St. George and St. Michael Vol. II

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

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'Which tale wouldst thou have, my Molly?' the grandsire would say:
it was the regular form of each day's fresh salutation; and the
little one would answer, 'Of the good Jesu,' generally adding, 'and
of the damsel which fell sick and died.'

Torn as the country was, all the good grandparents, catholic and
protestant, royalist and puritan, told their children the same tales
about the same man; and I suspect there was more then than there is
now of that kind of oral teaching, for which any amount of books
written for children is a sadly poor substitute.

Although Molly asked oftenest for the tale of the damsel who came
alive again at the word of the man who knew all about death, she did
not limit her desires to the repetition of what she knew already;
and in order to keep his treasure supplied with things new as well
as old, the marquis went the oftener to his Latin bible to refresh
his memory for Molly's use, and was in both ways, in receiving and
in giving, a gainer. When the old man came thus to pour out his
wealth to the child, lady Margaret then first became aware what a
depth both of religious knowledge and feeling there was in her
father-in-law. Neither sir Toby Mathews, nor Dr. Bayly, who also
visited her at times, ever, with the torch of their talk, lighted
the lamps behind those great eyes, whose glass was growing dull with
the vapours from the grave; but her grandfather's voice, the moment
he began to speak to her of the good Jesu, brought her soul to its
windows.

This sultry evening Molly was restless. 'Madam! madam!' she kept
calling to her mother--for, like so many of such children, her
manners and modes of speech resembled those of grown people, 'What
wouldst thou, chicken?' her mother would ask. 'Madam, I know not,'
the child would answer. Twenty times in an hour, as the evening went
on, almost the same words would pass between them. At length, once
more, 'Madam! madam!' cried the child. 'What would my heart's
treasure?' said the mother; and Molly answered, 'Madam, I would see
the white horse spout.'

With a glance and sign to her mistress. Dorothy rose and crept from
the room, crossed the court and the moat, and dragged her heavy
heart up the long stair to the top of the keep. Arrived there, she
looked down through a battlement, and fixed her eyes on a certain
window, whence presently she caught the wave of a
signal-handkerchief.

At the open window stood lady Margaret with Molly in her arms. The
night was so warm that the child could take no hurt; and indeed what
could hurt her, with the nameless fever-moth within, fretting a
passage for the new winged body which, in the pains of a second
birth, struggled to break from its dying chrysalis.

'Now, Molly, tell the horse to spout,' said lady Margaret, with such
well-simulated cheerfulness as only mothers can put on with hearts
ready to break.

'Mother Mary, tell the horse to spout,' said Molly; and up went the
watery parabolas.

The old flame of delight flushed the child's cheek, like the flush
in the heart of a white rose. But it died almost instantly, and
murmuring, 'Thanks, good madam!' whether to mother Mary or mother
Margaret little mattered, Molly turned towards the bed, and her
mother knew at her heart that the child sought her last sleep--as we
call it, God forgive us our little faith! 'Madam!' panted the child,
as she laid her down. 'Darling?' said the mother. 'Madam, I would
see my lord marquis.' 'I will send and ask him to come.' 'Let Robert
say that Molly is going--going--where is Molly going, madam?' 'Going
to mother Mary, child,' answered lady Margaret, choking back the
sobs that would have kept the tears company. 'And the good Jesu ?'
'Yes.'--'And the good God over all ?' 'Yes, yes.' 'I want to tell
my lord marquis. Pray, madam, let him come, and quickly.'

His lordship entered, pale and panting. He knew the end was
approaching. Molly stretched out to him one hand instead of two, as
if her hold upon earth were half yielded. He sat down by the
bedside, and wiped his forehead with a sigh.

'Thee tired too, marquis?' asked the odd little love-bird.

'Yes, I am tired, my Molly. Thou seest I am so fat.'

'Shall I ask the good mother, when I go to her, to make thee spare
like Molly?'

'No, Molly, thou need'st not trouble her about that. Ask her to make
me good.'

'Would it then be easier to make thee good than to make thee spare,
marquis?'

'No, child--much harder, alas!'

'Then why--?' began Molly; but the marquis perceiving her thought,
made haste to prevent it, for her breath was coming quick and weak.

'But it is so much better worth doing, you see. If she makes me
good, she will have another in heaven to be good to.'

