white horse, her
usual application to which was thence for the moment in vain. Having
waited about three seconds in perfect patience, she turned her head
slowly round, and gazed in her nurse's countenance with large
questioning eyes, but said nothing. Then she turned again to the
horse. Presently a smile broke over her face, and she cried in the
tone of one who had made a great discovery,
'Horse has ears of stone: he cannot hear, Molly.'
Instantly thereupon she turned her face up to the sky, and said,
'Dear holy Mary, tell horse to spout.'
That moment up into the sun shot the two jets. Molly clapped her
little hands with delight and cried,
'Thanks, dear holy Mary! I knowed thou would do it for Molly.
Thanks, madam!'
The nurse told the story to her mistress, and she to Dorothy. It set
both of them feeling, and Dorothy thinking besides.
'It cannot be,' she thought, 'but that a child's prayer will reach
its goal, even should she turn her face to the west or the north
instead of up to the heavens! A prayer somewhat differs from a bolt
or a bullet.'
'How you protestants CAN live without a woman to pray to!' said lady
Margaret.
'Her son Jesus never refused to hear a woman, and I see not
wherefore I should go to his mother, madam,' said Dorothy, bravely.
'Thou and I will not quarrel, Dorothy,' returned lady Margaret
sweetly; 'for sure am I that would please neither the one nor the
other of them.'
Dorothy kissed her hand, and the subject dropped.
After that, Molly never asked the horse to spout, or if she happened
to do so, would correct herself instantly, and turn her request to
the mother Mary. Nor did the horse ever fail to spout,
notwithstanding an evil thought which arose in the protestant part
of Dorothy's mind--the temptation, namely, to try the effect upon
Molly of a second failure. All the rest of her being on the instant
turned so violently protestant against the suggestion, that no
parley with it was possible, and the conscience of her intellect
cowered before the conscience of her heart.
It was from this fancy of the child's for the spouting of the horse
that it came to be known in the castle that mistress Dorothy was
ruler of Raglan waters. In lord Herbert's absence not a person in
the place but she and Caspar understood their management, and except
lady Margaret, the marquis, and lord Charles, no one besides even
knew of the existence of such a contrivance as the water-shoot or
artificial cataract.
Every night Dorothy and Caspar together set the springs of it, and
every morning Caspar detached the lever connecting the stone with
the drawbridge.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE DAMSEL WHICH FELL SICK.
From within the great fortress, like the rough husk whence the green
lobe of a living tree was about to break forth, a lovely child-soul,
that knew neither of war nor ambition, knew indeed almost nothing
save love and pain, was gently rising as from the tomb. The bonds of
the earthly life that had for ever conferred upon it the rights and
privileges of humanity were giving way, and little, white-faced,
big-eyed Molly was leaving father and mother and grandfather and
spouting horse and all, to find--what?--To find what she wanted,
and wait a little for what she loved.
One sultry evening in the second week of June, the weather had again
got inside the inhabitants of the castle, forming different
combinations according to the local atmosphere it found in each.
Clouds had been slowly steaming up all day from several sides of the
horizon, and as the sun went down, they met in the zenith. Not a
wing seemed to be abroad under heaven, so still was the region of
storms. The air was hot and heavy and hard to breathe--whether from
lack of life, or too much of it, oppressing the narrow and weak
recipients thereof, as the sun oppresses and extinguishes earthly
fires, I at least cannot say. It was weather that made SOME dogs
bite their masters, made most of the maids quarrelsome, and all the
men but one or two more or less sullen, made Dorothy sad, Molly long
after she knew not what, her mother weep, her grandfather feel
himself growing old, and the hearts of all the lovers, within and
without the castle, throb for the comfort of each other's lonely
society. The fish lay still in the ponds, the pigeons sat motionless
on the roof-ridges, and the fountains did not play; for Dorothy's
heart was so heavy about Molly, that she had forgotten them.
The marquis, fond of all his grandchildren, had never taken special
notice of Molly beyond what she naturally claimed as youngest. But
when it appeared that she was one of the spring-flowers of the human
family, so soon withdrawing thither whence they come, he found that
she began to pull at his heart, not merely with the attraction
betwixt childhood and age, in which there is more than the poets
have yet sung, but with the dearness which the growing shadow of
death gives to all upon whom it gathers. The eyes of the child
seemed to nestle into his bosom. Every morning he paid her a visit,
and every morning it was clear that little Molly's big heart had
been waiting for him. The young as well as the old recognize that
they belong to each other, despite the unwelcome intervention of
wrinkles and baldness and toothlessness. Molly's eyes brightened
when she heard his steps at the door, and ere he had come within her
sight, where she lay half-dressed on her mother's bed, tented in its
tall carved posts and curtains of embroidered silk, the figures on
which gave her so much trouble all the half-delirious night long,
her arms would be stretched out to him, and the words would be
trembling on her lips, 'Prithee, tell me a tale, sir.'
'Which tale wouldst thou have, my Molly?' the grandsire would say:
it was the regular form of each day's fresh salutation; and the
little one would answer, 'Of the good Jesu,' generally adding, 'and
of the damsel which fell sick and died.'
Torn as the country was, all the good grandparents, catholic and
protestant, royalist and puritan, told their children the same tales
about the same man; and I suspect there was more then than there is
now of that kind of oral teaching, for which any amount of books
written for children is a sadly poor substitute.
Although Molly asked oftenest for the tale of the damsel who came
alive again at the word of the man who knew all about death, she did
not limit her desires to the repetition of what she knew already;
and in order to keep his treasure supplied with things new as well
as old, the marquis went the oftener to his Latin bible to refresh
his memory for Molly's use, and was in both ways, in receiving and
in giving, a gainer. When the old man came thus to pour out his
wealth to the child, lady Margaret then first became aware what a
depth both of religious knowledge and feeling there was in her
father-in-law. Neither sir Toby Mathews, nor Dr. Bayly, who also
visited her at times, ever, with the torch of their talk, lighted
the lamps behind those great eyes, whose glass was growing dull with
the vapours from the grave; but her grandfather's voice, the moment
he began to speak to her of the good Jesu, brought her soul to its
windows.
This sultry evening Molly was restless. 'Madam! madam!' she kept
calling to her mother--for, like so many of such children, her
manners and modes of speech resembled those of grown people, 'What
wouldst thou, chicken?' her mother would ask. 'Madam, I know not,'
the child would answer. Twenty times in an hour, as the evening went
on, almost the same words would pass between them. At length, once
more, 'Madam! madam!' cried the child. 'What would my heart's
treasure?' said the mother; and Molly answered, 'Madam, I would see
the white horse spout.'
With a glance and sign to her mistress. Dorothy rose and crept from
the room, crossed the court and the moat, and dragged her heavy
heart up the long stair to the top of the keep. Arrived there, she
looked down through a battlement, and fixed her eyes on a certain
window, whence presently she caught the wave of a
signal-handkerchief.
At the open window stood lady Margaret with Molly in her arms. The
night was so warm that the child could take no hurt; and indeed what
could hurt her, with the nameless fever-moth within, fretting a
passage for the new winged body which, in the pains of a second
birth, struggled to break from its dying chrysalis.
'Now, Molly, tell the horse to spout,' said lady Margaret, with such
well-simulated cheerfulness as only mothers can put on with hearts
ready to break.
'Mother Mary, tell the horse to spout,' said Molly; and up went the
watery parabolas.
The old flame of delight flushed the child's cheek, like the flush
in the heart of a white rose. But it died almost instantly, and
murmuring, 'Thanks, good madam!' whether to mother Mary or mother
Margaret little mattered, Molly turned towards the bed, and her
mother knew at her heart that the child sought her last sleep--as we
call it, God forgive us our little faith! 'Madam!' panted the child,
as she laid her down. 'Darling?' said the mother. 'Madam, I would
see my lord marquis.' 'I will send and ask him to come.' 'Let Robert
say that Molly is going--going--where is Molly going, madam?' 'Going
to mother Mary, child,' answered lady Margaret, choking back the
sobs that would have kept the tears company. 'And the good Jesu ?'
'Yes.'--'And the good God over all ?' 'Yes, yes.' 'I want to tell
my lord marquis. Pray, madam, let him come, and quickly.'
His lordship entered, pale and panting. He knew the end was
approaching. Molly stretched out to him one hand instead of two, as
if her hold upon earth were half yielded. He sat down by the
bedside, and wiped his forehead with a sigh.
'Thee tired too, marquis?' asked the odd little love-bird.
'Yes, I am tired, my Molly. Thou seest I am so fat.'
'Shall I ask the good mother, when I go to her, to make thee spare
like Molly?'
'No, Molly, thou need'st not trouble her about that. Ask her to make
me good.'
'Would it then be easier to make thee good than to make thee spare,
marquis?'
'No, child--much harder, alas!'
'Then why--?' began Molly; but the marquis perceiving her thought,
made haste to prevent it, for her breath was coming quick and weak.
'But it is so much better worth doing, you see. If she makes me
good, she will have another in heaven to be good to.'
'Then I know she will. But I will ask her. Mother Mary has so many
to mind, she might be forgetting.'
After this she lay very quiet with her hand in his. All the windows
of the room were open, and from the chapel came the mellow sounds of
the organ. Delaware had captured Tom Fool and got him to blow the
bellows, and through the heavy air the music surged in. Molly was
dozing a little, and she spoke as one that speaks in a dream.
'The white horse is spouting music,' she said. 'Look! See how it
goes up to mother Mary. She twists it round her distaff and spins it
with her spindle. See, marquis, see! Spout, horse, spout.'
She lay silent again for a long time. The old man sat holding her
hand; her mother sat on the farther side of the bed, leaning against
one of the foot-posts, and watching the white face of her darling
with eyes in which love ruled distraction. Dorothy sat in one of the
window-seats, and listened to the music, which still came surging
in, for still the fool blew the bellows, and the blind youth struck
the keys. And still the clouds gathered overhead and sunk towards
the earth; and still the horse, which Dorothy had left spouting,
threw up his twin-fountain, whose musical plash in the basin as it
fell mingled with the sounds of the organ.
'What is it?' said Molly, waking up. 'My head doth not ache, and my
heart doth not beat, and I am not affrighted. What is it? I am not
tired. Marquis, are you no longer tired? Ah, now I know! He cometh!
He is here!--Marquis, the good Jesu wants Molly's hand. Let him have
it, marquis. He is lifting me up. I am quite well--quite--'
The sentence remained broken. The hand which the marquis had
yielded, with the awe of one in bodily presence of the Holy, and
which he saw raised as if in the grasp of one invisible, fell back
on the bed, and little Molly was quite well.
But she left sick hearts behind. The mother threw herself on the
bed, and wailed aloud. The marquis burst into tears, left the room,
and sought his study. Mechanically he took his Confessio Amantis,
and sat down, but never opened it; rose again and took his
Shakespere, opened it, but could not read; rose once more, took his
Vulgate, and read:
'Quid turbamini, et ploratis? puella non est mortua, sed dormit.'
He laid that book also down, fell on his knees, and prayed for her
who was not dead but sleeping.
Dorothy, filled with awe, rather from the presence of the mother of
the dead than death itself, and feeling that the mother would rather
be alone with her dead, also left the room, and sought her chamber,
where she threw herself upon the bed. All was still save the
plashing of the fountain, for the music from the chapel had ceased.
The storm burst in a glare and a peal. The rain fell in straight
lines and huge drops, which came faster and faster, drowning the
noise of the fountain, till the sound of it on the many roofs of the
place was like the trampling of an army of horsemen, and every spout
was gurgling musically with full throat. The one court was filled
with a clashing upon its pavement, and the other with a soft singing
upon its grass, with which mingled a sound as of little castanets
from the broad leaves of the water-lilies in the moat. Ever and anon
came the lightning, and the great bass of the thunder to fill up the
psalm.
At the first thunderclap lady Margaret fell on her knees and prayed
in an agony for the little soul that had gone forth into the midst
of the storm. Like many women she had a horror of lightning and
thunder, and it never came into her mind that she who had so loved
to see the horse spout was far more likely to be revelling in the
elemental tumult, with all the added ecstasy of newborn freedom and
health, than to be trembling like her mortal mother below.
Dorothy was not afraid, but she was heavy and weary; the thunder
seemed to stun her and the lightning to take the power of motion
from the shut eyelids through which it shone. She lay without
moving, and at length fell fast asleep.
To the marquis alone of the mourners the storm came as a relief to
his overcharged spirit. He had again opened his New Testament, and
tried to read; but if the truths which alone can comfort are not at
such a time present to the spirit, the words that embody them will
seldom be of much avail. When the thunder burst he closed the book
and went to the window, flung it wide, and looked out into the
court. Like a tide from the plains of innocent heaven through the
sultry passionate air of the world, came the coolness to his brow
and heart. Oxygen, ozone, nitrogen, water, carbonic acid, is it?
Doubtless--and other things, perhaps, which chemistry cannot
detect. Nevertheless, give its parts what names you will, its whole
is yet the wind of the living God to the bodies of men, his spirit
to their spirits, his breath to their hearts. When I learn that
there is no primal intent--only chance--in the unspeakable joy that
it gives, I shall cease to believe in poetry, in music, in woman, in
God. Nay, I must have already ceased to believe in God ere I could
believe that the wind that bloweth where it listeth is free because
God hath forgotten it, and that it bears from him no message to me.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CATARACT.
In the midst of a great psalm, on the geyser column of which his
spirit was borne heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found
the keys dumb beneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty,
the singing thing dead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed
through the empty chapel, but no living response came back. Tom Fool
had grown weary and forsaken him. Disappointed and baffled, he rose
and left the chapel, not immediately from the organ loft, by a door
and a few upward steps through the wall to the minstrels' gallery,
as he had entered, but by the south door into the court, his
readiest way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near
the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever
made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered
flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed
charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason
why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove
the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the lock
retained no hold.
Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken
as to the cause and mode of his desertion: oppressed like every one
else with the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep,
leaning against the organ. The thunder only waked him sufficiently
to render him capable of slipping from the stool on which he had
lazily seated himself as he worked the lever of the bellows, and
stretching himself at full length upon the floor; while the coolness
that by degrees filled the air as the rain kept pouring, made his
sleep sweeter and deeper. He lay and snored till midnight.
A bell rang in the marquis's chamber.
It was one of his lordship's smaller economic maxims that in every
house, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance,
the master thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from
each other as might, with due respect to general fitness, be
arranged for, in order that, to use his own figure, he might spread
his skirts the wider over the place, and chiefly the part occupied
by his own family and immediate attendants--thereby to give himself,
without paying more attention to such matters than he could afford,
a better chance of coming upon the trace of anything that happened
to be going amiss. 'For,' he said, 'let a man have ever so many
responsible persons about him, the final responsibility of his
affairs yet returns upon himself.' Hence, while his bedroom was
close to the main entrance, that is the gate to the stone court, the
room he chose for retirement and study was over the western gate,
that of the fountain-court, nearly a whole side of the double
quadrangle away from his bedroom, and still farther from the
library, which was on the other side of the main entrance--whence,
notwithstanding, he would himself, gout permitting, always fetch any
book he wanted. It was, therefore, no wonder that, being now in his
study, the marquis, although it rang loud, never heard the bell
which Caspar had hung in his bedchamber. He was, however, at the
moment, looking from a window which commanded the very spot--namely,
the mouth of the archway--towards which the bell would have drawn
his attention.
The night was still, the rain was over, and although the moon was
clouded, there was light enough to recognise a known figure in any
part of the court, except the shadowed recess where the door of the
chapel and the archway faced each other, and the door of the hall
stood at right angles to both.
Came a great clang that echoed loud through the court, followed by
the roar of water. It sounded as if a captive river had broken
loose, and grown suddenly frantic with freedom. The marquis could
not help starting violently, for his nerves were a good deal shaken.
The same instant, ere there was time for a single conjecture, a
torrent, visible by the light of its foam, shot from the archway,
hurled itself against the chapel door, and vanished. Sad and
startled as he was, lord Worcester, requiring no explanation of the
phenomenon now that it was completed, laughed aloud and hurried from
the room.
When he had screwed his unwieldy form to the bottom of the stair,
and came out into the court, there was Tom Fool flying across the
turf in mortal terror, his face white as another moon, and his hair
standing on end--visibly in the dull moonshine.
His terror had either deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of his
obedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stop
him. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to
him trembling, and stood before him speechless. But when the
marquis, to satisfy himself that he was really as dry as he seemed,
laid his hand on his arm, the touch brought him to himself, and,
assisted by his master's questions, he was able to tell how he had
fallen asleep in the chapel, had waked but a minute ago, had left it
by the minstrels' gallery, had reached the floor of the hall, and
was approaching the western door, which was open, in order to cross
the court to his lodging near the watch-tower, when a hellish
explosion, followed by the most frightful roaring, mingled with
shrieks and demoniacal laughter, arrested him; and the same instant,
through the open door, he saw, as plainly as he now saw his noble
master, a torrent rush from the archway, full of dim figures,
wallowing and shouting. The same moment they all vanished, and the
flood poured into the hall, wetting him to the knees, and almost
carrying him off his legs.
Here the marquis professed profound astonishment, remarking that the
water must indeed have been thickened with devils to be able to lay
hold of Tom's legs.
'Then,' pursued Tom, reviving a little, 'I summoned up all my
courage--'
'No great feat,' said the marquis.
But Tom went on unabashed.
'I summoned up the whole of my courage,' he repeated, 'stepped out
of the hall, carefully examined the ground, looked through the
arch-way, saw nothing, and was walking slowly across the court to my
lodging, pondering with myself whether to call my lord governor or
sir Toby Mathews, when I heard your lordship call me.'
'Tom! Tom! thou liest,' said the marquis. 'Thou wast running as if
all the devils in hell had been at thy heels.'
Tom turned deadly pale, a fresh access of terror overcoming his
new-born hardihood.
'Who were they, thinkest thou, whom thou sawest in the water, Tom?'
resumed his master. 'For what didst thou take them?'
Tom shook his head with an awful significance, looked behind him,
and said nothing.
Perceiving there was no more to be got out of him, the marquis sent
him to bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he
reached the watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as
he went. The next day he did not appear. He thought himself he was
doomed, but his illness was only the prostration following upon
terror.
