St. George and St. Michael Vol. III

G >> George MacDonald >> St. George and St. Michael Vol. III

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'Domine, non sum dignus.'

I would I had not to give this brief dialogue; but it stands on
record, and may suggest something worth thinking to him who can read
it aright.

The king replied:

'My lord, I may very well answer you again: I have not found so
great faith in Israel; for no man would trust me with so much money
as you have done.'

'I hope your majesty will prove a defender of the faith,' returned
the marquis.

The king then dismounted, ascended the marble steps with his host,
nearly as stiff as he from his long ride, crossed the moat on the
undulating drawbridge, passed the echoing gateway, and entered the
stone court.

The marquis turned to the king, and presented the keys of the
castle. The king took them and returned them.

'I pray your majesty keep them in so good a hand. I fear that ere it
be long I shall be forced to deliver them into the hands of who will
spoil the compliment', said the marquis.

'Nay,' rejoined his majesty, 'but keep them till the King of kings
demand the account of your stewardship, my lord.'

'I trust your majesty's name will then be seen where it stands
therein,' said the marquis, 'for so it will fare the better with the
steward.'

In the court, the garrison, horse and foot, a goodly show, was drawn
up to receive him, with an open lane through, leading to the
north-western angle, where was the stair to the king's apartment. At
the draw-well, which lay right in the way, and around which the men
stood off in a circle, the king stopped, laid his hand on the wheel,
and said gaily:

'My lord, is this your lordship's purse?'

'For your majesty's sake, I would it were,' returned the marquis.

At the foot of the stair, on plea of his gout, he delivered his
majesty to the care of lord Charles, sir Ralph Blackstone, and Mr.
Delaware, who conducted him to his chamber.

The king supped alone, but after supper, lady Glamorgan and the
other ladies of the family, having requested permission to wait upon
him, were ushered into his presence. Each of them took with her one
of her ladies in attendance, and Dorothy, being the one chosen by
her mistress for that honour, not without the rousing of a strong
feeling of injustice in the bosoms of the elder ladies, entered
trembling behind her mistress, as if the room were a temple wherein
no simulacrum but the divinity himself dwelt in visible presence.

His majesty received them courteously, said kind things to several
of them, but spoke and behaved at first with a certain long-faced
reserve rather than dignity, which, while it jarred a little with
Dorothy's ideal of the graciousness that should be mingled with
majesty in the perfect monarch, yet operated only to throw her
spirit back into that stage of devotion wherein, to use a figure of
the king's own, the awe overlays the love.

A little later the marquis entered, walking slowly, leaning on the
arm of lord Charles, but carrying in his own hands a present of
apricots from his brother to the king.

Meantime Dorothy's love had begun to rise again from beneath her
awe; but when the marquis came in, old and stately, reverend and
slow, with a silver dish in each hand and a basket on his arm, and
she saw him bow three times ere he presented his offering, himself
serving whom all served, himself humble whom all revered, then again
did awe nearly overcome her. When the king, however, having
graciously received the present, chose for each of the ladies one of
the apricots, and coming to Dorothy last, picked out and offered the
one he said was likest the bloom of her own fair cheek, gratitude
again restored the sway of love, and in the greatness of the honour
she almost let slip the compliment. She could not reply, but she
looked her thanks, and the king doubtless missed nothing.

The next day his majesty rested, but on following days rode to
Monmouth, Chepstow, Usk, and other towns in the neighbourhood, whose
loyalty, thanks to the marquis, had as yet stood out. After dinner
he generally paid the marquis a visit in the oak parlour, then
perhaps had a walk in the grounds, or a game on the bowling-green.

But although the marquis was devoted to the king's cause, he was not
therefore either blinded or indifferent to the king's faults, and as
an old man who had long been trying to grow better, he made up his
mind to risk a respectful word in the matter of kingly obligation.

One day, therefore, when his majesty entered the oak parlour, he
found his host sitting by the table with his Gower lying open before
him, as if he had been reading, which doubtless was the case.

'What book have you there, my lord?' asked the king--while some of
his courtiers stood near the door, and others gazed from the window
on the moat and the swelling, towering mass of the keep. 'I like to
know what books my friends read.'

'Sir, it is old master John Gower's book of verses, entitled
Confessio Amantis,' answered his lordship.

'It is a book I have never seen before,' said the king, glancing at
its pages.

'Oh!' returned the marquis, 'it is a book of books, which if your
majesty had been well versed in, it would have made you a king of
kings.'