'Then I know she will. But I will ask her. Mother Mary has so many
to mind, she might be forgetting.'

After this she lay very quiet with her hand in his. All the windows
of the room were open, and from the chapel came the mellow sounds of
the organ. Delaware had captured Tom Fool and got him to blow the
bellows, and through the heavy air the music surged in. Molly was
dozing a little, and she spoke as one that speaks in a dream.

'The white horse is spouting music,' she said. 'Look! See how it
goes up to mother Mary. She twists it round her distaff and spins it
with her spindle. See, marquis, see! Spout, horse, spout.'

She lay silent again for a long time. The old man sat holding her
hand; her mother sat on the farther side of the bed, leaning against
one of the foot-posts, and watching the white face of her darling
with eyes in which love ruled distraction. Dorothy sat in one of the
window-seats, and listened to the music, which still came surging
in, for still the fool blew the bellows, and the blind youth struck
the keys. And still the clouds gathered overhead and sunk towards
the earth; and still the horse, which Dorothy had left spouting,
threw up his twin-fountain, whose musical plash in the basin as it
fell mingled with the sounds of the organ.

'What is it?' said Molly, waking up. 'My head doth not ache, and my
heart doth not beat, and I am not affrighted. What is it? I am not
tired. Marquis, are you no longer tired? Ah, now I know! He cometh!
He is here!--Marquis, the good Jesu wants Molly's hand. Let him have
it, marquis. He is lifting me up. I am quite well--quite--'

The sentence remained broken. The hand which the marquis had
yielded, with the awe of one in bodily presence of the Holy, and
which he saw raised as if in the grasp of one invisible, fell back
on the bed, and little Molly was quite well.

But she left sick hearts behind. The mother threw herself on the
bed, and wailed aloud. The marquis burst into tears, left the room,
and sought his study. Mechanically he took his Confessio Amantis,
and sat down, but never opened it; rose again and took his
Shakespere, opened it, but could not read; rose once more, took his
Vulgate, and read:

'Quid turbamini, et ploratis? puella non est mortua, sed dormit.'

He laid that book also down, fell on his knees, and prayed for her
who was not dead but sleeping.

Dorothy, filled with awe, rather from the presence of the mother of
the dead than death itself, and feeling that the mother would rather
be alone with her dead, also left the room, and sought her chamber,
where she threw herself upon the bed. All was still save the
plashing of the fountain, for the music from the chapel had ceased.

The storm burst in a glare and a peal. The rain fell in straight
lines and huge drops, which came faster and faster, drowning the
noise of the fountain, till the sound of it on the many roofs of the
place was like the trampling of an army of horsemen, and every spout
was gurgling musically with full throat. The one court was filled
with a clashing upon its pavement, and the other with a soft singing
upon its grass, with which mingled a sound as of little castanets
from the broad leaves of the water-lilies in the moat. Ever and anon
came the lightning, and the great bass of the thunder to fill up the
psalm.

At the first thunderclap lady Margaret fell on her knees and prayed
in an agony for the little soul that had gone forth into the midst
of the storm. Like many women she had a horror of lightning and
thunder, and it never came into her mind that she who had so loved
to see the horse spout was far more likely to be revelling in the
elemental tumult, with all the added ecstasy of newborn freedom and
health, than to be trembling like her mortal mother below.

Dorothy was not afraid, but she was heavy and weary; the thunder
seemed to stun her and the lightning to take the power of motion
from the shut eyelids through which it shone. She lay without
moving, and at length fell fast asleep.

To the marquis alone of the mourners the storm came as a relief to
his overcharged spirit. He had again opened his New Testament, and
tried to read; but if the truths which alone can comfort are not at
such a time present to the spirit, the words that embody them will
seldom be of much avail. When the thunder burst he closed the book
and went to the window, flung it wide, and looked out into the
court. Like a tide from the plains of innocent heaven through the
sultry passionate air of the world, came the coolness to his brow
and heart. Oxygen, ozone, nitrogen, water, carbonic acid, is it?
Doubtless--and other things, perhaps, which chemistry cannot
detect. Nevertheless, give its parts what names you will, its whole
is yet the wind of the living God to the bodies of men, his spirit
to their spirits, his breath to their hearts. When I learn that
there is no primal intent--only chance--in the unspeakable joy that
it gives, I shall cease to believe in poetry, in music, in woman, in
God. Nay, I must have already ceased to believe in God ere I could
believe that the wind that bloweth where it listeth is free because
God hath forgotten it, and that it bears from him no message to me.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE CATARACT.