In the version of the story which he gave his fellow-servants, he
doubtless mingled the after visions of his bed with what he had when
half-awake seen and heard through the mists of his startled
imagination. His tale was this--that he saw the moat swell and rise,
boil over in a mass, and tumble into the court as full of devils as
it could hold, swimming in it, floating on it, riding it aloft as if
it had been a horse; that in a moment they had all vanished again,
and that he had not a doubt the castle was now swarming with
them--in fact, he had heard them all the night long.
The marquis walked up to the archway, saw nothing save the grim wall
of the keep, impassive as granite crag, and the ground wet a long
way towards the white horse; and never doubting he had lost his
chance by taking Tom for the culprit, contented himself with the
reflection that, whoever the night-walkers were, they had received
both a fright and a ducking, and betook himself to bed, where,
falling asleep at length, he saw little Molly in the arms of mother
Mary, who, presently changing to his own lady Anne that left him
about a year before little Molly came, held out a hand to him to
help him up beside them, whereupon the bubble sleep, unable to hold
the swelling of his gladness, burst, and he woke just as the first
rays of the sun smote the gilded cock on the bell-tower.
The noise of the falling drawbridge and the out-rushing water had
roused Dorothy also, with most of the lighter sleepers in the
castle; but when she and all the rest whose windows were to the
fountain court, ran to them and looked out, they saw nothing but the
flight of Tom Fool across the turf, its arrest by his master, and
their following conference. The moon had broken through the clouds,
and there was no mistaking either of their persons.
Meantime, inside the chapel door stood Amanda and Rowland, both
dripping, and one of them crying as well. Thither, as into a safe
harbour, the sudden flood had cast them; and it indicated no small
amount of ready faculty in Scudamore that, half-stunned as he was,
he yet had the sense, almost ere he knew where he was, to put up the
long bar that secured the door.
All the time that the marquis was drawing his story from Tom, they
stood trembling, in great bewilderment yet very sensible misery,
bruised, drenched, and horribly frightened, more even at what might
be than by what had been. There was only one question, but that was
hard to answer: what were they to do next? Amanda could contribute
nothing towards its solution, for tears and reproaches resolve no
enigmas. There were many ways of issue, whereof Rowland knew
several; but their watery trail, if soon enough followed, would be
their ruin as certainly as Hop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles were safety to
himself and his brothers. He stood therefore the very bond slave of
perplexity, 'and, like a neutral to his will and matter, did
nothing.'
Presently they heard the approaching step of the marquis, which
every one in the castle knew. It stopped within a few feet of them,
and through the thick door they could hear his short asthmatic
breathing.
They kept as still as their trembling, and the mad beating of their
hearts, would permit. Amanda was nearly out of her senses, and
thought her heart was beating against the door, and not against her
own ribs. But the marquis never thought of the chapel, having at
once concluded that they had fled through the open hall. Had he not,
however, been so weary and sad and listless, he would probably have
found them, for he would at least have crossed the hall to look into
the next court, and, the moon now shining brightly, the absence of
all track on the floor where the traces of the brief inundation
ceased, would have surely indicated the direction in which they had
sought refuge.
The acme of terror happily endured but a moment. The sound of his
departing footsteps took the ghoul from their hearts; they began to
breathe, and to hope that the danger was gone. But they waited long
ere at last they ventured, like wild animals overtaken by the
daylight, to creep out of their shelter and steal back like
shadows--but separately, Amanda first, and Scudamore some slow
minutes after--to their different quarters. The tracks they could
not help leaving in-doors were dried up before the morning.
Rowland had greater reason to fear discovery than any one else in
the castle, save one, would in like circumstances have had, and that
one was his bedfellow in the ante-chamber to his master's bedroom.
Through this room his lordship had to pass to reach his own; but so
far was he from suspecting Rowland, or indeed any gentleman of his
retinue, that he never glanced in the direction of his bed, and so
could not discover that he was absent from it. Had Rowland but
caught a glimpse of his own figure as he sneaked into that room five
minutes after the marquis had passed through it, believing his
master was still in his study, where he had left his candles
burning, he could hardly for some time have had his usual success in
regarding himself as a fine gentleman.
Amanda Serafina did not show herself for several days. A bad cold in
her head luckily afforded sufficient pretext for the concealment of
a bad bruise upon her cheek. Other bruises she had also, but they,
although more severe, were of less consequence.
For a whole fortnight the lovers never dared exchange a word.
In the morning the marquis was in no mood to set any inquiry on
foot. His little lamb had vanished from his fold, and he was sad and
lonely. Had it been otherwise, possibly the shabby doublet in which
Scudamore stood behind his chair the next morning, might have set
him thinking; but as it was, it fell in so well with the gloom in
which his own spirit shrouded everything, that he never even marked
the change, and ere long Rowland began to feel himself safe.
CHAPTER XXIII.
AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.
So also did Amanda; but not the less did she cherish feelings of
revenge against her whom she more than suspected of having been the
contriver of her harmful discomfiture. She felt certain that Dorothy
had laid the snare into which they had fallen, with the hope if not
the certainty of catching just themselves two in it, and she read in
her, therefore, jealousy and cruelty as well as coldness and
treachery. Rowland on the other hand was inclined to attribute the
mishap to the displeasure of lord Herbert, whose supernatural
acquirements, he thought, had enabled him both to discover and
punish their intrusion. Amanda, nevertheless, kept her own opinion,
and made herself henceforth all eyes and ears for Dorothy, hoping
ever to find a chance of retaliating, if not in kind yet in
plentiful measure of vengeance. Dorothy's odd ways, lawless
movements, and what the rest of the ladies counted her vulgar
tastes, had for some time been the subject of remark to the
gossiping portion of the castle community; and it seemed to Amanda
that in watching and discovering what she was about when she
supposed herself safe from the eyes of her equals and superiors, lay
her best chance of finding a mode of requital. Nor was she satisfied
with observation, but kept her mind busy on the trail, now of one,
now of another vague-bodied revenge.
The charge of low tastes was founded upon the fact that there was
not an artisan about the castle, from Caspar downwards, whom Dorothy
did not know and address by his name; but her detractors, in drawing
their conclusions from it, never thought of finding any related
significance in another fact, namely, that there was not a single
animal either, of consequence enough to have a name, which did not
know by it. There were very few of the animals indeed which did not
know her in return, if not by her name, yet by her voice or her
presence--some of them even by her foot or her hand. She would
wander about the farmyard and stables for an hour at a time,
visiting all that were there, and specially her little horse, which
she had long, oh, so long ago! named Dick, nor had taken his name
from him any more than from Marquis.
The charge of lawlessness in her movements was founded on another
fact as well, namely, that she was often seen in the court after
dusk, and that not merely in running across to the keep, as she
would be doing at all hours, but loitering about, in full view of
the windows. It was not denied that this took place only when the
organ was playing--but then who played the organ? Was not the poor
afflicted boy, barring the blank of his eyes, beautiful as an angel?
And was not mistress Dorothy too deep to be fathomed? And so the
tattling streams flowed on, and the ears of mistress Amanda
willingly listened to their music, nor did she disdain herself to
contribute to the reservoir in which those of the castle whose souls
thirsted after the minutiae of live biography, accumulated their
stores of fact and fiction, conjecture and falsehood.
Lord Herbert came home to bury his little one, and all that was left
behind of her was borne to the church of St. Cadocus, the parish
church of Raglan, and there laid beside the marquis's father and
mother. He remained with them a fortnight, and his presence was much
needed to lighten the heavy gloom that had settled over both his
wife and his father.
As if it were not enough to bury the bodies of the departed, there
are many, and the marquis and his daughter-in-law were of the
number, who in a sense seek to bury their souls as well, making a
graveyard of their own spirits, and laying the stone of silence over
the memory of the dead. Such never speak of them but when compelled,
and then almost as if to utter their names were an act of impiety.
Not In Memoriam but In Oblivionem should be the inscription upon the
tombs they raise. The memory that forsakes the sunlight, like the
fishes in the underground river, loses its eyes; the cloud of its
grief carries no rainbow; behind the veil of its twin-future burns
no lamp fringing its edges with the light of hope. I can better,
however, understand the hopelessness of the hopeless than their
calmness along with it. Surely they must be upheld by the presence
within them of that very immortality, against whose aurora they shut
to their doors, then mourn as if there were no such thing.
Radiant as she was by nature, lady Margaret, when sorrow came, could
do little towards her own support. The marquis said to himself, 'I
am growing old, and cannot smile at grief so well as once on a day.
Sorrow is a hawk more fell than I had thought.' The name of little
Molly was never mentioned between them. But sudden floods of tears
were the signs of the mother's remembrance; and the outbreak of
ambushed sighs, which he would make haste to attribute to the gout,
the signs of the grandfather's.
Dorothy, too, belonged in tendency to the class of the unspeaking.
Her nature was not a bright one. Her spirit's day was evenly, softly
lucent, like one of those clouded calm grey mornings of summer,
which seem more likely to end in rain than sunshine.
Lord Herbert was of a very different temperament. He had hope enough
in his one single nature to serve the whole castle, if only it could
have been shared. The veil between him and the future glowed as if
on fire with mere radiance, and about to vanish in flame. It was not
that he more than one of the rest imagined he could see through it.
For him it was enough that beyond it lay the luminous. His eyes, to
those that looked on him, were lighted with its reflex.
Such as he, are, by those who love them not, misjudged as shallow.
Depth to some is indicated by gloom, and affection by a persistent
brooding--as if there were no homage to the past of love save sighs
and tears. When they meet a man whose eyes shine, whose step is
light, on whose lips hovers a smile, they shake their heads and say,
'There goes one who has never loved, and who therefore knows not
sorrow.' And the man is one of those over whom death has no power;
whom time nor space can part from those he loves; who lives in the
future more than in the past! Has not his being ever been for the
sake of that which was yet to come? Is not his being now for the
sake of that which it shall be? Has he not infinitely more to do
with the great future than the little past? The Past has descended
into hell, is even now ascending glorified, and will, in returning
cycle, ever and again greet our faith as the more and yet more
radiant Future.
But even lord Herbert had his moments of sad longing after his
dainty Molly. Such moments, however, came to him, not when he was at
home with his wife, but when he rode alone by his troops on a night
march, or when, upon the eve of an expected battle, he sought sleep
that he might fight the better on the morrow.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE GREAT MOGUL.
One evening, Tom Fool, and a groom, his particular friend, were
taking their pastime after a somewhat selfish fashion, by no means
newly discovered in the castle--that of teasing the wild beasts.
There was one in particular, a panther, which, in a special dislike
to grimaces, had discovered a special capacity for being teased.
Betwixt two of the bars of his cage, therefore, Tom was busy
presenting him with one hideous puritanical face after another, in
full expectation of a satisfactory outburst of feline rancour. But
to their disappointment, the panther on this occasion seemed to have
resolved upon a dignified resistance to temptation, and had
withdrawn in sultry displeasure to the back of his cage, where he
lay sideways, deigning to turn neither his back nor his face towards
the inferior animal, at whom to cast but one glance, he knew, would
be to ruin his grand Oriental sulks, and fly at the hideous
ape-visage insulting him in his prison. It was tiresome of the
brute. Tom Fool grew more daring and threw little stones at him, but
the panther seemed only to grow the more imperturbable, and to heed
his missiles as little as his grimaces.
At length, proceeding from bad to worse, as is always the way with
fools, born or made, Tom betook himself to stronger measures.
The cages of the wild beasts were in the basement of the kitchen
tower, with a little semicircular yard of their own before them.
They were solid stone vaults, with open fronts grated with huge iron
bars--our ancestors, whatever were their faults, did not err in the
direction of flimsiness. Between two of these bars, then, Tom,
having procured a long pole, proceeded to poke at the beast; but he
soon found that the pole thickened too rapidly towards the end he
held, to pass through the bars far enough to reach him. Thereupon,
in utter fool-hardiness, backed by the groom, he undid the door a
little way, and, his companion undertaking to prevent it from
opening too far, pushed in the pole till it went right in the
creature's face. One hideous yell--and neither of them knew what was
occurring till they saw the tail of the panther disappearing over
the six-foot wall that separated the cages from the stableyard. Tom
fled at once for the stair leading up to the stone-court, while the
groom, whose training had given him a better courage, now
supplemented by the horror of possible consequences, ran to warn the
stablemen and get help to recapture the animal.
The uproariest tumult of maddest barking which immediately arose
from the chained dogs, entered the ears of all in the castle, at
least every one possessed of dog-sympathies, and penetrated even
those of the rather deaf host of the White Horse in Raglan village.
Dorothy, sitting in her room, of course, heard it, and hearing it,
equally of course, hurried to see what was the matter. The marquis
heard it where he sat in his study, but was in no such young haste
as Dorothy: it was only after a little, when he found the noise
increase, and certain other sounds mingle with it, that he rose in
some anxiety and went to discover the cause.
Halfway across the stone court, Dorothy met Tom running, and the
moment she saw his face, knew that something serious had happened.
'Get indoors, mistress,' he said, almost rudely, 'the devil is to
pay down in the yard.' and ran on. 'Shut your door, master cook,'
she heard him cry as he ran. 'The Great Mogul is out.'
And as she ran too, she heard the door of the kitchen close with a
great bang.
But Dorothy was not running after the fool, or making for any door
but that at the bottom of the library tower; for the first terror
that crossed her mind was the possible fate of Dick, and the first
comfort that followed, the thought of Marquis; so she was running
straight for the stable-yard, where the dogs, to judge by the way
they tore their throats with barking, seemed frantic with rage.
No doubt the panther, when he cleared the wall, hoped exultant to
find himself in the savage forest, instead of which he came down on
the top of a pump, fell on the stones, and the same instant was
caught in a hurricane of canine hate. A little hurt and a good deal
frightened, for he had not endured such long captivity without
debasement, he glared around him with sneaking enquiry. But the
walls were lofty and he saw no gate, and feeling unequal at the
moment to the necessary spring, he crept almost like a snake under
what covert seemed readiest, and disappeared--just as the groom
entering by a door in one of the walls began to look about for him
in a style wherein caution predominated. Seeing no trace of him, and
concluding that, as he had expected, the clamour of the dogs had
driven him further, he went on, crossing the yard to find the men,
whose voices he heard on the green at the back of the rick-yard,
when suddenly he found that his arm was both broken and torn. The
sight of the blood completed the mischief, and he fell down in a
swoon.
Meantime Dorothy had reached the same door in the wall of the
stableyard, and peeping in saw nothing but the dogs raging and
RUGGING at their chains as if they would drag the earth itself after
them to reach the enemy. She was one of those on whose wits, usually
sedate in their motions, all sorts of excitement, danger amongst the
rest, operate favourably. When she specially noticed the fury of
Marquis, the same moment she perceived the danger in which he, that
was, all the dogs, would be, if the panther should attack them one
by one on the chain; not one of them had a chance. With the thought,
she sped across the space between her and Marquis, who--I really
cannot say WHICH concerning such a dog--was fortunately not very far
from the door. Feeling him a little safer now that she stood by his
side, she resumed her ocular search for the panther, or any further
sign of his proximity, but with one hand on the dog's collar, ready
in an instant to seize it with both, and unclasp it.
Nor had she to look long, for all the dogs were straining their
chains in one direction, and all their lines converged upon a little
dark shed, where stood a cart: under the cart, between its lower
shafts, she caught a doubtful luminousness, as if the dark while yet
dark had begun to throb with coming light. This presently seemed to
resolve itself, and she saw, vaguely but with conviction, two huge
lamping cat-eyes. I will not say she felt no fear, but she was not
terrified, for she had great confidence in Marquis. One moment she
stood bethinking herself, and one glance she threw at the spot where
her mastiff's chain was attached to his collar: she would fain have
had him keep the latter to defend his neck and throat: but alas! it
was as she knew well enough before--the one was riveted to the
other, and the two must go together.
And now first, as she raised her head from the momentary inspection,
she saw the groom lying on the ground within a few yards of the
shed. Her first thought was that the panther had killed him, but ere
a second had time to rise in her mind, she saw the terrible animal
creeping out from under the cart, with his chin on the ground, like
the great cat he was, and making for the man.
The brute had got the better of his fall, and finding he was not
pursued, the barking of the dogs, to which in moderation he was
sufficiently accustomed, had ceased to confuse him, he had recovered
his awful self, and was now scenting prey. Had the man made a single
movement he would have been upon him like lightning; but the few
moments he took in creeping towards him, gave Dorothy all the time
she needed. With resolute, though trembling hands, she undid
Marquis's collar.
The instant he was free, the fine animal went at the panther
straight and fast like a bolt from a cross-bow. But Dorothy loved
him too well to lose a moment in sending even a glance after him.
Leaving him to his work, she flew to hers, which lay at the next
kennel, that of an Irish wolf-hound, whose curling lip showed his
long teeth to the very root, and whose fury had redoubled at the
sight of his rival shooting past him free for the fight. So wildly
did he strain upon his collar, that she found it took all her
strength to unclasp it. In a much shorter time, however, than she
fancied, O'Brien too was on the panther, and the sounds of
cano-feline battle seemed to fill every cranny of her brain.
But now she heard the welcome cries of men and clatter of weapons.
Some, alarmed by Tom Fool, came rushing from the guard-rooms down
the stair, and others, chiefly farm-servants and grooms, who had
heard the frightful news from two that were in the yard when the
panther bounded over the wall, were approaching from the opposite
side, armed with scythes and pitchforks, the former more dangerous
to their bearers than to the beast.
Dorothy, into whom, girl as she was, either Bellona or Diana, or
both, had entered, was now thoroughly excited by the conflict she
ruled, although she had not wasted a moment in watching it. Having
just undone the collar of the fourth dog, she was hounding him on
with a cry, little needed, as she flew to let go the fifth, a small
bull-terrier, mad with rage and jealousy, when the crowd swept
between her and her game. The beast was captured, and the dogs taken
off him, ere the terrier had had a taste or Dorothy a glimpse of the
battle.
As the men with cart-ropes dragged the panther away, terribly torn
by the teeth of the dogs, and Tom Fool was following them, with his
hands in his pockets, looking sheepish because of the share he had
had in letting him loose, and the share he had not had in securing
him again, Dorothy was looking about for her friend Marquis. All at
once he came bounding up to her, and, exultant in the sense of
accomplished duty, leaped up against her, at once turning her into a
sanguineous object frightful to behold; for his wounds were bad,
although none of them were serious except one in his throat. This
upon examination she found so severe that to replace his collar was
out of the question. Telling him therefore to follow her, in the
confidence that she might now ask for him what she would, she left
the yard, went up the stair, and was crossing the stone court with
the trusty fellow behind her, making a red track all the way, when
out of the hall came the marquis, looking a little frightened. He
started when he saw her, and turned pale, but perceiving instantly
from her look that, notwithstanding the condition of her garments,
she was unhurt, he cast a glance at her now rather
disreputable-looking attendant, and said,
'I told you so, mistress Dorothy! Now I understand! It is that
precious mastiff of yours, and no panther of mine, that has been
making this uproar in my quiet house! Nay, but he looks evil enough
for any devil's work! Prithee keep him off me.'
