St. George and St. Michael Vol. II

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

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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.

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