'Why so, my lord?' asked the king.

'Why,' said the marquis, 'here is set down how Aristotle brought up
and instructed Alexander the Great in all his rudiments, and the
principles belonging to a prince. Allow me, sir, to read you such a
passage as will show your majesty the truth of what I say.'

He opened the book and read:

'Among the vertues one is chefe,
And that is trouthe, which is lefe (dear)
To God and eke to man also.
And for it hath ben ever so,
Taught Aristotle, as he well couth, (knew)
To Alisaundre, how in his youth
He shulde of trouthe thilke grace (that same)
With all his hole herte embrace,
So that his word be trewe and pleine
Toward the world, and so certeine,
That in him be no double speche.
For if men shulde trouthe seche,
And found it nought within a king,
It were an unfittende thing
The worde is token of that within;
There shall a worthy king begin
To kepe his tunge and to be trewe,
So shall his price ben ever newe.'

'And here, sir, is what he saith as to the significance of the
kingly crown, if your majesty will allow me to read it.'

'Read on, my lord; all is good and true,' said the king.

'The gold betokneth excellence,
That men shuld done him reverence,
As to her lege soveraine. (their liege)
The stones, as the bokes saine,
Commended ben in treble wise.
First, they ben hard, and thilke assise (that attribute)
Betokeneth in a king constaunce,
So that there shall be no variaunce
Be found in his condicion.
And also by description
The vertue, whiche is in the stones,
A verray signe is for the nones
Of that a king shall ben honest,
And holde trewely his behest (promise)
Of thing, which longeth to kinghede.' (belongeth)

'And so on--for I were loath to weary your majesty--of the colour of
the stones, and the circular form of the crown.'

'Read on, my lord,' said the king.

Several passages, therefore, did the marquis pick out and
read--amongst which probably were certain concerning
flatterers--taking care still to speak of Alexander and Aristotle,
and by no means of king and marquis, until at length he had 'read
the king such a lesson,' as Dr. Bayly informs us, 'that the
bystanders were amazed at his boldness.'

'My lord, have you got your lesson by heart, or speak you out of the
book?' asked the king, taking the volume.

'Sir,' the marquis replied, 'if you could read my heart, it may be
you might find it there; or if your majesty please to get it by
heart, I will lend you my book.'

'I would willingly borrow it,' said the king.

'Nay,' said the marquis, 'I will lend it to you upon these
conditions: first, that you read it; and, second, that you make use
of it.'

Here, glancing round, well knowing the nature of the soil upon which
his words fell, he saw 'some of the new-made lords displeased,
fretting and biting their thumbs,' and thus therefore resumed:--

'But, sir, I assure you that no man was so much for the absolute
power of the king as Aristotle. If your majesty will allow me the
book again, I will show you one remarkable passage to that purpose.'

Having searched the volume for a moment, and found it, he read as
follows:--

'Harpaghes first his tale tolde,
And said, how that the strength of kinges
Is mightiest of alle thinges.
For king hath power over man,
And man is he, which reson can,
As he, which is of his nature
The most noble creature
Of alle tho that God hath wrought.
And by that skill it seemeth nought, (for that reason)
He saith that any erthly thing
May be so mighty as a king.
A king may spille, a king may save,
A king may make of lorde a knave,
And of a knave a lord also;
The power of a king stant so
That he the lawes overpasseth.
What he will make lasse, he lasseth;
What he will make more, he moreth;
And as a gentil faucon soreth,
He fleeth, that no man him reclaimeth.
But he alone all other tameth,
And slant him self of lawe fre.'

'There, my liege! So much for Aristotle and the kinghood! But think
not he taketh me with him all the way. By our Lady, I go not so
far.'

Lifting his head again, he saw, to his wish, that 'divers new-made
lords' had 'slunk out of the room.'

'My lord,' said the king, 'at this rate you will drive away all my
nobility.'

'I protest unto your majesty,' the marquis replied, 'I am as new a
made lord as any of them all, but I was never called knave or rogue
so much in all my life as I have been since I received this last
honour: and why should they not bear their shares?'

In high good-humour with his success, he told the story the same
evening to lady Glamorgan in Dorothy's presence. It gave her ground
for thought: she wondered that the marquis should think the king
required such lessoning. She had never dreamed that a man and his
office are not only metaphysically distinct, but may be morally
separate things; she had hitherto taken the office as the pledge for
the man, the show as the pledge for the reality; and now therefore
her notion of the king received a rude shock from his best friend.