He drew back, for the dog, not liking the tone in which he addressed
his mistress, had taken a step nearer to him.
'My lord,' said Dorothy, as she laid hold of the animal, for the
first and only time in her life a little inclined to be angry with
her benefactor, 'you do my poor Marquis wrong. At the risk of his
own life he has just saved your lordship's groom, Shafto, from being
torn in pieces by the Great Mogul.'
While she spoke, some of those of the garrison who had been engaged
in securing the animal came up into the court, and attracted the
marquis's attraction by their approach, which, in the relaxation of
discipline consequent on excitement, was rather tumultuous. At their
head was lord Charles, who had led them to the capture, and without
whose ruling presence the enemy would not have been re-caged in
twice the time. As they drew near, and saw Dorothy stand in
battle-plight, with her dog beside her, even in their lord's
presence they could not resist the impulse to cheer her. Annoyed at
their breach of manners, the marquis had not however committed
himself to displeasure ere he spied a joke:
'I told you so, mistress Dorothy!' he said again. 'That rival of
mine has, as I feared, already made a party against me. You see how
my own knaves, before my very face, cheer my enemy! I presume, my
lord,' he went on, turning to the mastiff, and removing his hat, 'it
will be my wisdom to resign castle and title at once, and so
forestall deposition.'
Marquis replied with a growl, and amidst subdued yet merry laughter,
lord Charles hastened to enlighten his father.
'My lord,' he said, 'the dog has done nobly as ever dog, and
deserves reward, not mockery, which it is plain he understands, and
likes not. But it was not the mastiff, it was his fair mistress I
and my men presumed on saluting in your lordship's presence. No dog
ever yet shook off collar of Cranford's forging; nor is Marquis the
only dog that merits your lordship's acknowledgment: O'Brien and Tom
Fool--the lurcher, I mean--seconded him bravely, and perhaps
Strafford did best of all.'
'Prithee, now, take me with thee,' said the marquis. 'Was, or was
not the Great Mogul forth of his cage?'
'Indeed he was, my lord, and might be now in the fields but for
cousin Vaughan there by your side.'
The marquis turned and looked at her, but in his astonishment said
nothing, and lord Charles went on.
'When we got into the yard, there was the Great Mogul with three
dogs upon him, and mistress Dorothy uncollaring Tom Fool and
hounding him at the devilish brute; while poor Shafto, just waking
up, lay on the stones, about three yards off the combat. It was the
finest thing I ever saw, my lord.'
The marquis turned again to Dorothy, and stared without speech or
motion.
'Mean you--?' he said at length, addressing lord Charles, but still
staring at Dorothy; 'Mean you--?' he said again, half stammering,
and still staring.
'I mean, my lord,' answered his son, 'that mistress Dorothy, with
self-shown courage, and equal judgment as to time and order of
attack, when Tom Fool had fled, and poor Shafto, already evil torn,
had swooned from loss of blood, came to the rescue, stood her
ground, and loosed dog after dog, her own first, upon the animal.
And, by heaven! it is all owing to her that he is already secured
and carried back to his cage, nor any great harm done save to the
groom and the dogs, of which poor Strafford hath a hind leg crushed
by the jaws of the beast, and must be killed.'
'He shall live,' cried the marquis, 'as long as he hath legs enough
to eat and sleep with. Mistress Dorothy,' he went on, turning to her
once more, 'what is thy request? It shall be performed even to the
half of--of my marquisate.'
'My lord,' returned Dorothy, 'it is a small deed I have strewn to
gather such weighty thanks.'
'Be honest as well as brave, mistress. Mock me no modesty.' said the
marquis a little roughly.
'Indeed, my lord, I but spoke as I deemed. The thing HAD to be done,
and I did but do it. Had there been room to doubt, and I had yet
done well, then truly I might have earned your lordship's thanks.
But good my lord, do not therefore recall the word spoken,' she
added hurriedly, 'but grant me my boon. Your lordship sees my poor
dog can endure no collar: let him therefore be my chamber-fellow
until his throat be healed, when I shall again submit him to your
lordship's mandate.'
'What you will, cousin. He is a noble fellow, and hath a right noble
mistress.'
'Will you then, my lord Charles, order a bucket of water to be drawn
for me, that I may wash his wounds ere I take him to my chamber?'
Ten men at the word flew to the draw-well, but lord Charles ordered
them all back to the guard-room, except two whom he sent to fetch a
tub. With his own hands he then drew three bucketfuls of water,
which he poured into the tub, and by the side of the well, in the
open paved court, Dorothy washed her four-legged hero, and then
retired with him, to do a like office for herself.
The marquis stood for some time in the gathering dusk, looking on,
and smiling to see how the sullen animal allowed his mistress to
handle even his wounds without a whine, not to say a growl, at the
pain she must have caused him.
'I see, I see!' he said at length, 'I have no chance with a rival
like that!' and turning away he walked slowly into the oak parlour,
threw himself down in his great chair, and sat there, gazing at the
eyeless face of the keep, but thinking all the time of the courage
and patience of his rival, the mastiff.
'God made us both,' he said at length, 'and he can grant me patience
as well as him.' and so saying he went to bed.
His washing over, the dog showed himself much exhausted, and it was
with hanging head he followed his mistress up the grand staircase
and the second spiral one that led yet higher to her chamber.
Thither presently came lady Elizabeth, carrying a cushion and a
deerskin for him to lie upon, and it was with much apparent
satisfaction that the wounded and wearied animal, having followed
his tail but one turn, dropped like a log on his well-earned couch.
The night was hot, and Dorothy fell asleep with her door wide open.
In the morning Marquis was nowhere to be found. Dorothy searched for
him everywhere, but in vain.
'It is because you mocked him, my lord,' said the governor to his
father at breakfast. 'I doubt not he said to himself, "If I AM a
dog, my lord need not have mocked me, for I could not help it, and I
did my duty."'
'I would make him an apology,' returned the marquis, 'an' I had but
the opportunity. Truly it were evil minded knowingly to offer insult
to any being capable of so regarding it. But, Charles, I bethink me:
didst ever learn how our friend got into the castle? It was
assuredly thy part to discover that secret.'
'No, my lord. It hath never been found out in so far as I know.'
'That is an unworthy answer, lord Charles. As governor of the
castle, you ought to have had the matter thoroughly searched into.'
'I will see to it now, my lord,' said the governor, rising.
'Do, my lad,' returned his father.
And lord Charles did inquire; but not a ray of light did he succeed
in letting in upon the mystery. The inquiry might, however, have
lasted longer and been more successful, had not lord Herbert just
then come home, with the welcome news of the death of Hampden, from
a wound received in attacking prince Rupert at Chalgrove. He brought
news also of prince Maurice's brave fight at Bath, and lord Wilmot's
victory over sir William Waller at Devizes--which latter, lord
Herbert confessed, yielded him some personal satisfaction, seeing he
owed Waller more grudges than as a Christian he had well known how
to manage: now he was able to bear him a less bitter animosity. The
queen, too, had reached Oxford, bringing large reinforcement to her
husband, and prince Rupert had taken Bristol, castle and all. Things
were looking mighty hopeful, lord Herbert was radiant, and lady
Margaret, for the first time since Molly's death, was merry. The
castle was illuminated, and Marquis forgotten by all but Dorothy.
CHAPTER XXV.
RICHARD HEYWOOD.
So things looked ill for the puritans in general, and Richard
Heywood had his full portion in the distribution of the evils
allotted them. Following lord Fairfax, he had shared his defeat by
the marquis of Newcastle on Atherton moor, where of his score of men
he lost five, and was, along with his mare, pretty severely wounded.
Hence it had become absolutely necessary for both of them, if they
were to render good service at any near future, that they should
have rest and tending. Towards the middle of July, therefore,
Richard, followed by Stopchase, and several others of his men who
had also been wounded and were in need of nursing, rode up to his
father's door. Lady was taken off to her own stall, and Richard was
led into the house by his father--without a word of tenderness, but
with eyes and hands that waited and tended like those of a mother.
Roger Heywood was troubled in heart at the aspect of affairs. There
was now a strong peace-party in the parliament, and to him peace and
ruin seemed the same thing. If the parliament should now listen to
overtures of accommodation, all for which he and those with whom he
chiefly sympathised had striven, was in the greatest peril, and
might be, if not irrecoverably lost, at least lost sight of, perhaps
for a century. The thing that mainly comforted him in his anxiety
was that his son had showed himself worthy, not merely in the matter
of personal courage, which he took as a thing of course in a
Heywood, but in his understanding of and spiritual relation to the
questions really at issue,--not those only which filled the mouths
of men. For the best men and the weightiest questions are never seen
in the forefront of the battle of their time, save by "larger other
eyes than ours."
But now, from his wounds, as he thought, and the depression
belonging to the haunting sense of defeat, a doubt had come to life
in Richard's mind, which, because it was born IN weakness, he very
pardonably looked upon as born OF weakness, and therefore regarded
as itself weak and cowardly, whereas his mood had been but the
condition that favoured its development. It came and came again,
maugre all his self-recrimination because of it: what was all this
fighting for? It was well indeed that nor king nor bishop should
interfere with a man's rights, either in matters of taxation or
worship, but the war could set nothing right either betwixt him and
his neighbour, or betwixt him and his God.
There was in the mind of Richard, innate, but more rapidly developed
since his breach with Dorothy, a strong tendency towards the
supernatural--I mean by the word that which neither any one of the
senses nor all of them together, can reveal. He was one of those
young men, few, yet to be found in all ages of the world's history,
who, in health and good earthly hope, and without any marked poetic
or metaphysical tendency, yet know in their nature the need of
conscious communion with the source of that nature--truly the
veriest absurdity if there be no God, but as certainly the most
absolute necessity of conscious existence if there be a first life
from whom our life is born.
'Am I not free now?' he said to himself, as he lay on his bed in his
own gable of the many-nooked house; 'Am I not free to worship God
as I please? Who will interfere with me? Who can prevent me? As to
form and ceremony, what are they, or what is the absence of them, to
the worship in which my soul seeks to go forth? What the better
shall I be when all this is over, even if the best of our party
carry the day? Will Cromwell rend for me the heavy curtain, which,
ever as I lift up my heart, seems to come rolling down between me
and him whom I call my God? If I could pass within that curtain,
what would Charles, or Laud, or Newcastle, or the mighty Cromwell
himself and all his Ironsides be to me? Am I not on the wrong road
for the high peak?'
But then he thought of others--of the oppressed and the
superstitious, of injustice done and not endured--not wrapt in the
pearly antidote of patience, but rankling in the soul; of priests
who, knowing not God, substituted ceremonies for prayer, and led the
seeking heart afar from its goal--and said that his arm could at
least fight for the truth in others, if only his heart could fight
for the truth in himself. No; he would go on as he had begun; for,
might it not be the part of him who could take the form of an angel
of light when he would deceive, to make use of inward truths, which
might well be the strength of his own soul, to withdraw him from the
duties he owed to others, and cause the heart of devotion to
paralyze the arm of battle? Besides, was he not now in a low
physical condition, and therefore the less likely to judge truly
with regard to affairs of active outer life? His business plainly
was to gain strength of body, that the fumes of weakness might no
longer cloud his brain, and that, if he had to die for the truth,
whether in others or in himself, he might die in power, like the
blast of an exploding mine, and not like the flame of an expiring
lamp. And certainly, as his body grew stronger, and the impulses to
action, so powerful in all healthy youth, returned, his doubts grew
weaker, and he became more and more satisfied that he had been in
the right path.
Lady outstripped her master in the race for health, and after a few
days had oats and barley in a profusion which, although far from
careless, might well have seemed to her unlimited. Twice every day,
sometimes oftener, Richard went to see her, and envied the rapidity
of her recovery from the weakness which scanty rations, loss of
blood, and the inflammation of her wounds had caused. Had there been
any immediate call for his services, however, that would have
brought his strength with it. Had the struggle been still going on
upon the fields of battle instead of in the houses of words, he
would have been well in half the time. But Waller and Essex were
almost without an army between them, and were at bitter strife with
each other, while the peace-party seemed likely to carry everything
before them, women themselves presenting a petition for peace, and
some of them using threats to support it.
At length, chiefly through the exertions of the presbyterian
preachers and the common council of the city of London, the
peace-party was defeated, and a vigorous levying and pressing of
troops began anew. So the hour had come for Richard to mount. His
men were all in health and spirits, and their vacancies had been
filled up. Lady was frolicsome, and Richard was perfectly well.
The day before they were to start he took the mare out for a gallop
across the fields. Never had he known her so full of life. She
rushed at hedge and ditch as if they had been squares of royalist
infantry. Her madness woke the fervour of battle in Richard's own
veins, and as they swept along together, it grew until he felt like
one of the Arabs of old, flashing to the harvest field of God, where
the corn to be reaped was the lives of infidels, and the ears to be
gleaned were the heads of the fallen. That night he scarcely slept
for eagerness to be gone.
Waking early from what little sleep he had had, he dressed and armed
himself hurriedly, and ran to the stables, where already his men
were bustling about getting their horses ready for departure.
Lady had a loose box for herself, and thither straight her master
went, wondering as he opened the door of it that he did not hear
usual morning welcome. The place was empty. He called Stopchase.
'Where is my mare?' he said. 'Surely no one has been fool enough to
take her to the water just as we are going to start.'
Stopchase stood and stared without reply, then turned and left the
stable, but came back almost immediately, looking horribly scared.
Lady was nowhere to be seen or heard. Richard rushed hither and
thither, storming. Not a man about the place could give him a word
of enlightenment. All knew she was in that box the night before;
none knew when she left it or where she was now.
He ran to his father, but all his father could see or say was no
more than was plain to every one: the mare had been carried off in
the night, and that with a skill worthy of a professional
horse-thief.
What now was the poor fellow to do? If I were to tell the
truth--namely, that he wept--so courageous are the very cowards of
this century that they would sneer at him; but I do tell it
notwithstanding, for I have little regard to the opinion of any man
who sneers. Whatever he may or may not have been as a man, Richard
felt but half a soldier without his mare, and, his country calling
him, oppressed humanity crying aloud for his sword and arm, his men
waiting for him, and Lady gone, what was he to do?
'Never heed, Dick, my boy,' said his father.--It was the first time
since he had put on man's attire that he had called him Dick,--
'Thou shalt have my Oliver. He is a horse of good courage, as thou
knowest, and twice the weight of thy little mare.'
'Ah, father! you do not know Lady so well as I. Not Cromwell's best
horse could comfort me for her. I MUST find her. Give me leave, sir;
I must go and think. I cannot mount and ride, and leave her I know
not where. Go I will, if it be on a broomstick, but this morning I
ride not. Let the men put up their horses, Stopchase, and break
their fast.'
'It is a wile of the enemy,' said Stopchase. 'Truly, it were no
marvel to me were the good mare at this moment eating her oats in
the very stall where we have even but now in vain sought her. I will
go and search for her with my hands.'
'Verily,' said Mr. Heywood with a smile, 'to fear the devil is not
to run from him!--How much of her hay hath she eaten, Stopchase?'
he added, as the man returned with disconsolate look.
'About a bottle, sir,' answered Stopchase, rather indefinitely; but
the conclusion drawn was, that she had been taken very soon after
the house was quiet.
The fact was, that since the return of their soldiers, poor watch
had been kept by the people of Redware. Increase of confidence had
led to carelessness. Mr. Heywood afterwards made inquiry, and had
small reason to be satisfied with what he discovered.
'The thief must have been one who knew the place,' said Faithful.
'Why dost thou think so?' asked his master.
'How swooped he else so quietly upon the best animal, sir?' returned
the man.
'She was in the place of honour,' answered Mr. Heywood.
'Scudamore!' said Richard to himself. It might be no light--only a
flash in his brain. But that even was precious in the utter
darkness.
'Sir,' he said, turning to his father, 'I would I had a plan of
Raglan stables.'
'What wouldst thou an' thou hadst, my son?' asked Mr. Heywood.
'Nay, sir, that wants thinking. But I believe my poor mare is at
this moment in one of those vaults they tell us of.'
'It may be, my son. It is reported that the earl hath of late been
generous in giving of horses. Poor soldiers the king will find them
that fight for horses, or titles either. Such will never stand
before them that fight for the truth--in the love thereof! Eh,
Richard?'
'Truly, sir, I know not,' answered his son, disconsolately. 'I hope
I love the truth, and I think so doth Stopchase, after his kind; and
yet were we of those that fled from Atherton moor.'
'Thou didst not flee until thou couldst no more, my son. It asketh
greater courage of some men to flee when the hour of flight hath
come, for they would rather fight on to the death than allow, if but
to their own souls, that they are foiled. But a man may flee in
faith as well as fight in faith, my son, and each is good in its
season. There is a time for all things under the sun. In the end,
when the end cometh, we shall see how it hath all gone. When, then,
wilt thou ride?'
'To-morrow, an' it please you, sir. I should fight but evil with the
knowledge that I had left my best battle-friend in the hands of the
Philistines, nor sent even a cry after her.'
'What boots it, Richard? If she be within Raglan walls, they yield
her not again. Bide thy time; and when thou meetest thy foe on thy
friend's back, woe betide him!'
'Amen, sir!' said Richard. 'But with your leave I will not go
to-day. I give you my promise I will go to-morrow.'
'Be it so, then. Stopchase, let the men be ready at this hour on the
morrow. The rest of the day is their own.'
So saying, Roger Heywood turned away, in no small distress, although
he concealed it, both at the loss of the mare and his son's grief
over it. Betaking himself to his study, he plunged himself
straightway deep in the comfort of the last born and longest named
of Milton's tracts.
The moment he was gone, Richard, who had now made up his mind as to
his first procedure, sent Stopchase away, saddled Oliver, rode
slowly out of the yard, and struck across the fields. After a
half-hour's ride he stopped at a lonely cottage at the foot of a
rock on the banks of the Usk. There he dismounted, and having
fastened his horse to the little gate in front, entered a small
garden full of sweet-smelling herbs mingled with a few flowers, and
going up to the door, knocked, and then lifted the latch.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WITCH'S COTTAGE.
