St. George and St. Michael Vol. II

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

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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.'

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