The arrival of his majesty had added to her labours, for now again
horse must spout every day,--with no Molly to see it and rejoice.
Every fountain rushed heavenwards, 'and all the air' was 'filled
with pleasant noise of waters.' This required the fire-engine to be
kept pretty constantly at work, and Dorothy had to run up and down
the stair of the great tower several times a-day. But she lingered
on the top as often and as long as she might.

One glorious July afternoon, gazing from the top of the keep, she
saw his majesty, the marquis, some of the courtiers, and a Mr.
Prichard of the neighbourhood, on the bowling-green, having a game
together. It was like looking at a toy-representation of one, for,
so far below, everything was wondrously dwarfed and fore-shortened.
But certainly it was a pretty sight-the gay garments, the moving
figures, the bowls rolling like marbles over the green carpet, while
the sun, and the blue sky, and just an air of wind--enough to turn
every leaf into a languidly waved fan, enclosed it in loveliness and
filled it with life. It was like a picture from a CAMERA OBSCURA
dropped right at the foot of the keep, for the surrounding walk,
moat, and sunk walk beyond, were, seen from that height, but enough
to keep the bowling-green, which came to the edge of the sunk walk,
twelve feet below it, from appearing to cling to the foundations of
the tower. The circle of arches filled with shell-work and statues
of Roman emperors, which formed the face of the escarpment of the
sunk walk, looked like a curiously-cut fringe to the carpet.

While Dorothy aloft was thus looking down and watching the game,--

'What a lovely prospect it is!' said his majesty below, addressing
Mr. Prichard, while the marquis bowled.

Making answer, Mr. Prichard pointed out where his own house lay,
half hidden by a grove, and said--'May it please your majesty, I
have advised my lord to cut down those trees, so that when he wants
a good player at bowls, he may have but to beckon.'

'Nay,' returned the king, 'he should plant more trees, that so he
might not see thy house at all.'

The marquis, who had bowled, and was coming towards them, heard what
the king said, and fancying he aimed at the fault of the greedy
buying-up of land--

'If your majesty hath had enough of the game,' he said, 'and will
climb with me to the top of the tower, I will show you what may do
your mind some ease.'

'I should be sorry to set your Lordship such an arduous task,'
replied the king. 'But I am very desirous of seeing your great
tower, and if you will permit me, I will climb the stair without
your attendance.'

'Sir, it will pleasure me to think that the last time ever I
ascended those stairs, I conducted your majesty. For indeed it shall
be the last time. I grow old.'

As the marquis spoke, he led towards the twin-arched bridge over the
castle-moat, then through the western gate, and along the side of
the court to the Gothic bridge, on their way despatching one of his
gentlemen to fetch the keys of the tower.

'My lord,' said the king when the messenger had gone, 'there are
some men so unreasonable as to make me believe that your lordship
hath good store of gold yet left within the tower; but I, knowing
how I have exhausted you, could never have believed it, until now I
see you will not trust the keys with any but yourself.'

'Sir,' answered the marquis, 'I was so far from giving your majesty
any such occasion of thought by this tender of my duty, that I
protest unto you that I was once resolved that your majesty should
have lain there, but that I was loath to commit your majesty to the
Tower.'

'You are more considerate, my lord, than some of my subjects would
be if they had me as much in their keeping,' answered the king
sadly. 'But what are those pipes let into the wall up there?' he
asked, stopping in the middle of the bridge and looking up at the
keep.

'Nay, sire, my son Edward must tell you that. He taketh strange
liberties with the mighty old hulk. But I will not injure his good
grace with your majesty by talking of that I understand not. I trust
that one day, when you shall no more require his absence, you will
yet again condescend to be my guest, when my son, by your majesty's
favour now my lord Glamorgan, will have things to show you that will
delight your eyes to behold.'

'I have ere now seen something of his performance,' answered the
king; 'but these naughty times give room for nothing in that kind
but guns and swords.'

Leaving the workshop unvisited, his lordship took the king up the
stair, and unlocking the entrance to the first floor, ushered him
into a lofty vaulted chamber, old in the midst of antiquity, dark,
vast, and stately.

'This is where I did think to lodge your majesty,' he said,
'but--but--your majesty sees it is gloomy, for the windows are
narrow, and the walls are ten feet through.'

'It maketh me very cold,' said the king, shuddering. 'Good sooth,
but I were loath to be a prisoner!'