Richard was met on the threshold by mistress Rees, in the same old-
fashioned dress, all but the hat, which I have already described. On
her head she wore a widow's cap, with large crown, thick frill, and
black ribbon encircling it between them. She welcomed him with the
kindness almost of an old nurse, and led the way to the one chair in
the room--beside the hearth, where a fire of peat was smouldering
rather than burning beneath the griddle, on which she was cooking
oat-cake. The cottage was clean and tidy. From the smoky rafters
hung many bunches of dried herbs, which she used partly for
medicines, partly for charms.
To herself, the line dividing these uses was not very clearly
discernible.
'I am in trouble, mistress Rees,' said Richard, as he seated
himself.
'Most men do be in trouble most times, master Heywood,' returned the
old woman. 'Dost find thou hast taken the wrong part, eh?--There be
no need to tell what aileth thee. 'Tis a bit easier to cast off a
maiden than to forget her--eh?'
'No, mistress Rees. I came not to trouble thee concerning what is
past and gone,' said Richard with a sigh. 'It is a taste of thy
knowledge I want rather than of thy skill.'
'What skill I have is honest,' said the old woman.
'Far be it from thee to say otherwise, mother Rees. But I need it
not now. Tell me, hast thou not been once and again within the great
gates of Raglan castle?'
'Yes, my son--oftener than I can tell thee,' answered the old woman.
'It is but a se'night agone that I sat a talking with my son Thomas
Rees in the chimney corner of Raglan kitchen, after the supper was
served and the cook at rest. It was there my lad was turnspit once
upon a time, for as great a man as he is now with my lord and all
the household. Those were hard times after my good man left me,
master Heywood. But the cream will to the top, and there is my son
now--who but he in kitchen and hall? Well, of all places in the
mortal world, that Raglan passes!'
'They tell strange things of the stables there, mistress Rees: know
you aught of them?'
'Strange things, master? They tell nought but good of the stables
that tell the truth. As to the armoury, now--well it is not for such
as mother Rees to tell tales out of school.'
'What I heard, and wanted to ask thee about, mother, was that they
are under ground. Thinkest thou horses can fare well under ground?
Thou knowest a horse as well as a dog, mother.'
Ere she replied, the old woman took her cake from the griddle, and
laid it on a wooden platter, then caught up a three-legged stool,
set it down by Richard, seated herself at his knee, and assumed the
look of mystery wherewith she was in the habit of garnishing every
bit of knowledge, real or fancied, which it pleased her to
communicate.
'Hear me, and hold thy peace, master Richard Heywood,' she said. 'As
good horses as ever stamped in Redware stables go down into Raglan
vaults; but yet they eat their oats and their barley, and when they
lift their heads they look out to the ends of the world. Whether it
be by the skill of the mason or of such as the hidden art of my lord
Herbert knows best how to compel, let them say that list to make
foes where it were safer to have friends. But this I am free to tell
thee--that in the pitched court, betwixt the antechamber to my
lord's parlour that hath its windows to the moat, and the great bay
window of the hall that looks into that court, there goeth a
descent, as it seemeth of stairs only; but to him that knoweth how
to pull a certain tricker, as of an harquebus or musquetoon, the
whole thing turneth around, and straightway from a stair passeth
into an easy matter of a sloping way by the which horses go up and
down. And Thomas he telleth me also that at the further end of the
vaults to which it leads, the which vaults pass under the marquis's
oak parlour, and under all the breadth of the fountain court, as
they do call the other court of the castle, thou wilt come to a
great iron door in the foundations of one of the towers, in which my
lord hath contrived stabling for a hundred and more horses, and
that, mark my words, my son, not in any vault or underground
dungeon, but in the uppermost chamber of all.'
'And how do they get up there, mother?' asked Richard, who listened
with all his ears.
'Why, they go round and round, and ever the rounder the higher, as a
fly might crawl up a corkscrew. And there is a stair also in the
same screw, as it were, my Thomas do tell me, by which the people of
the house do go up and down, and know nothing of the way for the
horses within, neither of the stalls at the top of the tower, where
they stand and see the country. Yet do they often marvel at the
sounds of their hoofs, and their harness, and their cries, and their
chumping of their corn. And that is how Raglan can send forth so
many horseman for the use of the king. But alack, master Heywood! is
it for a wise woman like myself to forget that thou art of the other
part, and that these are secrets of state which scarce another in
the castle but my son Thomas knoweth aught concerning! What will
become of me that I have told them to a Heywood, being, as is well
known, myself no more of a royalist than another?'
And she regarded him a little anxiously.
'What should it signify, mother,'' said Richard, 'so long as neither
you nor I believe a word of it? Horses go up a tower to bed
forsooth! Yet for the matter of that, I will engage to ride my mare
up any corkscrew wide enough to turn her forelock and tail in--ay,
and down again too, which is another business with most horses. But
come now, mother Rees, confess this all a fable of thine own
contriving to make a mock of a farm-bred lad like me.'
'In good sooth, master Heywood,' answered the old woman, 'I tell the
tale as 'twas told to me. I avouch it not for certain, knowing that
my son Thomas hath a seething brain and loveth a joke passing well,
nor heedeth greatly upon whom he putteth it, whether his master or
his mother; but for the stair by the great hall window, that stair
have I seen with mine own eyes, though for the horses to come and go
thereby, that truly have I not seen. And for the rest I only say it
may well be, for there is nothing of it all which the wise man, my
lord Herbert, could not with a word--and that a light one for him to
speak, though truly another might be torn to pieces in saying it.'
'I would I might see the place!' murmured Richard.
'An' it were not thou art such a--! But it boots not talking, master
Heywood. Thou art too well known for a puritan--roundhead they call
thee; and thou hast given them and theirs too many hard knocks, my
son, to look they should be willing to let thee gaze on the wonders
of their great house. Else, being that I am a friend to thee and
thine, I would gladly--. But, as I say, it boots nothing--although
I have a son, who being more of the king's part than I am--.'
'Hast thou not then art enough, mother, to set me within Raglan
walls for an hour or two after midnight? I ask no more,' said
Richard, who, although he was but leading the way to quite another
proposal, nor desired aid of art black or white, yet could not help
a little tremor at making the bare suggestion of the unhallowed
idea.
'An' I had, I dared not use it,' answered the old woman; 'for is not
my lord Herbert there? Were it not for him--well--. But I dare not,
as I say, for his art is stronger than mine, and from his knowledge
I could hide nothing. And I dare not for thy sake either, my young
master. Once inside those walls of stone, those gates of oak, and
those portcullises of iron, and thou comes not out alive again, I
warrant thee.'
'I should like to try once, though,' said Richard. 'Couldst thou not
disguise me, mother Rees, and send me with a message to thy son?'
'I tell thee, young master, I dare not,' answered the old woman,
with utmost solemnity. 'And if I did, thy speech would presently
bewray thee.'
'I would then I knew that part of the wall a man might scramble over
in the dark,' said Richard.
'Thinks thou my lord marquis hath been fortifying his castle for two
years that a young Heywood, even if he be one of the godly, and have
long legs to boot, should make a vaulting horse of it? I know but
one knows the way over Raglan walls, and thou wilt hardly persuade
him to tell thee,' said mother Rees, with a grim chuckle.
As she spoke she rose, and went towards her sleeping chamber. Then
first Richard became aware that for some time he had been hearing a
scratching and whining. She opened the door, and out ran a
wretched-looking dog, huge and gaunt, with the red marks of recent
wounds all over his body, and his neck swathed in a discoloured
bandage. He went straight to Richard, and began fawning upon him and
licking his hands. Miserable and most disreputable as he looked, he
recognised in him Dorothy's mastiff.
'My poor Marquis!' he said, 'what evil hath then befallen thee? What
would thy mistress say to see thee thus?'
Marquis whined and wagged his tail as if he understood every word he
said, and Richard was stung to the heart at the sight of his
apparently forlorn condition.
'Hath thy mistress then forsaken thee too, Marquis?' he said, and
from fellow-feeling could have taken the dog in his arms.
'I think not so,' said mistress Rees. 'He hath been with her in the
castle ever since she went there.'
'Poor fellow, how thou art torn!' said Richard. 'What animal of
thine own size could have brought thee into such a plight? Or can it
be that thou hast found a bigger? But that thou hast beaten him I am
well assured.'
Marquis wagged an affirmative.
'Fangs of biggest dog in Gwent never tore him like that, master
Heywood. Heark'ee now. He cannot tell his tale, so I must tell thee
all I know of the matter. I was over to Raglan village three nights
agone, to get me a bottle of strong waters from mine host of the
White Horse, for the distilling of certain of my herbs good for
inward disorders, when he told me that about an hour before there
had come from the way of the castle all of a sudden the most
terrible noise that ever human ears were pierced withal, as if every
devil in hell of dog or cat kind had broken loose, and fierce battle
was waging between them in the Yellow Tower. I said little, but had
my own fears for my lord Herbert, and came home sad and slow and
went to bed. Now what should wake me the next morning, just as
daylight broke the neck of the darkness, but a pitiful whining and
obstinate scratching at my door! And who should it be but that same
lovely little lapdog of my young mistress now standing by thy knee!
But had thou seen him then, master Richard! It was the devil's
hackles he had been through! Such a torn dishclout of a dog thou
never did see! I understood it all in a moment. He had made one in
the fight, and whether he had had the better or the worse of it,
like a wise dog as he always was, he knew where to find what would
serve his turn, and so when the house was quiet, off he came to old
mother Rees to be plaistered and physicked. But what perplexes my
old brain is, how, at that hour of the night, for to reach my door
when he did, and him hardly able to stand when I let him in, it must
have been dead night when he left--it do perplex me, I say, to think
how at that time of the night he got out of that prison, watched as
it is both night and day by them that sleep not.'
'He couldn't have come over the wall?' suggested Richard.
'Had thou seen him--thou would not make that the question.'
'Then he must have come through or under it; there are but three
ways,' said Richard to himself. 'He's a big dog,' he added aloud,
regarding him thoughtfully as he patted his sullen affectionate
head. 'He's a big dog,' he repeated.
'I think a'most he be the biggest dog _I_ ever saw,' assented
mistress Rees.
'I would I were less about the shoulders,' said Richard.
'Who ever heard a man worth his mess of pottage wish him such a wish
as that, master Heywood! What would mistress Dorothy say to hear
thee? I warrant me she findeth no fault with the breadth of thy
shoulders.'
'I am less in the compass than I was before the last fight,' he went
on, without heeding his hostess, and as if he talked to the dog, who
stood with his chin on his knee, looking up in his face. 'Where
thou, Marquis, canst walk, I doubt not to creep; but if thou must
creep, what then is left for me? Yet how couldst thou creep with
such wounds in thy throat and belly, my poor Marquis?'
The dog whined, and moved all his feet, one after the other, but
without taking his chin off Richard's knee.
'Hast seen thy mistress, little Dick, Marquis?' asked Richard.
Again the dog whined, moved his feet, and turned his head towards
the door. But whether it was that he understood the question, or
only that he recognised the name of his friend, who could tell?
'Will thou take me to Dick, Marquis?'
The dog turned and walked to the door, then stood and looked back,
as if waiting for Richard to open it and follow him.
'No, Marquis, we must not go before night,' said Richard.
The dog returned slowly to his knee, and again laid his chin upon
it.
'What will the dog do next, thinkest thou, mother--when he finds
himself well again, I mean? Will he run from thee?' said Richard.
'He would be like neither dog nor man I ever knew, did he not.'
returned the old woman. 'He will for sure go back where he got his
hurts--to revenge them if he may, for that is the custom also with
both dogs and men.'
'Couldst thou make sure of him that he run not away till I come
again at night, mother?'
'Certain I can, my son. I will shut him up whence he will not break
so long as he hears me nigh him.'
'Do so then an' thou lovest me, mother Rees, and I will be here with
the first of the darkness.'
'An' I love thee, master Richard? Nay, but I do love thy good face
and thy true words, be thou puritan or roundhead, or fanatic, or
what evil name soever the wicked fashion of the times granteth to
men to call thee.'
'Hark in thine ear then, mother: I will call no names; but they of
Raglan have, as I truly believe, stolen from me my Lady.'
'Nay, nay, master Richard,' interrupted mistress Rees; 'did I not
tell thee with my own mouth that she went of her own free will, and
in the company of the reverend sir Matthew Herbert?'
'Alas! thou goest not with me, mother Rees. I meant not mistress
Dorothy. She is lost to me indeed; but so also is my poor mare,
which was stolen last night from Redware stables as the watchers
slept.'
'Alack-a-day!' cried goody Rees, holding up her hands in sore
trouble for her friend. 'But what then dreams thou of doing? Not
surely, before all the saints in heaven, will thou adventure thy
body within Raglan walls? But I speak like a fool. Thou canst not.'
'This good dog,' said Richard, stroking Marquis, 'must, as thou
thyself plainly seest, have found some way of leaving Raglan without
the knowledge or will of its warders. Where he gat him forth, will
he not get him in again? And where dog can go, man may at least
endeavour to follow.--Mayhap he hath for himself scratched a way, as
many dogs will.'
'But, for the love of God, master Heywood, what would thou do inside
that stone cage? Thy mare, be she, as thou hast often vaunted her to
me, the first for courage and wisdom and strength and fleetness of
all mares created--be her fore feet like a man's hands and her
heart like a woman's heart, as thou sayest, yet cannot she overleap
Raglan walls; and thinks thou they will raise portcullis and open
gate and drop drawbridge to let thee and her ride forth in peace? It
were a fool's errand, my young master, and nowise befitting thy
young wisdom.'
'What I shall do, when I am length within the walls, I cannot tell
thee, mother. Nor have I ever yet known much good in forecasting. To
have to think, when the hour is come, of what thou didst before
resolve, instead of setting thyself to understand what is around
thee, and perchance the whole matter different from what thou had
imagined, is to stand like Lazarus bound hand and foot in thine own
graveclothes. It will be given me to meet what comes; or if not, who
will bar me from meeting what follows ?'
'Master Heywood,' cried goody Rees, drawing herself with rebuke,
'for a man that is born of a woman to talk so wisely and so
foolishly both in a breath!--But,' she added, with a change of tone,
'I know better than bar the path to a Heywood. An' he will, he will.
And thou hast been vilely used, my young master. I will do what I
can to help thee to thine own--and no more--no more than thine own.
Hark in thine ear now. But first swear to me by the holy cross,
puritan as thou art, that thou wilt make no other use of what I tell
thee but to free thy stolen mare. I know thou may be trusted even
with the secret that would slay thine enemy. But I must have thy
oath notwithstanding thereto.'
'I will not swear by the cross, which was never holy, for thereby
was the Holy slain. I will not swear at all, mother Rees. I will
pledge thee the word of a man who fears God, that I will in no way
dishonourable make use of that which thou tellest me. An' that
suffice not, I will go without thy help, trusting in God, who never
made that mare to carry the enemy of the truth into the battle.'
'But what an' thou should take the staff of strife to measure thy
doings withal? That may then seem honourable, done to an enemy,
which thou would scorn to do to one of thine own part, even if he
wronged thee.'
'Nay, mother; but I will do nothing THOU wouldst think
dishonourable--that I promise thee. I will use what thou tellest me
for no manner of hurt to my lord of Worcester or aught that is his.
But Lady is not his, and her will I carry, if I may, from Raglan
stables back to Redware.'
'I am content. Hearken then, my son. Raglan watchword for the rest
of the month is--ST. GEORGE AND ST. PATRICK! May it stand thee in
good stead.'
'I thank thee, mother, with all my heart,' said Richard, rising
jubilant. 'Now shut up the dog, and let me go. One day it may lie in
my power to requite thee.'
'Thou hast requited me beforehand, master Heywood. Old mother Rees
never forgets. I would have done well by thee with the maiden, an'
thou would but have hearkened to my words. But the day may yet come.
Go now, and return with the last of the twilight. Come hither,
Marquis.'
The dog obeyed, and she shut him again in her chamber.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE MOAT OF THE KEEP.
Richard left the cottage, and mounted Oliver. To pass the time and
indulge a mournful memory, he rode round by Wyfern. When he reached
home, he found that his father had gone to pay a visit some miles
off. He went to his own room, cast himself on his bed, and tried to
think. But his birds would not come at his call, or coming would but
perch for a moment, and again fly. As he lay thus, his eyes fell on
his cousin, old Thomas Heywood's little folio, lying on the window
seat where he had left it two years ago, and straightway his
fluttering birds alighting there, he thought how the book had been
lying unopened all the months, while he had been passing through so
many changes and commotions. How still had the room been around it,
how silent the sunshine and the snow, while he had inhabited
tumult--tumult in his heart, tumult in his ears, tumult of sorrows,
of vain longings, of tongues and of swords! Where was the gain to
him? Was he nearer to that centre of peace, which the book, as it
lay there so still, seemed to his eyes to typify? The maiden loved
from childhood had left him for a foolish king and a phantom-church:
had he been himself pursuing anything better? He had been fighting
for the truth: had he then gained her? where was she? what was she
if not a living thing in the heart? Would the wielding of the sword
in its name ever embody an abstraction, call it from the vasty deep
of metaphysics up into self-conscious existence in the essence of a
man's own vitality? Was not the question still, how, of all loves,
to grasp the thing his soul thirsted after?
To many a sermon, cleric and lay, had he listened since he left that
volume there--in church, in barn, in the open field--but the
religion which seemed to fill all the horizon of these preachers'
vision, was to him little better than another tumult of words;
while, far beyond all the tumults, hung still, in the vast of
thought unarrived, unembodied, that something without a shape, yet
bearing a name around which hovered a vague light as of something
dimly understood, after which, in every moment of inbreaking
silence, his soul straightway began to thirst. And if the Truth was
not to be found in his own heart, could he think that the blows by
which he had not gained her had yet given her?--that through means
of the tumult he had helped to arouse in her name and for her sake,
but in which he had never caught a sight of her beauteous form, she
now sat radiantly smiling in any one human soul where she sat not
before?
Or should he say it was Freedom for which he had fought? Was he then
one whit more free in the reality of his being than he had been
before? Or had ever a battle wherein he had perilled his own life,
striking for liberty, conveyed that liberty into a single human
heart? Was there one soul the freer within, from the nearer presence
of that freedom which would have a man endure the heaviest wrong,
rather than inflict the lightest? He could not tell, but he greatly
doubted.