In the midst of a great psalm, on the geyser column of which his
spirit was borne heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found
the keys dumb beneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty,
the singing thing dead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed
through the empty chapel, but no living response came back. Tom Fool
had grown weary and forsaken him. Disappointed and baffled, he rose
and left the chapel, not immediately from the organ loft, by a door
and a few upward steps through the wall to the minstrels' gallery,
as he had entered, but by the south door into the court, his
readiest way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near
the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever
made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered
flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed
charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason
why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove
the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the lock
retained no hold.

Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken
as to the cause and mode of his desertion: oppressed like every one
else with the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep,
leaning against the organ. The thunder only waked him sufficiently
to render him capable of slipping from the stool on which he had
lazily seated himself as he worked the lever of the bellows, and
stretching himself at full length upon the floor; while the coolness
that by degrees filled the air as the rain kept pouring, made his
sleep sweeter and deeper. He lay and snored till midnight.

A bell rang in the marquis's chamber.

It was one of his lordship's smaller economic maxims that in every
house, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance,
the master thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from
each other as might, with due respect to general fitness, be
arranged for, in order that, to use his own figure, he might spread
his skirts the wider over the place, and chiefly the part occupied
by his own family and immediate attendants--thereby to give himself,
without paying more attention to such matters than he could afford,
a better chance of coming upon the trace of anything that happened
to be going amiss. 'For,' he said, 'let a man have ever so many
responsible persons about him, the final responsibility of his
affairs yet returns upon himself.' Hence, while his bedroom was
close to the main entrance, that is the gate to the stone court, the
room he chose for retirement and study was over the western gate,
that of the fountain-court, nearly a whole side of the double
quadrangle away from his bedroom, and still farther from the
library, which was on the other side of the main entrance--whence,
notwithstanding, he would himself, gout permitting, always fetch any
book he wanted. It was, therefore, no wonder that, being now in his
study, the marquis, although it rang loud, never heard the bell
which Caspar had hung in his bedchamber. He was, however, at the
moment, looking from a window which commanded the very spot--namely,
the mouth of the archway--towards which the bell would have drawn
his attention.

The night was still, the rain was over, and although the moon was
clouded, there was light enough to recognise a known figure in any
part of the court, except the shadowed recess where the door of the
chapel and the archway faced each other, and the door of the hall
stood at right angles to both.

Came a great clang that echoed loud through the court, followed by
the roar of water. It sounded as if a captive river had broken
loose, and grown suddenly frantic with freedom. The marquis could
not help starting violently, for his nerves were a good deal shaken.
The same instant, ere there was time for a single conjecture, a
torrent, visible by the light of its foam, shot from the archway,
hurled itself against the chapel door, and vanished. Sad and
startled as he was, lord Worcester, requiring no explanation of the
phenomenon now that it was completed, laughed aloud and hurried from
the room.

When he had screwed his unwieldy form to the bottom of the stair,
and came out into the court, there was Tom Fool flying across the
turf in mortal terror, his face white as another moon, and his hair
standing on end--visibly in the dull moonshine.

His terror had either deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of his
obedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stop
him. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to
him trembling, and stood before him speechless. But when the
marquis, to satisfy himself that he was really as dry as he seemed,
laid his hand on his arm, the touch brought him to himself, and,
assisted by his master's questions, he was able to tell how he had
fallen asleep in the chapel, had waked but a minute ago, had left it
by the minstrels' gallery, had reached the floor of the hall, and
was approaching the western door, which was open, in order to cross
the court to his lodging near the watch-tower, when a hellish
explosion, followed by the most frightful roaring, mingled with
shrieks and demoniacal laughter, arrested him; and the same instant,
through the open door, he saw, as plainly as he now saw his noble
master, a torrent rush from the archway, full of dim figures,
wallowing and shouting. The same moment they all vanished, and the
flood poured into the hall, wetting him to the knees, and almost
carrying him off his legs.