He turned and left the room hastily. The marquis rejoined him on the
stair, and led him, two stories higher, to the armoury, now empty
compared to its former condition, but still capable of affording
some supply. The next space above was filled with stores, and the
highest was now kept clear for defence, for the reservoir so fully
occupied the top that there was no room for engines of any sort; and
indeed it took up so much of the storey below with its depth that it
left only such room as between the decks of a man of war, rendering
it hardly fit for any other use.

Reaching the summit at length, the king gazed with silent wonder at
the little tarn which lay there as on the crest of a mountain. But
the marquis conducted him to the western side, and, pointing with
his finger, said--

'Sir, you see that line of trees, stretching across a neck of arable
field, where to the right the brook catches the sun?'

'I see it, my lord,' answered the king.

'And behind it a house and garden, small but dainty?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Then I trust your majesty will release me from suspicion of being
of those to whom the prophet Isaias saith, "Vae qui conjungitis
domum ad domum, et agrum agro copulatis usque ad terminum loci:
numquid habitabitis vos soli in medio terrae?" May it please your
majesty, I planted those trees to hoodwink mine eyes from such
temptations, hiding from them the vineyard of Naboth, lest they
should act the Jezebel and tempt me to play the Ahab thereto. If I
did thus when those trees and I were young, shall I do worse now
that I stand with one foot in the grave, and purgatory itself in the
other?'

The king seemed to listen politely, but only listened half and did
not perceive his drift. He was looking at Dorothy where she stood at
the opposite side of the reservoir, unable, because of the temporary
obstruction occasioned by certain alterations and repairs about the
cocks now going on, to reach the stair without passing the king and
the marquis. The king asked who she was; and the marquis, telling
him a little about her, called her. She came, courtesied low to his
majesty, and stood with beating heart.

'I desire,' said the marquis, 'thou shouldst explain to his majesty
that trick of thy cousin Glamorgan, the water-shoot, and let him see
it work.'

'My lord,' answered Dorothy, trembling betwixt devotion and doubtful
duty, 'it was the great desire of my lord Glamorgan that none in the
castle should know the trick, as it pleases your lordship to call
it.'

'What, cousin! cannot his majesty keep a secret? And doth not all
that Glamorgan hath belong to the king?'

'God forbid I should doubt either, my lord,' answered Dorothy,
turning very pale, and ready to sink, 'but it cannot well be done in
the broad day without some one seeing. At night, indeed--'

'Tut, tut! it is but a whim of Glamorgan's. Thou wilt not do a jot
of ill to show the game before his majesty in the sunlight.'

'My lord, I promised.'

'Here standeth who will absolve thee, child! His majesty is
paramount to Glamorgan.'

'My lord! my lord!' said Dorothy almost weeping, 'I am bewildered,
and cannot well understand. But I am sure that if it be wrong, no
one can give me leave to do it, or absolve me beforehand. God
himself can but pardon after the thing is done, not give permission
to do it. Forgive me, sir, but so master Matthew Herbert hath taught
me.'

'And very good doctrine, too,' said the marquis emphatically, 'let
who will propound it. Think you not so, sir?'

But the king stood with dull imperturbable gaze fixed on the distant
horizon, and made no reply. An awkward silence followed. The king
requested his host to conduct him to his apartment.

'I marvel, my lord,' said his majesty as they went down the stair,
seeing how lame his host was, 'that, as they tell me, your lordship
drinks claret. All physicians say it is naught for the gout.'

'Sir,' returned the marquis, 'it shall never be said that I forsook
my friend to pleasure my enemy.'

The king's face grew dark, for ever since the lecture for which he
had made Gower the textbook, he had been ready to see a double
meaning of rebuke in all the marquis said. He made no answer,
avoided his attendants who waited for him in the fountain court,
expecting him to go by the bell-tower, and, passing through the hall
and the stone court, ascended to his room alone, and went into the
picture-gallery, where he paced up and down till supper-time.

The marquis rejoined the little company of his own friends who had
left the bowling-green after him, and were now in the oak parlour. A
little troubled at the king's carriage towards him, he entered with
a merrier bearing than usual.

'Well, gentlemen, how goes the bias?' he said gayly.

'We were but now presuming to say, my lord,' answered Mr. Prichard,
'that there are who would largely warrant that if you would you
might be duke of Somerset.'

'When I was earl of Worcester,' returned the marquis, 'I was well to
do; since I was marquis, I am worse by a hundred thousand pounds;
and if I should be a duke, I should be an arrant beggar. Wherefore I
had rather go back to my earldom, than at this rate keep on my pace
to the dukedom of Somerset.'