His thought went wandering away, and vision after vision, now of war
and now of love, now of earthly victory and now of what seemed
unattainable felicity, arose and passed before him, filling its
place. At length it came back: he would glance again into his cousin
Thomas's book. He had but to stretch out his hand to take it, for
his bed was close by the window. Opening it at random, he came upon
this passage:
And as the Mill, that circumgyreth fast, Refuseth nothing that
therein is cast, But whatsoever is to it assign'd Gladly receives
and willing is to grynd, But if the violence be with nothing fed, It
wasts itselfe: e'en so the heart mis-led, Still turning round,
unstable as the Ocean, Never at rest, but in continuall Motion,
Sleepe or awake, is still in agitation Of some presentment in th'
imagination.
If to the Mill-stone you shall cast in Sand, It troubles them, and
makes them at a stand; If Pitch, it chokes them; or if Chaffe let
fall, They are employ'd, but to no use at all. So, bitter thoughts
molest, uncleane thoughts staine And spot the Heart; while those
idle and vaine Weare it, and to no purpose. For when 'tis Drowsie
and carelesse of the future blisse, And to implore Heav'n's aid, it
doth imply How far is it remote from the most High. For whilst our
Hearts on Terrhen things we place, There cannot be least hope of
Divine grace.
'Just such a mill is my mind,' he said to himself. 'But can I
suppose that to sit down and read all day like a monk, would bring
me nearer to the thing I want?'
He turned over the volume half thinking, half brooding.
'I will look again,' he thought, 'at the verses which that day my
father gave me to read. Truly I did not well understand them.'
Once more he read the poem through. It closed with these lines:
So far this Light the Raies extends, As that no place It
comprehends. So deepe this Sound, that though it speake, It cannot
by a Sence so weake Be entertain'd. A Redolent Grace The Aire blowes
not from place to place. A pleasant Taste, of that delight It doth
confound all appetite. A strict Embrace, not felt, yet leaves That
vertue, where it takes it cleaves. This Light, this Sound, this
Savouring Grace, This Tastefull Sweet, this Strict Embrace, No Place
containes, no Eye can see, My God is; and there's none but Hee.
'I HAVE gained something,' he cried aloud. 'I understand it now--at
least I think I do. What if, in fighting for the truth as men say,
the doors of a man's own heart should at length fly open for her
entrance! What if the understanding of that which is uttered
concerning her, be a sign that she herself draweth nigh! Then I will
go on.--And that I may go on, I must recover my mare.'
Honestly, however, he could not quite justify the scheme. All the
efforts of his imagination, as he rode home, to bring his judgment
to the same side with itself, had failed, and he had been driven to
confess the project a foolhardy one. But, on the other hand, had he
not had a leading thitherward? Whence else the sudden conviction
that Scudamore had taken her, and the burning desire to seek her in
Raglan stables? And had he not heard mighty arguments from the lips
of the most favoured preachers in the army for an unquestioning
compliance with leadings? Nay, had he not had more than a leading?
Was it not a sign to encourage him, even a pledge of happy result,
that, within an hour of it, and in consequence of his first step in
partial compliance with it, he had come upon the only creature
capable of conducting him into the robber's hold? And had he not at
the same time learned the Raglan password?--He WOULD go.
He rose, and descending the little creaking stair of black oak that
led from his room to the next storey, sought his father's study,
where he wrote a letter informing him of his intended attempt, and
the means to its accomplishment that had been already vouchsafed
him. The rest of his time, after eating his dinner, he spent in
making overshoes for his mare out of an old buff jerkin. As soon as
the twilight began to fall, he set out on foot for the witch's
cottage.
When he arrived, he found her expecting him, but prepared with no
hearty welcome.
'I had liefer by much thee had not come so pat upon thy promise,
master Heywood. Then I might have looked to move thee from thy
purpose, for truly I like it not. But thou will never bring an old
woman into trouble, master Richard?'
'Or a young one either, if I can help it Mother Rees,' answered
Richard. 'But come now, thou must trust me, and tell me all I want
to know.'
He drew from his pocket paper and pencil, and began to put to her
question after question as to the courts and the various buildings
forming them, with their chief doors and windows, and ever as she
gave him an answer, he added its purport to the rough plan he was
drawing of the place.
'Listen to me, Master Heywood,' said the old woman at length after a
long, silence, during which he had been pondering over his paper.
'An' thou get once into the fountain court thou will know where thee
is by the marble horse that stands in the middle of it. Turn then
thy back to the horse, with the yellow tower above thee upon thy
right hand, and thee will be facing the great hall. On the other
side of the hall is the pitched court with its great gate and double
portcullis and drawbridge. Nearly at thy back, but to thy right
hand, will lie the gate to the bowling-green. At which of these
gates does thee think to lead out thy mare?'
'An' I pass at all, mother, it will be on her back, not at her
head.'
'Thou wilt not pass, my son. Be counselled. To thy mare, thou wilt
but lose thyself.'
Richard heard her as though he heard her not.
'At what hour doth the moon rise, mistress Rees?' he asked.
'What would thou with the moon?" she returned. "Is not she the enemy
of him who roves for plunder? Shines she not that the thief may be
shaken out of the earth?'
'I am not thief enough to steal in the dark, mother. How shall I
tell without her help where I am or whither I go?'
'She will be half way to the top of her hill by midnight.'
'An' thou speak by the card, then is it time that Marquis and I were
going.'
'Here, take thee some fern-seed in thy pouch, that thou may walk
invisible,' said the old woman. 'If thee chance to be an hungred,
then eat thereof,' she added, as she transferred something from her
pocket to his.
She called the dog and opened the chamber door. Out came Marquis,
walked to Richard, and stood looking up in his face as if he knew
perfectly that his business was to accompany him. Richard bade the
old woman good night, and stepped from the cottage.
No sooner was he in the darkness with the dog, than, fearing he
might lose sight of him, he tied his handkerchief round the dog's
neck, and fastened to it the thong of his riding whip--the sole
weapon he had brought with him--and so they walked together, Marquis
pulling Richard on. Ere long the moon rose, and the country dawned
into the dim creation of the light.
On and on they trudged, Marquis pulling at his leash as if he had
been a blind man's dog, and on and on beside them crept their
shadows, flattened out into strange distortion upon the road. But
when they had come within about two miles of Raglan, whether it was
that the sense of proximity to his mistress grew strong in him, or
that he scented the Great Mogul, as the horse the battle from afar,
Marquis began to grow restless, and to sniff about on one side of
the way. When at length they had by a narrow bridge crossed a brook,
the dog insisted on leaving the road and going down into the meadow
to the left. Richard made small resistance, and that only for
experiment upon the animal's determination. Across field after field
his guide led him, until, but for the great keep towering dimly up
into the moonlit sky, he could hardly have even conjectured where he
was. But he was well satisfied, for, ever as they came out of copse
or hollow, there was the huge thing in the sky, nearer than before.
At last he was able to descry a short stretch of the castle rampart,
past which, away to the westward, the dog was pulling, along a rough
cart-track through a field. This he presently found to be a quarry
road, and straight into the quarry the dog went, pulling eagerly;
but Richard was compelled to follow with caution, for the ground was
rough and broken, and the moon cast black misleading shadows.
Towards the blackest of these the dog led, and entered a hollow way.
Richard went straight after him, guarding his head with his arm,
lest he might meet a sudden descent of the roof, and lengthening his
leash to the utmost, that he might have timely warning of any
descent of the floor.
It was a very rough tunnel, the intent of which will afterwards
appear, forming part of one of lord Herbert's later contrivances for
the safety of the castle; but so well had Mr. Salisbury, the
surveyor, managed, that not one of the men employed upon it had an
idea that they were doing more than working the quarry for the
repair of the fortifications.
From the darkness, and the cautious rate at which he had to proceed,
holding back the dog who tugged hard at the whip, Richard could not
even hazard a conjecture as to the distance they had advanced, when
he heard the noise of a small runnel of water, which seemed from the
sound to make abrupt descent from some little height. He had gone
but a few paces further when the handle of the whip received a great
upward pull and was left loose in his grasp: the dog was away,
leaving his handkerchief at the end of the thong. So now he had to
guide himself, and began to feel about him. He seemed at first to
have come to the end of the passage, for he could touch both sides
of it by stretching out his arms, and in front a tiny stream of
water came down the face of the rough rock; but what then had become
of Marquis? The answer seemed plain: the water must come from
somewhere, and doubtless its channel had spare room enough for the
dog to pass thither. He felt up the rock, and found that, at about
the height of his head, the water came over an obtuse angle.
Climbing a foot or two, he discovered that the opening whence it
issued was large enough for him to enter.
Only one who has at some time passed where lengthened creeping was
necessary, will know how Richard felt, with water under him,
pitch-darkness about him, and the rock within an inch or two of his
body all round. By and by the slope became steeper and the ascent
more difficult. The air grew very close, and he began to fear he
should be stifled. Then came a hot breath, and a pair of eyes
gleamed a foot or two from his face. Had he then followed into the
den of the animal by which poor Marquis had been so frightfully
torn? But no: it was Marquis himself waiting for him!
'Go on, Marquis,' he said, with a sigh of relief.
The dog obeyed, and in another moment a waft of cool air came in.
Presently a glimmer of light appeared. The opening through which it
entered was a little higher than his horizontally posed head, and
looked alarmingly narrow.
But as he crept nearer it grew wider, and when he came under it he
found it large enough to let him through. When cautiously he poked
up his head, there was the huge mass of the keep towering blank
above him! On a level with his eyes, the broad, lilied waters of the
moat lay betwixt him and the citadel.
Marquis had brought him to the one neglected, therefore forgotten,
and thence undefended spot of the whole building. Before the well
was sunk in the keep, the supply of water to the moat had been far
more bountiful, and provision for a free overflow was necessary. For
some reason, probably for the mere sake of facility in the
construction, the passage for the superfluous water had been made
larger than needful at the end next the moat. About midway to its
outlet, however--a mere drain-mouth in a swampy hollow in the middle
of a field--it had narrowed to a third of the compass. But the
quarriers had cut across it above the point of contraction; and no
danger of access occurring to lord Herbert or Mr. Salisbury, while
they found a certain service in the tiny waterfall, they had left it
as it was.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
RAGLAN STABLES.
The passage for the overflow of the water of the moat was under the
sunk walk which, reaching from the gate of the stone court round to
the gate of the fountain court, enclosed the keep and its moat,
looping them on as it were to the side of the double quadrangle of
the castle. The only way out of this passage, at whose entrance
Richard now found himself, was into the moat. As quietly therefore
as he could, he got through the opening and into the water, amongst
the lilies, where, much impeded by their tangling roots, which
caused him many a submergence, but with a moon in her second quarter
over his head to light him, he swam gently along. As he looked up
from the water, however, to the huge crag-like tower over his head,
the soft moonlight smoothing the rigour but bringing out all the
wasteness of the grim blank, it seemed a hopeless attempt he had
undertaken. Not the less did he keep his eye on the tower-side of
the moat, and had not swum far before he caught sight of the little
stair, which, enclosed in one of the six small round bastions
encircling it, led up from the moat to the walk immediately around
the citadel. The foot of this stair was, strangely enough, one of
the only two points in the defence of the moat not absolutely
commanded from either one or the other of the two gates of the
castle. The top of the stair, however, was visible from one extreme
point over the western gate, and the moment Richard, finding the
small thick iron-studded door open, put his head out of the bastion,
he caught sight of a warder far away, against the moonlit sky. All
of the castle except the spot where that man stood, was hidden by
the near bulk of the keep. He drew back, and sat down on the top of
the stair--to think and let the water run from his clothes. When he
issued, it was again on all-fours. He had, however, only to creep an
inch or two to the right to be covered by one of the angles of the
tower.
But this shelter was merely momentary, for he must go round the
tower in search of some way to reach the courts beyond; and no
sooner had he passed the next angle than he found himself within
sight of one of the towers of the main entrance. Dropping once more
on his hands and knees he crept slowly along, as close as he could
squeeze to the root of the wall, and when he rounded the next angle,
was in the shadow of the keep, while he had but to cross the walk to
be covered by the parapet on the edge of the moat. This he did, and
having crept round the curve of the next bastion, was just beginning
to fear lest he should find only a lifted drawbridge, and have to
take to the water again, when he came to the stone bridge.
It was well for him that Dorothy and Caspar had now omitted the
setting of their water-trap, otherwise he would have entered the
fountain court in a manner unfavourable to his project. As it was,
he got over in safety, never ceasing his slow crawl until he found
himself in the archway. Here he stood up, straightened his limbs,
went through a few gymnastics, as silent as energetic, to send the
blood through his chilled veins, and the next moment was again on
the move.
Peering from the mouth of the archway, he saw to his left the
fountain court, with the gleaming head of the great horse rising out
of the sea of shadow into the moonlight, and knew where he was. Next
he discovered close to him on his right an open door into a dim
space, and knew that he was looking into the great hall. Opposite
the door glimmered the large bay window of which Mrs. Rees had
spoken.
There was now a point to be ascertained ere he could determine at
which of the two gates he should attempt his exit--a question which,
up to the said point, he had thoroughly considered on his way.
The stables opened upon the pitched court, and in that court was the
main entrance: naturally that was the one to be used. But in front
of it was a great flight of steps, the whole depth of the ditch,
with the marble gate at the foot of them; and not knowing the
carriageway, he feared both suspicion and loss of time, where a
single moment might be all that divided failure from success. Also
at this gate were a double portcullis and drawbridge, the working of
whose machinery took time, and of all things a quick execution was
essential, seeing that at any moment sleeping suspicion might awake,
and find enough to keep her so. At the other gate there was but one
portcullis and no drawbridge, while from it he perfectly knew the
way to the brick gate. Clearly this was the preferable for his
attempt. There was but one point to cast in the other scale--namely,
that, if old Eccles were still the warder of it, there would be
danger of his recognition in respect both of himself and his mare.
But, on the other hand, he thought he could turn to account his
knowledge of the fact that the marquis's room was over it. So here
the scale had settled to rebound no more--except indeed he should
now discover any difficulty in passing from the stone court in which
lay the MOUTH of the stables, to the fountain court in which stood
the preferable gate. This question he must now settle, for once on
horseback there must be no deliberation.
One way at least there must be--through the hall: the hall must be
accessible from both courts. He pulled off his shoes, and stepped
softly in. Through the high window immediately over the huge
fireplace, a little moonlight fell on the northern gable-wall,
turning the minstrels' gallery into an aerial bridge to some strange
region of loveliness, and in the shadow under it he found at once
the door he sought, standing open but dark under a deep porch.
Issuing and gliding along by the side of the hall and round the
great bay window, he came to the stair indicated by Mrs. Rees, and
descending a little way, stood and listened: plainly enough to his
practised ear, what the old woman had represented as the underground
passage to the airiest of stables, was itself full of horses. To go
down amongst these in the dark, and in ignorance of the construction
of the stable, was somewhat perilous; but he had not come there to
avoid risk. Step by step he stole softly down, and, arrived at the
bottom, seated himself on the last--to wait until his eyes should
get so far accustomed to the darkness as to distinguish the poor
difference between the faint dusk sinking down the stair and the
absolute murk. A little further on, he could descry two or three
grated openings into the fountain court, but by them nothing could
enter beyond the faintest reflection of moonlight from the windows
between the grand staircase and the bell tower.
As soon as his eyes had grown capable of using what light there was,
which however was scarcely sufficient to render him the smallest
service, Richard began to whistle, very softly, a certain tune well
known to Lady, one he always whistled when he fed or curried her
himself. He had not got more than half through it, when a low drowsy
whinny made reply from the depths of the darkness before him, and
the heart of Richard leaped in his bosom for joy. He ceased a
moment, then whistled again. Again came the response, but this time,
although still soft and low, free from all the woolliness of sleep.
Once more he whistled, and once more came the answer. Certain at
length of the direction, he dropped on his hands and knees, and
crawled carefully along for a few yards, then stopped, whistled
again, and listened. After a few more calls and responses, he found
himself at Lady's heels, which had begun to move restlessly. He
crept into the stall beside her, spoke to her in a whisper, got upon
his feet, caressed her, told her to be quiet, and, pulling her buff
shoes from his pockets, drew them over her hoofs, and tied them
securely about her pasterns. Then with one stroke of his knife he
cut her halter, hitched the end round her neck, and telling her to
follow him, walked softly through the stable and up the stair. She
followed like a cat, though not without some noise, to whose echoes
Richard's bosom seemed the beaten drum. The moment her back was
level, he flung himself upon it, and rode straight through the porch
and into the hall.
But here at length he was overtaken by the consequences of having an
ally unequal to the emergency. Marquis, who had doubtless been
occupied with his friends in the stable yard, came bounding up into
the court just as Richard threw himself on the back of his mare. At
the sight of Lady, whom he knew so well, with her master on her
back, a vision of older and happier times, the poor animal forgot
himself utterly, rushed through the hall like a whirlwind, and burst
into a tempest of barking in the middle of the fountain
court--whether to rouse his mistress, or but to relieve his own
heart, matters little to my tale. There was not a moment to lose,
and Richard rode out of the hall and made for the gate.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE APPARITION.
The voice of her lost Marquis, which even in her dreams she could
attribute to none but him, roused Dorothy at once. She sprang from
her bed, flew to the window, and flung it wide. That same moment,
from the shadows about the hall-door, came forth a man on horseback,
and rode along the tiled path to the fountain, where never had hoof
of horse before trod. Stranger still, the tramp sounded far away,
and woke no echo in the echo-haunted place. A phantom surely--horse
and man! As they drew nearer where she stared with wide eyes, the
head of the rider rose out of the shadow into the moonlight, and she
recognised the face of Richard--very white and still, though not, as
she supposed, with the whiteness and stillness of a spectre, but
with the concentration of eagerness and watchful resolution. The
same moment she recognised Lady. She trembled from head to foot.
What could it mean but that beyond a doubt they were both dead,
slain in battle, and that Richard had come to pay her a last visit
ere he left the world. On they came. Her heart swelled up into her
throat, and the effort to queen it over herself, and neither shriek
nor drop on the floor, was like struggling to support a falling
wall. When the spectre reached the marble fountain, he gave a little
start, drew bridle, and seemed to become aware that he had taken a
wrong path, looked keenly around him, and instead of continuing his
advance towards her window, turned in the direction of the gate. One
thing was clear, that whether ghostly or mortal, whether already
dead or only on the way to death, the apparition was regardless of
her presence. A pang of disappointment shot through her bosom, and
for the moment quenched her sense of relief from terror. With it
sank the typhoon of her emotion, and she became able to note how
draggled and soiled his garments were, how his hair clung about his
temples, and that for all accoutrement his mare had but a halter.
