St. George and St. Michael Vol. II

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

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 eager in
her service than before. But in this she was every now and then
rudely checked by the fear that lady Margaret would take it as the
endeavour of guilt to win favour; and, do what she would, instead of
getting closer to her, she felt every time they met, that the hedge
of separation which had sprung up between them had in the interval
grown thicker. By degrees the mistress had assumed towards the poor
girl that impervious manner of self-contained dignity, which,
according to her who wears it, is the carriage either of a
wing-bound angel, the gait of a stork, or the hobble of a crab.

Of a different kind was the change which now began to take place
towards her on the part of another member of the household.

While she had been intent upon Richard as he stood before the
marquis, not Amanda only but another as well had been intent upon
her. Poor creature as Scudamore yet was, he possessed, besides no
small generosity of nature, a good deal of surface sympathy, and a
ready interest in the shows of humanity. Hence as he stood regarding
now the face of the prisoner and now that of Dorothy, whom he knew
for old friends, he could not help noticing that every phase of the
prisoner, so to speak, might be read on Dorothy. He was too shallow
to attribute this to anything more than the interest she must feel
in the results of the exploit she had performed. The mere suggestion
of what had afforded such wide ground for speculation on the part of
Amanda, was to Scudamore rendered impossible by the meeting of two
things--the fact that the only time he had seen them together,
Richard was very plainly out of favour, and now the all-important
share Dorothy had had in his capture. But the longer he looked, the
more he found himself attracted by the rich changefulness of
expression on a countenance usually very still. He surmised little
of the conflict of emotions that sent it to the surface, had to
construct no theory to calm the restlessness of intellectual
curiosity, discovered no secret feeding of the flame from behind.
Yet the flame itself drew him as the candle draws the moth. Emotion
in the face of a woman was enough to attract Scudamore; the prettier
the face, the stronger the attraction, but the source or character
of the emotion mattered nothing to him: he asked no questions any
more than the moth, but circled the flame. In a word, Dorothy had
now all at once become to him interesting.

As soon as she found a safe opportunity, Amanda told him of
Dorothy's being found in the turret chamber, a fact she pretended to
have heard in confidence from mistress Watson, concealing her own
part in it, But as Amanda spoke, Dorothy became to Rowland twice as
interesting as ever Amanda had been. There was a real romance about
the girl, he thought. And then she LOOKED so quiet! He never thought
of defending her or playing the true part of a cousin. Amanda might
think of her as she pleased: Rowland was content. Had he cared ever
so much more for her judgment than he did, it would have been all
the same. How far Dorothy had been right or wrong in visiting
Heywood, he did not even conjecture, not to say consider. It was
enough that she who had been to him like the blank in the centre of
the African map, was now a region of marvels and possibilities,
vague but not the less interesting, or the less worthy of beholding
the interest she had awaked. As to her loving the roundhead fellow,
that would not stand long in the way.

In this period then of gloom and wretchedness, Dorothy became aware
of a certain increase of attention on the part of her cousin. This
she attributed to kindness generated of pity. But to accept it, and
so confess that she needed it, would have been to place herself too
much on a level with one whom she did not respect, while at the same
time it would confirm him in whatever probably mistaken grounds he
had for offering it. She therefore met his advances kindly but
coldly, a treatment under which his feelings towards her began to
ripen into something a little deeper and more genuine.

During the next ten days or so, Dorothy could not help feeling that
she was regarded by almost every one in the castle as in disgrace,
and that deservedly. The most unpleasant proof she had of this was
the behaviour of the female servants, some of them assuming airs of
injured innocence, others of offensive familiarity in her presence,
while only one, a kitchen-maid she seldom saw, Tom Fool's bride in
the marriage-jest, showed her the same respect as formerly. This
girl came to her one night in her room, and with tears in her eyes
besought permission to carry her meals thither, that she might be
spared eating with the rude ladies, as in her indignation she called
them. But Dorothy saw that to forsake mistress Watson's table would
be to fly the field, and therefore, hateful as it was to meet the
looks of those around it, she did so with unvailed lids and an
enforced dignity which made itself felt. But the effort was as
exhausting as painful, and the reflex of shame, felt as shame in
spite of innocence, was eating into her heart. In vain she said to
herself that she was guiltless; in vain she folded herself round in
the cloak of her former composure; the consciousness that, to say
the least of it, she was regarded as a young woman of questionable
refinement, weighed down her very eyelids as she crossed the court.

But she was not left utterly forsaken; she had still one refuge--the
workshop, where Caspar Kaltoff wrought like an 'artificial god;' for
the worthy German altered his manner to her not a whit, but
continued to behave with the mingled kindness of a father and
devotion of a servant. His respect and trustful sympathy showed,
without word said, that he, if no other, believed nothing to her
disadvantage, but was as much her humble friend as ever; and to the
hitherto self-reliant damsel, the blessedness of human sympathy,
embodied in the looks and tones of the hard-handed mechanic, brought
such healing and such schooling together, that for a long time she
never said her prayers by her bedside without thanking God for
Caspar Kaltoff.

Ere long her worn look, thin cheek, and weary eye began to work on
the heart of lady Margaret, and she relented in spirit towards the
favourite of her husband, whose anticipated disappointment in her
had sharpened the arrows of her resentment. But to the watery dawn
of favour which followed, the poor girl could not throw wide her
windows, knowing it arose from no change in lady Margaret's judgment
concerning her: she could not as a culprit accept what had been as a
culprit withdrawn from her. The conviction burned in her heart like
cold fire, that, but for compassion upon the desolate state of an
orphan, she would have been at once dismissed from the castle.
Sometimes she ventured to think that if lord Herbert had been at
home, all this would not have happened; but now what could she
expect other than that on his return he would regard her and treat
her in the same way as his wife and father and brother?

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13