CHAPTER XLV.

THE SECRET INTERVIEW.

Between the third of July, when he first came, and the fifteenth of
September, when he last departed, the king went and came several
times. During his last visit a remarkable interview took place
between him and his host, the particulars of which are
circumstantially given by Dr. Bayly in the little book he calls
Certamen Religiosum: to me it falls to recount after him some of the
said particulars, because, although Dorothy was brought but one
little step within the sphere of the interview, certain results were
which bore a large influence upon her history.

'Though money came from him,' that is, the marquis, 'like drops of
blood,' says Dr. Bayly, 'yet was he contented that every drop within
his body should be let out,' if only he might be the instrument of
bringing his majesty back to the bosom of the catholic church--a
bosom which no doubt the marquis found as soft as it was capacious,
but which the king regarded as a good deal resembling that of a
careless nurse rather than mother--frized with pins, and here and
there a cruel needle. Therefore, expecting every hour that the king
would apply to him for more money, the marquis had resolved that, at
such time as he should do so, he would make an attempt to lead the
stray sheep within the fold--for the marquis was not one of those
who regarded a protestant as necessarily a goat.

But the king shrank from making the request in person, and having
learned that the marquis had been at one point in his history under
the deepest obligation to Dr. Bayly, who having then preserved both
his lordship's life and a large sum of money he carried with him, by
'concealing both for the space that the moon useth to be twice in
riding of her circuit,' had thereafter become a member of his family
and a sharer in his deepest confidence, greatly desired that the
doctor should take the office of mediator between him and the
marquis.

The king's will having been already conveyed to the doctor, in the
king's presence colonel Lingen came up to him and said,

'Dr. Bayly, the king, much wishing your aid in this matter, saith he
delights not to be a beggar, and yet is constrained thereunto.'

'I am at his majesty's disposal,' returned the doctor, 'although I
confess myself somewhat loath to be the beetle-head that must drive
this wedge.'

'Nay,' said the colonel, 'they tell me that no man can make a
divorce between the Babylonish garment and the wedge of gold sooner
than thyself, good doctor.'

The end was that he undertook the business, though with
reluctance--unwilling to be 'made an instrument to let the same
horse bleed whom the king himself had found so free'--and sought the
marquis in his study.

'My lord,' he said, 'the thing that I feared is now fallen upon me.
I am made the unwelcome messenger of bad news: the king wants
money.'

'Hold, sir! that's no news,' interrupted the marquis. 'Go on with
your business.'

'My lord,' said the doctor, 'there is one comfort yet, that, as the
king is brought low, so are his demands, and, like his army, are
come down from thousands to hundreds, and from paying the soldiers
of his army to buying bread for himself and his followers. My lord,
it is the king's own expression, and his desire is but three hundred
pound.'

Lord Worcester remained a long time silent, and Dr. Bayly waited,
'knowing by experience that in such cases it was best leaving him to
himself, and to let that nature that was so good work itself into an
act of the highest charity, like the diamond which is only polished
with its own dust.'

'Come hither--come nearer, my good doctor,' said his lordship at
length: 'hath the king himself spoken unto thee concerning any such
business?'

'The king himself hath not, my lord, but others did, in the king's
hearing.'

'Might I but speak unto him--,' said the marquis. 'But I was never
thought worthy to be consulted with, though in matters merely
concerning the affairs of my own country!--I would supply his wants,
were they never so great, or whatsoever they were.'

'If the king knew as much, my lord, you might quickly speak with
him,' remarked the doctor.

'The way to have him know so much is to have somebody to tell him of
it,' said the marquis testily.

'Will your lordship give me leave to be the informer?' asked the
doctor.

'Truly I spake it to the purpose,' answered the marquis.

Away ran the little doctor, ambling through the picture-gallery,
'half going and half running,' like some short-winged bird--his
heart trembling lest the marquis should change his mind and call him
back, and so his pride in his successful mediation be mortified--to
the king's chamber, where he told his majesty with diplomatic
reserve, and something of diplomatic cunning, enhancing the
difficulties, that he had perceived his lordship desired some
conference with him, and that he believed, if the king granted such
conference, he would find a more generous response to his
necessities than perhaps he expected. The king readily consenting,
the doctor went on to say that his lordship much wished the
interview that very night. The king asked how it could be managed,
and the doctor told him the marquis had contrived it before his
majesty came to the castle, having for that reason appointed the
place where they were for his bed-chamber, and not that in the great
tower, which the marquis himself liked the best in the castle.

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