Yet Richard sat erect and proud, and Lady stepped like a mare full
of life and vigour. And there was Marquis, not cowering or howling
as dogs do in spectral presence, but madly bounding and barking as
if in uncontrollable jubilation!
The acme of her bewilderment was reached when the phantom came under
the marquis's study-window, and she heard it call aloud, in a voice
which undoubtedly came from corporeal throat, and that throat
Richard's, ringing of the morning and the sunrise and the wind that
shakes the wheat--anything rather than of the tomb:
'Ho, master Eccles!' it cried; 'when? when? Must my lord's business
cool while thou rubbest thy sleepy eyes awake? What, I say! When?
--Yes, my lord, I will punctually attend to your lordship's orders.
Expect me back within the hour.'
The last words were uttered in a much lower tone, with the respect
due to him he seemed addressing, but quite loud enough to be
distinctly heard by Eccles or any one else in the court.
Dorothy leaned from her window, and looked sideways to the gate,
expecting to see the marquis bending over his window-sill, and
talking to Richard. But his window was close shut, nor was there any
light behind it.
A minute or two passed, during which she heard the combined discords
of the rising portcullis. Then out came Eccles, slow and sleepy.
'By St. George and St. Patrick!' cried Richard, 'why keep'st thou
six legs here standing idle? Is thy master's business nothing to
thee?'
Eccles looked up at him. He was coming to his senses.
'Thou rides in strange graith on my lord's business,' he said, as he
put the key in the lock.
'What is that to thee? Open the gate. And make haste. If it please
my lord that I ride thus to escape eyes that else might see further
than thine, keen as they are, master Eccles, it is nothing to thee.'
The lock clanged, the gate swung open, and Richard rode through.
By this time a process of doubt and reasoning, rapid as only thought
can be, had produced in the mind of Dorothy the conviction that
there was something wrong. By what authority was Richard riding from
Raglan with muffled hoofs between midnight and morning? His speech
to the marquis was plainly a pretence, and doubtless that to Eccles
was equally false. To allow him to pass unchallenged would be
treason against both her host and her king.
'Eccles! Eccles!' she cried, her voice ringing clear through the
court, 'let not that man pass.'
'He gave the word, mistress,' said Eccles, in dull response.
'Stop him, I say,' cried Dorothy again, with energy almost frantic,
as she heard the gate swing to heavily. 'Thou shalt be held to
account.'
'He gave the word.'
'He's a true man, mistress,' returned Eccles, in tone of
self-justification. 'Heard you not my lord marquis give him his last
orders from his window?'
'There was no marquis at the window. Stop him, I say.'
'He's gone,' said Eccles quietly, but with waking uneasiness.
'Run after him,' Dorothy almost screamed.
'Stop him at the gate. It is young Heywood of Redware, one of the
busiest of the round-heads.'
Eccles was already running and shouting and whistling. She heard his
feet resounding from the bridge. With trembling hands she flung a
cloak about her, and sped bare-footed down the grand staircase and
along the north side of the court to the bell-tower, where she
seized the rope of the alarm-bell, and pulled with all her strength.
A horrid clangour tore the stillness of the night, re-echoed with
yelping response from the multitudinous buildings around. Window
after window flew open, head after head was popped out--amongst the
first that of the marquis, shouting to know what was amiss. But the
question found no answer. The courts began to fill. Some said the
castle was on fire; others, that the wild beasts were all out;
others, that Waller and Cromwell had scaled the rampart, and were
now storming the gates; others, that Eccles had turned traitor and
admitted the enemy. In a few moments all was outcry and confusion.
Both courts and the great hall were swarming with men and women and
children, in every possible stage of attire. The main entrance was
crowded with a tumult of soldiery, and scouts were rushing to
different stations of outlook, when the cry reached them that the
western gate was open, the portcullis up, and the guard gone.
The moment Richard was clear of the portcullis, he set off at a
sharp trot for the brick gate, and had almost reached it when he
became aware that he was pursued. He had heard the voice of Dorothy
as he rode out, and knew to whom he owed it. But yet there was a
chance. Rousing the porter with such a noisy reveillee as drowned in
his sleepy ears the cries of the warder and those that followed him,
he gave the watch-word, and the huge key was just turning in the
wards when the clang of the alarm-bell suddenly racked the air. The
porter stayed his hand, and stood listening.
'Open the gate,' said Richard in authoritative tone.
'I will know first, master,--' began the man.
'Dost not hear the bell?' cried Richard. 'How long wilt thou
endanger the castle by thy dulness?'
'I shall know first,' repeated the man deliberately, 'what that
bell--'
Ere he could finish the sentence, the butt of Richard's whip had
laid him along the threshold of the gate. Richard flung himself from
his horse, and turned the key. But his enemies were now close at
hand--Eccles and the men of his guard. If the porter had but fallen
the other way! Ere he could drag aside his senseless body and open
the gate, they were upon him with blows and curses. But the
puritan's blood was up, and with the heavy handle of his whip he had
felled one and wounded another ere he was himself stretched on the
ground with a sword-cut in the head.
CHAPTER XXX.
RICHARD AND THE MARQUIS.
A very few strokes of the brazen-tongued clamourer had been enough
to wake the whole castle. Dorothy flew back to her chamber, and
hurrying on her clothes, descended again to the court. It was
already in full commotion. The western gate stood open, with the
portcullis beyond it high in the wall, and there she took her stand,
waiting the return of Eccles and his men.
Presently lord Charles came through the hall from the stone court,
and seeing the gate open, called aloud in anger to know what it
meant. Receiving no reply, he ran with an oath to drop the
portcullis.
'Is there a mutiny amongst the rascals?' he cried.
'There is no cause for dread, my lord,' said Dorothy from the shadow
of the gateway.
'How know you that, fair mistress?' returned lord Charles, who knew
her voice. 'You must not inspire us with too much of your spare
courage. That would be to make us fool-hardy.'
'Indeed, there is nothing to fear, my lord,' persisted Dorothy. 'The
warder and his men have but this moment rushed out after one on
horseback, whom they had let pass with too little question. They are
ten to one,' added Dorothy with a shudder, as the sounds of the fray
came up from below.
'If there is then no cause of fear, cousin, why look you so pale?'
asked lord Charles, for the gleam of a torch had fallen on Dorothy's
face.
'I think I hear them returning, doubtless with a prisoner,' said
Dorothy, and stood with her face turned aside, looking anxiously
through the gateway and along the bridge. She had obeyed her
conscience, and had now to fight her heart, which unreasonable
member of the community would insist on hoping that her efforts had
been foiled. But in a minute more came the gathering noise of
returning footsteps, and presently Lady's head appeared over the
crown of the bridge; then rose Eccles, leading her in grim silence;
and next came Richard, pale and bleeding, betwixt two men, each
holding him by an arm; the rest of the guard crowded behind. As they
entered the court, Richard caught sight of Dorothy, and his face
shone into a wan smile, to which her rebellious heart responded with
a terrible pang.
The voice of lord Charles reached them from the other side of the
court.
'Bring the prisoner to the hall,' it cried.
Eccles led the mare away, and the rest took Richard to the hall,
which now began to be lighted up, and was soon in a blaze of candles
all about the dais. When Dorothy entered, it was crowded with
household and garrison, but the marquis, who was tardy at dressing,
had not yet appeared. Presently, however, he walked slowly in from
the door at the back of the dais, breathing hard, and seated himself
heavily in the great chair. Dorothy placed herself near the door,
where she could see the prisoner.
Lady Mary entered and seated herself beside her father.
'What meaneth all this tumult?' the marquis began. 'Who rang the
alarum-bell?'
'I did, my lord,' answered Dorothy in a trembling voice.
'Thou, mistress Dorothy!' exclaimed the marquis. 'Then I doubt not
thou hadst good reason for so doing. Prithee what was the reason?
Verily it seems thou wast sent hither to be the guardian of my
house!'
'It was not I, my lord, gave the first alarm, but--' She hesitated,
then added, 'my poor Marquis.'
'Not so poor for a marquis, cousin Dorothy, as to be called the poor
Marquis. Why dost thou call me poor?'
'My lord, I mean my dog.'
'The truth will still lie--between me and thy dog,' said the
marquis. 'But come now, instruct me. Who is this prisoner, and how
comes he here?'
'He be young Mr. Heywood of Redware, my lord, and a pestilent
roundhead,' answered one of his captors.
'Who knows him?'
A moment's silence followed. Then came Dorothy's voice again.
'I do, my lord.'
'Tell me, then, all thou knowest from the beginning, cousin,' said
the marquis.
'I was roused by the barking of my dog,' Dorothy began.
'How came HE hither again?'
'My lord, I know not.'
''Tis passing strange. See to it, lord Charles. Go on, mistress
Dorothy.'
'I heard my dog bark in the court, my lord, and looking from my
window saw Mr. Heywood riding through on horseback. Ere I could
recover from my astonishment, he had passed the gate, and then I
rang the alarm-bell,' said Dorothy briefly.
'Who opened the gate for him?'
'I did, my lord,' said Eccles. 'He made me believe he was talking to
your lordship at the study window.'
'Ha! a cunning fox!' said the marquis. 'And then?'
'And then mistress Dorothy fell out upon me--'
'Let thy tongue wag civilly, Eccles.'
'He speaks true, my lord,' said Dorothy. 'I did fall out upon him,
for he was but half awake, and I knew not what mischief might be at
hand.'
'Eccles is obliged to you, cousin. And so the lady brought you to
your senses in time to catch him?'
'Yes, my lord.'
'How comes he wounded? He was but one to a score.'
'My lord, he would else have killed us all.'
'He was armed then?'
Eccles was silent.
'Was he armed?' repeated the marquis.
'He had a heavy whip, my lord.'
'H'm!' said the marquis, and turned to the prisoner.
'Is thy name Heywood, sirrah?' he asked.
'My lord, if you treat me as a clown, you shall have but clown's
manners of me; I will not answer.'
''Fore heaven!' exclaimed the marquis, 'our squires would rule the
roast.'
'He that doth right, marquis or squire, will one day rule, my lord,'
said Richard.
''Tis well said,' returned the marquis. 'I ask your pardon, Mr.
Heywood. In times like these a man must be excused for occasionally
dropping his manners.'
'Assuredly, my lord, when he stoops to recover them so gracefully as
doth the marquis of Worcester.'
'What, then, would'st thou in my house at midnight, Mr. Heywood?'
asked the marquis courteously.
'Nothing save mine own, my lord. I came but to look for a stolen
mare.'
'What! thou takest Raglan for a den of thieves?'
'I found the mare in your lordship's stable.'
'How then came the mare in my stable?'
'That is not a question for me to answer, my lord.'
'Doubtless thou didst lose her in battle against thy sovereign.'
'She was in Redware stable last night, my lord.'
'Which of you, knaves, stole the gentleman's mare?' cried the
marquis.--'But, Mr. Heywood, there can be no theft upon a rebel. He
is by nature an outlaw, and his life and goods forfeit to the king.'
'He will hardly yield the point, my lord. So long as Might, the
sword, is in the hand of Right, the--'
'Of Right, the roundhead, I suppose you mean,' interrupted the
marquis. 'Who carried off Mr. Heywood's mare?' he repeated, rising,
and looking abroad on the crowd.
'Tom Fool,' answered a voice from the obscure distance.
A buzz of suppressed laughter followed, which as instantly ceased,
for the marquis looked angrily around.
'Stand forth, Tom Fool,' he said.
Through the crowd came Tom, and stood before the dais, looking
frightened and sheepish.
'Sure I am, Tom, thou didst never go to steal a mare of thine own
notion: who went with thee?' said the marquis.
'Mr. Scudamore, my lord,' answered Tom.
'Ha, Rowland! Art thou there?' cried his lordship.
'I gave him fair warning two years ago, my lord, and the king wants
horses,' said Scudamore cunningly.
'Rowland, I like not such warfare. Yet can the roundheads say nought
against it, who would filch kingdom from king and church from
bishops,' said the marquis, turning again to Heywood.
'As they from the pope, my lord,' rejoined Richard.
'True,' answered the marquis; 'but the bishops are the fairer
thieves, and may one day be brought to reason and restitution.'
'As I trust your lordship will in respect of my mare.'
'Nay, that can hardly be. She shall to Gloucester to the king. I
would not have sent to Redware to fetch her, but finding thee and
her in my house at midnight, it would be plain treason to set such
enemies at liberty. What! hast thou fought against his majesty? Thou
art scored like an old buckler!'
Richard had started on his adventure very thinly clad, for he had
expected to find all possible freedom of muscle necessary, and
indeed could not in his buff coat have entered the castle. In the
scuffle at the gate, his garment had been torn open, and the eye of
the marquis had fallen on the scar of a great wound on his chest,
barely healed.
'What age art thou?' he went on, finding Richard made no answer.
'One and twenty, my lord--almost.'
'And what wilt thou be by the time thou art one and thirty, an' I'll
let thee go,' said the marquis thoughtfully.
'Dust and ashes, my lord, most likely. Faith, I care not.'
As he spoke he glanced at Dorothy, but she was looking on the
ground.
'Nay, nay!' said the marquis feelingly. 'These are, but wild and
hurling words for a fine young fellow like thee. Long ere thou be a
man, the king will have his own again, and all will be well. Come,
promise me thou wilt never more bear arms against his majesty, and I
will set thee and thy mare at liberty the moment thou shalt have
eaten thy breakfast.'
'Not to save ten lives, my lord, would I give such a promise.'
'Roundhead hypocrite!' cried the marquis, frowning to hide the gleam
of satisfaction he felt breaking from his eyes. 'What will thy
father say when he hears thou liest deep in Raglan dungeon?'
'He will thank heaven that I lie there a free man instead of walking
abroad a slave,' answered Richard.
''Fore heaven!' said the marquis, and was silent for a moment.
'Owest thou then thy king NOTHING, boy?' he resumed.
'I owe the truth everything,' answered Richard.
'The truth!' echoed the marquis.
'Now speaks my lord Worcester like my lord Pilate,' said Richard.
'Hold thy peace, boy,' returned the marquis sternly. 'Thy godly
parents have ill taught thee thy manners. How knowest thou what was
in my thought when I did but repeat after thee the sacred word thou
didst misuse?'
'My lord, I was wrong, and I beg your lordship's pardon. But an'
your lordship were standing here with your head half beaten in, and
your clothes--'
Here Richard bethought himself, and was silent.
'Tell me then how gat'st thou in, lunatic,' said the marquis, not
unkindly, 'and thou shalt straight to bed.'
'My lord,' returned Richard, 'you have taken my mare, and taken my
liberty, but the devil is in it if you take my secret.'
'I would thy mare had been poisoned ere she drew thee hither on such
a fool's errand! I want neither thee nor thy mare, and yet I may not
let you go!'
'A moment more, and it had been an exploit, and no fool's errand, my
lord.'
'Then the fool's cap would have been thine, Eccles. How earnest thou
to let him out? Thou a warder, and ope gate and up portcullis 'twixt
waking and sleeping!'
'Had he wanted in, my lord, it would have been different,' said
Eccles. 'But he only wanted out, and gave the watchword.'
'Where got'st thou the watchword, Mr. Heywood?'
'I will tell thee what I gave for it, my lord. More I will not.'
'What gavest thou then?'
'My word that I would work neither thee nor thine any hurt withal,
my lord.'
'Then there are traitors within my gates!' cried the marquis.
'Truly, that I know not, my lord,' answered Richard.
'Prithee tell me how them gat thee into my house, Mr. Heywood? It
were but neighbourly.'
'It were but neighbourly, my lord, to hang young Scudamore and Tom
Fool for thieves.'
'Tell me how thou gat hold of the watchword, good boy, and I will
set thee free, and give thee thy mare again.'
'I will not, my lord.'
'Then the devil take thee!' said the marquis, rising.
The same moment Richard reeled, and but for the men about him, would
have fallen heavily.
Dorothy darted forward, but could not come near him for the crowd.
'My lord Charles,' cried the marquis, 'see the poor fellow taken
care of. Let him sleep, and perchance on the morrow he will listen
to reason. Mistress Watson will see to his hurts. I would to God he
were on our side! I like him well.'
The men took him up and followed lord Charles to the housekeeper's
apartment, where they laid him on a bed in a little turret, and left
him, still insensible, to her care, with injunctions to turn the key
in the lock if she went from the chamber but for a moment. 'For who
can tell,' thought lord Charles, greatly perplexed, 'but as he came
he may go?'
Some of the household had followed them, and several of the women
would gladly have stayed, but Mrs. Watson sent all away. Gradually
the crowd dispersed. The tumult ceased; the household retired. The
castle grew still, and most of its inhabitants fell asleep again.
'A damned hot-livered roundhead coxcomb!' said lord Worcester to
himself, pacing his room. 'These pelting cockerel squires and yeomen
nowadays go strutting and crowing as if all the yard were theirs! We
shall see how far this heat will carry the rogue! I doubt not the
boy would tell everything than see his mare whipped. He's a fine
fellow, and it were a thousand pities he turned coward and gave in.
But the affair is not mine; it is the king's majesty's. Would to God
the rascal were of our side! He's the right old English breed. A few
such were very welcome, if only to show some of our dainty young
lordlings of yesterday what breed can do. But an ass-foal it is! To
run his neck into a halter, and set honest people in mortal doubt
whether to pull the end or no!
How on earth did he ever dream of carrying off a horse out of the
very courts of Raglan castle! And yet, by saint George! he would
have done it too, but for that brave wench of a Vaughan! What a
couple the two would make! They'd give us a race of Arthurs and
Orlandos between them. God be praised there are such left in
England! And yet the rogue is but a pestilent roundhead--the more's
the pity! Those coward rascals need never have mauled him like that.
Yet had the blow gone a little deeper it had been a mighty gain to
our side. Out he shall not go till the war be over! It would be
downright treason.'
So ran the thoughts of the marquis as he paced his chamber. But at
length he lay down once more, and sought refuge in sleep.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SLEEPLESS.
There were more than the marquis left awake and thinking; amongst
the rest one who ought to have been asleep, for the thoughts that
kept her awake were evil thoughts.
Amanda Serafina Fuller was a twig or leaf upon one of many decaying
branches, which yet drew what life they had from an ancient
genealogical tree. Property gone, but the sense of high birth
swollen to a vice, the one thought in her mother's mind, ever since
she grew capable of looking upon the social world in its relation to
herself, had been how, with stinted resources, to make the false
impression of plentiful ease. For one of the most disappointing
things in high descent is, that the descent is occasionally into
depths of meanness. Some who are proudest of their lineage, instead
of finding therein a spur to nobility of thought and action, find in
it only a necessity for prostrating themselves with the more abject
humiliation at the footstool of Mammon, to be admitted into the
penetralia of which foul god's favours, they will hasten to mingle
the blood of their pure descent with that of the very kennels,
yellow with the gold to which a noble man, if poor as Jesus himself,
would loathe to be indebted for a meal. In 'the high countries'
there will be a finding of levels more appalling than strange.
Hence Amanda had been born and brought up in falsehood, had been all
her life witness to a straining after the untrue so energetic, as to
assume the appearance of conscience; while such was the tenor and
spirit of the remarks she was constantly hearing, that she grew up
with the ingrained undisputed idea that she and her mother, whom she
had only known as a widow, had been wronged, spoiled indeed of their
lawful rights, by a combination of their rich relatives; whereas in
truth they had been the objects of very considerable generosity,
which they resented the more that it had been chiefly exercised by
such of the family as could least easily afford it, yet accepted in
their hearts, if not in their words, as their natural right. The
intercession through which Amanda had been received into lady
Margaret's household, was the contribution towards their maintenance
of one of their richer connections: the marquis himself, although
distantly related, not having previously been aware of their
existence.
But Amanda felt degraded by her position, and was unaware that to
herself alone she owed the degradation: she had not yet learned that
the only service which can degrade is that which is unwillingly
rendered. To be paid for such, is degradation in its very essence.
Every one who grumbles at his position as degrading, yet accepts the
wages thereof, brands himself a slave.
The evil tendencies which she had inherited, had then been nourished
in her from her very birth--chief of these envy, and a strong
tendency to dislike. Mean herself, she was full of suspicions with
regard to others, and found much pleasure in penetrating what she
took to be disguise, and laying bare the despicable motives which
her own character enabled her either to discover or imagine, and
which, in other people, she hated. Moderately good people have no
idea of the vileness of which their own nature is capable, or which
has been developed in not a few who pass as respectable persons, and
have not yet been accused either of theft or poisoning. Such as St.
Paul alone can fully understand the abyss of moral misery from which
the in-dwelling spirit of God has raised them.
The one redeeming element in Amanda was her love to her mother, but
inasmuch as it was isolated and self-reflected, their mutual
attachment partook of the nature of a cultivated selfishness, and
had lost much of its primal grace. The remaining chance for such a
woman, so to speak, seems--that she should either fall in love with
a worthy man, if that be still possible to her, or, by her own
conduct, be brought into dismal and incontrovertible disgrace.
She had stood in the hall within a few yards of Dorothy, and had
intently watched her face all the time Richard was before the
marquis. But not because she watched the field of their play was
Amanda able to read the heart whence ascended those strangely
alternating lights and shadows. She had, by her own confession,
conceived a strong dislike to Dorothy the moment she saw her, and
without love there can be no understanding. Hate will sharpen
observation to the point of microscopic vision, affording
opportunity for many a shrewd guess, and revealing facts for the
construction of the cleverest and falsest theories, but will leave
the observer as blind as any bat to the scope of the whole, or the
meaning of the parts which can be understood only from the whole;
for love alone can interpret.
As she gazed on the signs of conflicting emotion in Dorothy's
changes of colour and expression, Amanda came quickly enough to the
conclusion that nothing would account for them but the assumption
that the sly puritanical minx was in love with the handsome young
roundhead. How else could the deathly pallor of her countenance
while she fixed her eyes wide and unmoving upon his face, and the
flush that ever and anon swept its red shadow over the pallor as she
cast them on the ground at some brave word from the lips of the
canting psalm-singer, be in the least intelligible? Then came the
difficulty: how in that case was her share in his capture to be
explained? But here Amanda felt herself in her own province, and
before the marquis rose, had constructed a very clever theory, in
which exercise of ingenuity, however, unluckily for its truth, she
had taken for granted that Dorothy's nature corresponded to her own,
and reasoned freely from the character of the one to the conduct of
the other. This was her theory: Dorothy had expected Richard, and
contrived his admission. His presence betrayed by the mastiff, and
his departure challenged by the warder, she had flown instantly to
the alarm-bell, to screen herself in any case, and to secure the
chance, if he should be taken, of liberating him without suspicion
under cover of the credit of his capture. The theory was a bold one,
but then it accounted for all the points--amongst the rest, how he
had got the password and why he would not tell--and was indeed in
the fineness of its invention equally worthy of both the heart and
the intellect of the theorist.
Nor were mistress Fuller's resolves behind her conclusions in merit:
of all times since first she had learned to mistrust her, this night
must Dorothy be watched; and it was with a gush of exultation over
her own acuteness that she saw her follow the men who bore Richard
from the hall.
If Dorothy knew more of her own feelings than she who watched her,
she was far less confident that she understood them. Indeed she
found them strangely complicated, and as difficult to control as to
understand, while she stood gazing on the youth who through her
found himself helpless and wounded in the hands of his enemies. He
was all in the wrong, no doubt--a rebel against his king, and an
apostate from the church of his country; but he was the same Richard
with whom she had played all her childhood, whom her mother had
loved, and between whom and herself had never fallen shadow before
that cast by the sudden outblaze of the star of childish preference
into the sun of youthful love. And was it not when the very mother
of shadows, the blackness of darkness itself, swept between them and
separated them for ever, that first she knew how much she had loved
him? What if not with the love that could listen entranced to its
own echo!--love of child or love of maiden, Dorothy never asked
herself which it had been, or which it was now. She was not given to
self-dissection. The cruel fingers of analysis had never pulled her
flower to pieces, had never rubbed the bloom from the sun-dyed glow
of her feelings. But now she could not help the vaporous rise of a
question: all was over, for Richard had taken the path of
presumption, rebellion, and violence--how then came it that her
heart beat with such a strange delight at every answer he made to
the expostulations or enticements of the marquis? How was it that
his approval of the intruder, not the less evident that it was
unspoken, made her heart swell with pride and satisfaction, causing
her to forget the rude rebellion housed within the form whose youth
alone prevented it from looking grand in her eyes?
For the moment her heart had the better of--her conscience, shall I
say? Yes, of that part of her conscience, I will allow, which had
grown weak by the wandering of its roots into the poor soil of
opinion. In the delight which the manliness of the young fanatic
awoke in her, she even forgot the dull pain which had been gnawing
at her heart ever since first she saw the blood streaming down his
face as he passed her in the gateway. But when at length he fell
fainting in the arms of his captors, and the fear that she had slain
him writhed sickening through her heart, it was with a grim struggle
indeed that she kept silent and conscious. The voice of the marquis,
committing him to the care of mistress Watson instead of the rough
ministrations of the guard, came with the power of a welcome
restorative, and she hastened after his bearers to satisfy herself
that the housekeeper was made understand that he was carried to her
at the marquis's behest. She then retired to her own chamber,
passing in, the corridor Amanda, whose room was in the, same
quarter, with a salute careless from weariness and preoccupation.
The moment her head was on her pillow the great fight began--on that
only battle-field of which all others are but outer types and
pictures, upon which the thoughts of the same spirit are the
combatants, accusing and excusing one another.
She had done her duty, but what a remorseless thing that duty was!
She did not, she could not, repent that she had done it, but her
heart WOULD complain that she had had it to do. To her, as to
Hamlet, it was a cursed spite. She had not yet learned the mystery
of her relation to the Eternal, whose nature in his children it is
that first shows itself in the feeling of duty. Her religion had not
as yet been shaken, to test whether it was of the things that remain
or of those that pass. It is easy for a simple nature to hold by
what it has been taught, so long as out of that faith springs no
demand of bitter obedience; but when the very hiding place of life
begins to be laid bare under the scalpel of the law, when the heart
must forego its love, when conscience seems at war with kindness,
and duty at strife with reason, then most good people, let their
devotion to what they call their religion be what it may, prove
themselves, although generally without recognising the fact, very
much of pagans after all. And good reason why! For are they not
devoted to their church or their religion tenfold more than to the
living Love, the father of their spirits? and what else is that, be
the church or religion what it will, but paganism? Gentle and strong
at once as Dorothy was, she was not yet capable of knowing that,
however like it may look to a hardship, no duty can be other than a
privilege. Nor was it any wonder if she did not perceive that she
was already rewarded for the doing of the painful task, at the
memory of which her heart ached and rebelled, by the fresh outburst
in that same troubled heart of the half-choked spring of her love to
the playmate of her childhood. Had it fallen, as she would have
judged so much fairer, to some one else of the many in the populous
place to defeat Richard's intent and secure his person, she would
have both suffered and loved less. The love, I repeat, was the
reward of the duty done.
For a long time she tossed sleepless, for what she had just passed
through had so thorougly possessed her imagination that, ever as her
wearied brain was sinking under the waves of sleep, up rose the face
of Richard from its depths, deathlike, with matted curls and
bloodstained brow, and drove her again ashore on the rocks of
wakefulness. By and by the form of her suffering changed, and then
instead of the face of Richard it was his voice, ever as she reached
the point of oblivion, calling aloud for help in a tone of mingled
entreaty and reproach, until at last she could no longer resist the
impression that she was warned to go and save him from some
impending evil. This once admitted, not for a moment would she delay
response. She rose, threw on a dressing-gown, and set out in the
dim light of the breaking day to find again the room into which she
had seen him carried.
There was yet another in the house who could not sleep, and that was
Tom Fool. He had a strong suspicion that Richard had learned the
watchword from his mother, who, like most people desirous of a
reputation for superior knowledge, was always looking out for scraps
and orts of peculiar information. In such persons an imagination
after its kind has considerable play, and when mother Rees had
succeeded, without much difficulty on her own, or sense of risk on
her son's part, in drawing from him the watchword of the week, she
was aware in herself of a huge accession of importance; she felt as
if she had been intrusted with the keys of the main entrance, and
trod her clay floor as if the fate of Raglan was hid in her bosom,
and the great pile rested in safety under the shadow of her wings.
But her imagined gain was likely to prove her son's loss; for, as he
reasoned with himself, would Mr. Heywood, now that he knew him for
the thief of his mare, persist, upon reflection, in refusing to
betray his mother? If not, then the fault would at once be traced to
him, with the result at the very least, of disgraceful expulsion
from the marquis's service. Almost any other risk would be
preferable.
But he had yet another ground for uneasiness. He knew well his
mother's attachment to young Mr. Heywood, and had taken care she
should have no suspicion of the way he was going after leaving her
the night he told her the watchword; for such was his belief in her
possession of supernatural powers, that he feared the punishment she
would certainly inflict for the wrong done to Richard, should it
come to her knowledge, even more than the wrath of the marquis. For
both of these weighty reasons therefore he must try what could be
done to strengthen Richard in his silence, and was prepared with an
offer, or promise at least, of assistance in making his escape.
As soon as the house was once more quiet, he got up, and, thoroughly
acquainted with the "crenkles" of it, took his way through dusk and
dark, through narrow passage and wide chamber, without encountering
the slightest risk of being heard or seen, until at last he stood,
breathless with anxiety and terror, at the door of the
turret-chamber, and laid his ear against it.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE TURRET CHAMBER.
When mistress Watson had, as gently as if she had been his mother,
bound up Richard's wounded head, she gave him a composing draught,
and sat down by his bedside. But as soon as she saw it begin to take
effect, she withdrew, in the certainty that he would not move for
some hours at least. Although he did fall asleep, however, Richard's
mind was too restless and anxious to yield itself to the natural
influence of the potion. He had given his word to his father that he
would ride on the morrow; the morrow had come, and here he was!
Hence the condition which the drug superinduced was rather that of
dreaming than sleep, the more valuable element, repose, having
little place in the result.
The key was in the lock, and Tom Fool as he listened softly turned
it, then lifted the latch, peeped in, and entered. Richard started
to his elbow, and stared wildly about him. Tom made him an anxious
sign, and, fevered as he was and but half awake, Richard, whether he
understood it or not, anyhow kept silence, while Tom Fool approached
the bed, and began to talk rapidly in a low voice, trembling with
apprehension. It was some time, however, before Richard began to
comprehend even a fragment here and there of what he was saying.
When at length he had gathered this much, that his visitor was
running no small risk in coming to him, and was in mortal dread of
discovery, he needed but the disclosure of who he was, which
presently followed, to spring upon him and seize him by the throat
with a gripe that rendered it impossible for him to cry out, had he
been so minded.
'Master, master!' he gurgled, 'let me go. I will swear any oath you
please--'
'And break it any moment YOU please,' returned Richard through his
set teeth, and caught with his other hand the coverlid, dragged it
from the bed, and, twisting it first round his face, flung the
remainder about his body; then, threatening to knock his brains out
if he made the least noise, proceeded to tie him up in it with his
garters and its own corners. No sound escaped poor Tom beyond a
continuous mumbled entreaty through its folds. Richard laid him on
the floor, pulled all the bedding upon the top of him, and gliding
out, closed the door, but, to Tom's unspeakable relief, as his ears,
agonizedly listening, assured him, did not lock it behind him.
Tom's sole anxiety was now to get back to his garret unseen, and
nothing was farther from his thoughts than giving the alarm. The
moment Richard was out of hearing--out of sight he had been for some
stifling minutes--he devoted his energies to getting clear of his
entanglement, which he did not find very difficult; then stepping
softly from the chamber, he crept with a heavy heart back as he had
come through a labyrinth of by-ways.
About half an hour after, Dorothy came gliding through the house,
making a long circuit of corridors. Gladly would she have avoided
passing Amanda's door, and involuntarily held her breath as she
approached it, stepping as lightly as a thief. But alas! nothing
save incorporeity could have availed her. The moment she had passed,
out peeped Amanda and crept after her barefooted, saw her to her joy
enter the chamber and close the door behind her, then 'like a tiger
of the wood,' made one noiseless bound, turned the key, and sped
back to her own chamber--with the feeling of Mark Antony when he
said, 'Now let it work!'
Dorothy was startled by a slight click, but concluded at once that
it was nothing but a further fall of the latch, and was glad it was
no louder. The same moment she saw, by the dim rushlight, the signs
of struggle which the room presented, and discovered that Richard
was gone. Her first emotion was an undefined agony: they had
murdered him, or carried him off to a dungeon! There were the
bedclothes in a tumbled heap upon the floor! And--yes--it was blood
with which they were marked! Sickening at the thought, and
forgetting all about her own situation, she sank on the chair by the
bedside.
Knowing the castle as she did, a very little reflection convinced
her that if he had met with violence it must have been in attempting
to escape; and if he had made the attempt, might he not have
succeeded? There had certainly been no fresh alarm given. But upon
this consoling supposition followed instantly the pang of the
question: what was now required of her? The same hard thing as
before? Ought she not again to give the alarm, that the poor wounded
boy might be recaptured? Alas! had not evil enough already befallen
him at her hand? And if she did--horrible thought!--what account
could she give this time of her discovery? What indeed but the
truth? And to what vile comments would not the confession of her
secret visit in the first grey of the dawn to the chamber of the
prisoner expose her? Would it not naturally rouse such suspicion as
any modest woman must shudder to face, if but for the one moment
between utterance and refutation. And what refutation could there be
for her, so long as the fact remained? If he had escaped, the alarm
would serve no good end, and her shame could be spared; but he might
be hiding somewhere about the castle, and she must choose between
treachery to the marquis--was it?--on the one hand, and renewed
hurt, wrong, perhaps, to Richard, coupled with the bitterest
disgrace to herself, on the other. To weigh such a question
impartially was impossible; for in the one alternative no hurt would
befall the marquis, while from the other her very soul recoiled
sickening. Thus tortured, she sat motionless in the very den of the
dragon, the one moment vainly endeavouring to rouse up her courage
and look her duty in the face that she might know with certainty
what it was; the next, feeling her whole nature rise rebellious
against the fate that demanded such a sacrifice. Ought she to be
thus punished for an intent of the purest humanity?
There came a lull, and with the lull a sense of her position: she
sat in the very, jaws of slander! Any moment mistress Watson or
another might enter and find her there, and what then more natural
or irrefutable than the accusation of having liberated him? She
sprang to her feet, and darted to the door. It was locked!
Her first thought was relief: she had no longer to decide; her
second, that she was a prisoner--till, horror of horrors! the
soldiers of the guard came to seek Richard and found her, or stern
mistress Watson appeared, grim as one of the Fates; or, perhaps, if
Richard had been carried away, until she was compelled by hunger and
misery to call aloud for release. But no! she would rather die. Now
in this case, now in that, her thoughts pursued the horrible
possibilities, one or other of which was inevitable, through all the
windings of the torture of anticipation, until for a time she must
have lost consciousness, for she had no recollection of falling
where she found herself--on the heap in the middle of the floor. The
gray heartless dawn had begun to peer in through the dull green
glass that closed the one loophole. It grew and grew, and its growth
was the approach of the grinning demon of shame. The nearer a man
can arrive to the knowledge of such feelings as hers is the
conviction that he never can comprehend them. The cruel light seemed
gathering its strength to publish her shame to the universe.
Blameless as she was, she would have gladly accepted death in escape
from the misery that every moment grew nearer. Now and then a faint
glimmer of comfort reached her in the thought that at least the
escape of Richard, if he had escaped, was thus ensured, and that
without any blame to her. And perhaps mistress Watson would be
merciful--only she too had her obligations, and as housekeeper was
severely responsible. And even if she should prove pitiful, there
was the locking of the door! It followed so quickly, that some one
must have seen her enter, and wittingly snared her, believing most
likely that she was not alone in the chamber.
The terrible bolt at length slid back in the lock, gently, yet with
tearing sound; mistress Watson entered, stood, stared. Before her
sat Dorothy by the side of the bedstead, in her dressing-gown, her
hair about her neck, her face like the moon at sunrise, and her
eyelids red and swollen with weeping. She stood speechless, staring
first at the disconsolate maiden, and then at the disorder of the
room. The prisoner was nowhere. What her thoughts were, I must only
imagine. That she should stare and be bewildered, finding Dorothy
where she had left Richard, was at least natural.
The moment Dorothy found herself face to face with her doom, her
presence of mind returned. The blood rushed from her heart to her
brain. She rose, and ere the astonished matron, who stood before her
erect, high-nosed, and open-mouthed like Michael Angelo's Clotho,
could find utterance, said,
'Mistress Watson, I swear to you by the soul of my mother, that
although all seeming is against me, W--'
'Where is the young rebel?' interrupted mistress Watson sternly.
'I know not,' answered Dorothy. 'When first I entered the chamber,
he had already gone.'
'And what then hadst thou to do entering it?' asked the housekeeper,
in a tone that did Dorothy good by angering her.
Mistress Watson was a kind soul in reality, but few natures can
resist the debasing influence of a sudden sense of superiority.
Besides, was not the young gentlewoman in great wrong, and therefore
before her must she not personify an awful Purity?
'That I will tell to none but my lord marquis,' answered Dorothy,
with sudden resolve.
'Oh, by all means, mistress! but an' thou think to lead him by the
nose while I be in Raglan,--'
'Shall I inform his lordship in what high opinion his housekeeper
holds him?' said Dorothy. 'It seems to me he will hardly savour it.'
'It would be an ill turn to do me, but my lord marquis did never
heed a tale-bearer.'
'Then will he not heed the tale thou wouldst yield him concerning
me.'
'What tale should I yield him but that I find--thee here and the
prisoner gone?'
'The tale I read in thy face and thy voice. Thou lookest and talkest
as if I were a false woman.'
'Verily to my eyes the thing looketh ill.'
'It would look ill to any eyes, and therefore I need kind eyes to
read, and just ears to hear my tale. I tell thee this is a matter
for my lord, and if thou spread any report in the castle ere his
lordship hear it, whatever evil springs therefrom it will lie at thy
door.'
'My life! what dost take me for, mistress Dorothy? My age and
holding deserves some consideration at thy hands! Am I one to go
tattling about the courts forsooth?'
'Pardon me, madam, but a maiden's good name may be as precious to
Dorothy Vaughan as a matron's respectability to mistress Watson. An'
you had left me with that look on your face, and had but spoken my
name to it, some one would have guessed ten times more than you
know--or I either for that gear.'
'I must tell the truth,' said mistress Watson, relenting a little.
'Thou must, or I will tell it for thee--but to the marquis. Thou
shalt be there to hear, and if, after that, thou tell it to another,
then hast thou no mother's heart in thee.'
Dorothy gave way at last and burst into tears. Mistress Watson was
touched.
'Nay, child, I would do thee no wrong,' she rejoined. 'Get thee
to bed. I must rouse the guard to go look for the prisoner, but I
will say nothing of thee to any but my lord marquis. When he is
dressed and in his study, I will come for thee myself.'
Dorothy thanked her warmly, and betook herself to her chamber,
considerably relieved.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
JUDGE GOUT.
Dorothy had hardly reached her room when the castle was once more
astir. The rush of the guard across the stone court, the clang of
opening lattices, and the voices that called from out-shot heads,
again filled her ears, but she never once peeped from her window. A
moment, and the news was all over the castle that the prisoner had
escaped.
Lord Charles went at once to his father's room. The old man woke
instantly. He had but just laid his hand on his mane, not mounted
the shadowy steed, and was ill pleased to be already, and the second
time, startled back to conscious weariness. When he heard the bad
tidings he was silent for a few moments.
'I would Herbert were at home, Charles, to stop this rat-hole for
me,' he said at length. 'Let the roundhead go--I care not. I had but
half a right to hold him, and he deserves his freedom. But what a
governor art thou, my lord? Prithee, dost know the rents in thine
own hose, who knowest not when thy gingerbread bulwarks gape? Find
me out this rat-hole, I say, or I will depose thee and send for thy
brother John, whom the king can ill spare.'
'Have patience with me, father,' said lord Charles gently. 'I am
more ashamed than thou art angry.'
'Thou know'st I did but jest, my son. But in truth an'thou find it
not I will send for lord Herbert. If he find what thou canst not,
that will be no disgrace to thee. But find it we must.'
'Think you not, my lord, it were best set mistress Dorothy on the
search? She hath a wondrous gift of discovery.'
'A good thought, Charles! I will even do as thou sayest. But search
the castle first, from vane to dungeon, that we may be assured the
roundhead hath indeed vanished.'
As he spoke the marquis turned him round, to search the wide gray
fields again for the shadowy horse that roamed them tetherless. But
the steed would not come to his call; he grew chilly and asthmatic,
tossed to and fro, and began to dread an attack of the gout.
The sun rose higher; the hive of men and women was astir once more;
the clatter of the day's work and the buzz of the day's talk began,
and nothing was in anybody's mouth but the escape of the prisoner.
His capture and trial were already of the past, forgotten for the
time in the nearer astonishment. Lord Charles went searching,
questioning, peering about everywhere, but could find neither
prisoner nor the traitorous hole.
Meantime mistress Watson was not a little anxious until she should
have revealed what she knew to the marquis, for the prisoner was in
her charge when he disappeared. In the course of the morning lord
Charles came to her apartment to question her, but she begged to be
excused, because of a certain disclosure she was not at liberty to
make to any but his father. Lord Charles, whom she had known from
his boyhood, readily yielded, and mistress Watson, five minutes
after he had left his room, followed the marquis to his study,
whither it was his custom always to repair before breakfast. He was
looking pale from the trouble of the night, which had resulted in
unmistakeable symptoms of the gout, listened to all she had to tell
him without comment, looked grave, and told her to fetch mistress
Dorothy. As soon as she was gone, he called Scudamore from the
antechamber, and sent him to request lord Charles's presence. He
came at once, and was there when Dorothy entered.
She was very white and worn, and her eyes were heavily downcast. Her
face wore that expression so much resembling guilt, which indicates
the misery the most innocent feel the most under the consciousness
of suspicion. At the sight of lord Charles, she crimsoned: it was
one thing to confess to the marquis, and quite another to do so in
the presence of his son.
The marquis sat with one leg on a stool, already in the gradually
contracting gripe of his ghoulish enemy. Before Dorothy could
recover from the annoyance of finding lord Charles present, or open
her mouth to beg for a more private interview, he addressed her
abruptly.
'Our young rebel friend hath escaped, it seems, mistress Dorothy!'
he said, gently but coldly, looking her full in the eyes, with
searching gaze and hard expression.
'I am glad to hear it, my lord,' returned Dorothy, with a sudden
influx of courage, coming, as the wind blows, she knew not whence.
'Ha!' said the marquis, quickly; 'then is it news to thee, mistress
Dorothy?'
His lip, as it seemed to Dorothy, curled into a mocking smile; but
the gout might have been in it.
'Indeed it is news, my lord. I hoped it might be so, I confess, but
I knew not that so it was.'
'What, mistress Dorothy! knewest thou not that the young thief was
gone?'
'I knew that Richard Heywood was gone from his chamber--whether from
the castle I knew not. He was no thief, my lord. Your lordship's
page and fool were the thieves.'
'Cousin, I hardly know myself in the change I find in thee! Truly, a
marvellous change! In the dark night thou takest a roundhead
prisoner; in the gray of the morning thou settest him free again!
Hath one visit to his chamber so wrought upon thee? To an old man it
seemeth less than maidenly.'
Again a burning blush overspread poor Dorothy's countenance. But she
governed herself, and spoke bravely, although she could not keep her
voice from trembling.
'My lord,' she said, 'Richard Heywood was my playmate. We were as
brother and sister, for our fathers'lands bordered each other.'
'Thou didst say nothing of these things last night?'
'My lord! Before the whole hall? Besides, what mattered it? All was
over long ago, and I had done my part against him.'
'Fell you out together then?'
'What need is there for your lordship to ask? Thou seest him of the
one part, and me of the other.'
'And from loving thou didst fall to hating?'
'God forbid, my lord! I but do my part against him.'
'For the which thou hadst a noble opportunity unsought, raising the
hue and cry upon him within his enemy's walls!'
'I would to God, my lord, it had not fallen to me.'
'Thinking better of it, therefore, and repenting of thy harshness,
thou didst seek his chamber in the night to tell him so? I would
fain know how a maiden reasoneth with herself when she doth such
things.'
'Not so, my lord. I will tell you all. I could not sleep for
thinking of my wounded playmate. And as to what he had done, after
it became clear that he sought but his own, and meant no
hair's-breadth of harm to your lordship, I confess the matter looked
not the same.'
'Therefore you would make him amends and undo what you had done? You
had caught the bird, and had therefore a right to free the bird when
you would? All well, mistress Dorothy, had he been indeed a bird!
But being a man, and in thy friend's house, I doubt thy logic. The
thing had passed from thy hands into mine, young mistress,' said the
marquis, into the ball of whose foot the gout that moment ran its
unicorn-horn.
'I did not set him free, my lord. When I entered the prison-chamber,
he was already gone.'
'Thou hadst the will and didst it not! Is there yet another in my
house who had the will and did it?' cried the marquis, who, although
more than annoyed that she should have so committed herself, yet was
willing to give such scope to a lover, that if she had but confessed
she had liberated him, he would have pardoned her heartily. He did
not yet know how incapable Dorothy was of a lie.
'But, my lord, I had not the will to set him free,' she said.
'Wherefore then didst go to him?'
'My lord, he was sorely wounded, and I had seen him fall fainting,'
said Dorothy, repressing her tears with much ado.
'And thou didst go to comfort him?'
Dorothy was silent.
'How camest thou locked into his room? Tell me that, mistress.'
'Your lordship knows as much of that as I do. Indeed, I have been
sorely punished for a little fault.'
'Thou dost confess the fault then?'
'If it WAS a fault to visit him who was sick and in prison, my
lord.'
The marquis was silent for a whole minute.
'And thou canst not tell how he gat him forth of the walls? Must I
believe him to be forth of them, my lord?' he said, turning to his
son.
'I cannot imagine him within them, my lord, after such search as we
have made.'
'Still,' returned the marquis, the acuteness of whose wits had not
been swallowed up by that of the gout, 'so long as thou canst not
tell how he gat forth, I may doubt whether he be forth. If the
manner of his exit be acknowledged hidden, wherefore not the place
of his refuge? Mistress Dorothy,' he continued, altogether averse to
the supposition of treachery amongst his people, 'thou art bound by
all obligations of loyalty and shelter and truth, to tell what thou
knowest. An' thou do not, thou art a traitor to the house, yea to
thy king, for when the worst comes, and this his castle is besieged,
much harm may be wrought by that secret passage, yea, it may be
taken thereby.'
'You say true, my lord: I should indeed be so bound, an' I knew what
my lord would have me disclose.'
'One may be bound and remain bound,' said the marquis, spying
prevarication. 'Now the thing is over, and the youth safe, all I ask
of thee, and surely it is not much, is but to bar the door against
his return--except indeed thou didst from the first contrive so to
meet thy roundhead lover in my loyal house. Then indeed it were too
much to require of thee! Ah ha! mistress Dorothy, the little blind
god is a rascally deceiver. He is but blind nor' nor' west. He
playeth hoodman, and peepeth over his bandage.'
'My lord, you wrong me much,' said Dorothy, and burst into tears,
while once more the red lava of the human centre rushed over her
neck and brow. 'I did think that I had done enough both for my lord
of Worcester and against Richard Heywood, and I did hope that he had
escaped: there lies the worst I can lay to my charge even in
thought, my lord, and I trust it is no more than may be found
pardonable.'
'It sets an ill example to my quiet house if the ladies therein go
anights to the gentlemen's chambers.'
'My lord, you are cruel,' said Dorothy.
'Not a soul in the house knows it but myself, my lord,' said
mistress Watson.
'Hold there, my good woman! Whose hand was it turned the key upon
her? More than thou must know thereof. Hear me, mistress Dorothy: I
would be heart-loath to quarrel with thee, and in all honesty I am
glad thy lover--'
'He is no lover of mine, my lord! At least--'
'Be he what he may, he is a fine fellow, and I am glad he hath
escaped. Do thou but find out for my lord Charles here the cursed
rat-hole by which he goes and comes, and I will gladly forgive thee
all the trouble thou hast brought into my sober house. For truly
never hath been in my day such confusion and uproar therein as since
thou earnest hither, and thy dog and thy lover and thy lover's mare
followed thee.'
'Alas, my lord! if I were fortunate enough to find it, what would
you but say I found it where I knew well to look for it?'
'Find it, and I promise thee I will never say word on the matter
again. Thou art a good girl, and thou do venture a hair too far for
a lover. The still ones are always the worst, mistress Watson.'
'My lord! my lord!' cried Dorothy, but ended not, for his lordship
gave a louder cry. His face was contorted with anguish, and he
writhed under the tiger fangs of the gout.
'Go away,' he shouted, 'or I shall disgrace my manhood before women,
God help me!'
'I trust thee will bear me no malice,' said the housekeeper, as they
walked in the direction of Dorothy's chamber.
'You did but your duty,' said Dorothy quietly.
'I will do all I can for thee,' continued mistress Watson, mounted
again, if not on her high horse then on her palfrey, by her master's
behaviour to the poor girl--'if thou but confess to me how thou
didst contrive the young gentleman's escape, and wherefore he locked
the door upon thee.'
At the moment they were close to Dorothy's room; her answer to the
impertinence was to walk in and shut the door; and mistress Watson
was thenceforward entirely satisfied of her guilt.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
AN EVIL TIME.
And now was an evil time for Dorothy. She retired to her chamber
more than disheartened by lord Worcester's behaviour to her, vexed
with herself for doing what she would have been more vexed with
herself for having left undone, feeling wronged, lonely, and
disgraced, conscious of honesty, yet ashamed to show herself--and
all for the sake of a presumptuous boy, whose opinions were a
disgust to her and his actions a horror! Yet not only did she not
repent of what she had done, but, fact as strange as natural, began,
with mingled pleasure and annoyance, to feel her heart drawn towards
the fanatic as the only one left her in the world capable of doing
her justice, that was, of understanding her. She thus unknowingly
made a step towards the discovery that it is infinitely better to
think wrong and to act right upon that wrong thinking, than it is to
think right and not to do as that thinking requires of us. In the
former case the man's house, if not built upon the rock, at least
has the rock beneath it; in the latter, it is founded on nothing but
sand. The former man may be a Saul of Tarsus, the latter a Judas
Iscariot. He who acts right will soon think right; he who acts wrong
will soon think wrong. Any two persons acting faithfully upon
opposite convictions, are divided but by a bowing wall; any two, in
belief most harmonious, who do not act upon it, are divided by,
infinite gulfs of the blackness of darkness, across which neither
ever beholds the real self of the other.
Dorothy ought to have gone at once to lady Margaret and told her
all; but she naturally and rightly shrank from what might seem an
appeal to the daughter against the judgment of her father; neither
could she dare hope that, if she did, her judgment would not be
against her also. Her feelings were now in danger of being turned
back upon herself, and growing bitter; for a lasting sense of injury
is, of the human moods, one of the least favourable to sweetness and
growth. There was no one to whom she could turn. Had good Dr. Bayly
been at home--but he was away on some important mission from his
lordship to the king: and indeed she could scarcely have looked for
refuge from such misery as hers in the judgment of the rather
priggish old-bachelor ecclesiastic. Gladly would she have forsaken
the castle, and returned to all the dangers and fears of her lonely
home; but that would be to yield to a lie, to flee from the devil
instead of facing him, and with her own hand to fix the imputed
smirch upon her forehead, exposing herself besides to the suspicion
of having fled to join her lover, and cast in her lot with his
amongst the traitors. Besides, she had been left by lord Herbert in
charge of his fire-engine and the water of the castle, which trust
she could not abandon. Whatever might be yet to come of it, she must
stay and encounter it, and would in the meantime set herself to
discover, if she might, the secret pathway by which dog and man came
and went at their pleasure. This she owed her friends, even at the
risk, in case of success, of confirming the marquis's worst
suspicions.
She was not altogether wrong in her unconscious judgment of lady
Margaret. Her nature was such as, its nobility tinctured with
romance, rendered her perfectly capable of understanding either of
the two halves of Dorothy's behaviour, but was not sufficient to the
reception and understanding of the two parts together. That is, she
could have understood the heroic capture of her former lover, or she
could have understood her going to visit him in his trouble, and
even, what Dorothy was incapable of, his release; but she was not
yet equal to understanding how she should set herself so against a
man, even to his wounding and capture, whom she loved so much as,
immediately thereupon, to dare the loss of her good name by going to
his chamber, so placing herself in the power of a man she had
injured, as well as running a great risk of discovery on the part of
her friends. Hence she was quite prepared to accept the solution of
her strange conduct, which by and by, it was hard to say how, came
to be offered and received all over the castle--that Dorothy first
admitted, then captured, and finally released the handsome young
roundhead.
Her first impressions of the affair, lady Margaret received from
lord Charles, who was certainly prejudiced against Dorothy, and no
doubt jealous of the relation of the fine young rebel to a loyal
maiden of Raglan; while the suspicion, almost belief, that she knew
and would not reveal the flaw in his castle, the idea of which had
begun to haunt him like some spot in his own body of which pain made
him unnaturally conscious, annoyed him more and more. To do him
justice, I must not omit to mention that he never made a
communication on the matter to any but his sister-in-law, who would
however have certainly had a more kindly as well as exculpatory
feeling towards Dorothy, had she first heard the truth from her own
lips.
For some little time, not perceiving the difficulties in her way,
and perhaps from unlikeness not understanding the disinclination of
such a girl to self-defence, lady Margaret continued to expect a
visit from her, with excuse at least, if not confession and apology
upon her lips, and was hurt by her silence as much as offended by
her behaviour. She was yet more annoyed, when they first met, that,
notwithstanding her evident suffering, she wore such an air of
reticence, and thence she both regarded and addressed her coldly; so
that Dorothy was confirmed in her disinclination to confide in her.
Besides, as she said to herself, she had nothing to tell but what
she had already told; everything depended on the interpretation
accorded to the facts, and the right interpretation was just the one
thing she had found herself unable to convey. If her friends did
not, she could not justify herself.
She tried hard to behave as she ought, for, conscious how much
appearances were against her, she felt it would be unjust to allow
her affection towards her mistress to be in the least shaken by her
treatment of her, and was if possible more submissive and eag 
St. George and St. Michael / MacDonald, George, 1824-1905