Here the marquis professed profound astonishment, remarking that the
water must indeed have been thickened with devils to be able to lay
hold of Tom's legs.

'Then,' pursued Tom, reviving a little, 'I summoned up all my
courage--'

'No great feat,' said the marquis.

But Tom went on unabashed.

'I summoned up the whole of my courage,' he repeated, 'stepped out
of the hall, carefully examined the ground, looked through the
arch-way, saw nothing, and was walking slowly across the court to my
lodging, pondering with myself whether to call my lord governor or
sir Toby Mathews, when I heard your lordship call me.'

'Tom! Tom! thou liest,' said the marquis. 'Thou wast running as if
all the devils in hell had been at thy heels.'

Tom turned deadly pale, a fresh access of terror overcoming his
new-born hardihood.

'Who were they, thinkest thou, whom thou sawest in the water, Tom?'
resumed his master. 'For what didst thou take them?'

Tom shook his head with an awful significance, looked behind him,
and said nothing.

Perceiving there was no more to be got out of him, the marquis sent
him to bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he
reached the watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as
he went. The next day he did not appear. He thought himself he was
doomed, but his illness was only the prostration following upon
terror.

In the version of the story which he gave his fellow-servants, he
doubtless mingled the after visions of his bed with what he had when
half-awake seen and heard through the mists of his startled
imagination. His tale was this--that he saw the moat swell and rise,
boil over in a mass, and tumble into the court as full of devils as
it could hold, swimming in it, floating on it, riding it aloft as if
it had been a horse; that in a moment they had all vanished again,
and that he had not a doubt the castle was now swarming with
them--in fact, he had heard them all the night long.

The marquis walked up to the archway, saw nothing save the grim wall
of the keep, impassive as granite crag, and the ground wet a long
way towards the white horse; and never doubting he had lost his
chance by taking Tom for the culprit, contented himself with the
reflection that, whoever the night-walkers were, they had received
both a fright and a ducking, and betook himself to bed, where,
falling asleep at length, he saw little Molly in the arms of mother
Mary, who, presently changing to his own lady Anne that left him
about a year before little Molly came, held out a hand to him to
help him up beside them, whereupon the bubble sleep, unable to hold
the swelling of his gladness, burst, and he woke just as the first
rays of the sun smote the gilded cock on the bell-tower.

The noise of the falling drawbridge and the out-rushing water had
roused Dorothy also, with most of the lighter sleepers in the
castle; but when she and all the rest whose windows were to the
fountain court, ran to them and looked out, they saw nothing but the
flight of Tom Fool across the turf, its arrest by his master, and
their following conference. The moon had broken through the clouds,
and there was no mistaking either of their persons.

Meantime, inside the chapel door stood Amanda and Rowland, both
dripping, and one of them crying as well. Thither, as into a safe
harbour, the sudden flood had cast them; and it indicated no small
amount of ready faculty in Scudamore that, half-stunned as he was,
he yet had the sense, almost ere he knew where he was, to put up the
long bar that secured the door.

All the time that the marquis was drawing his story from Tom, they
stood trembling, in great bewilderment yet very sensible misery,
bruised, drenched, and horribly frightened, more even at what might
be than by what had been. There was only one question, but that was
hard to answer: what were they to do next? Amanda could contribute
nothing towards its solution, for tears and reproaches resolve no
enigmas. There were many ways of issue, whereof Rowland knew
several; but their watery trail, if soon enough followed, would be
their ruin as certainly as Hop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles were safety to
himself and his brothers. He stood therefore the very bond slave of
perplexity, 'and, like a neutral to his will and matter, did
nothing.'

Presently they heard the approaching step of the marquis, which
every one in the castle knew. It stopped within a few feet of them,
and through the thick door they could hear his short asthmatic
breathing.

They kept as still as their trembling, and the mad beating of their
hearts, would permit. Amanda was nearly out of her senses, and
thought her heart was beating against the door, and not against her
own ribs. But the marquis never thought of the chapel, having at
once concluded that they had fled through the open hall. Had he not,
however, been so weary and sad and listless, he would probably have
found them, for he would at least have crossed the hall to look into
the next court, and, the moon now shining brightly, the absence of
all track on the floor where the traces of the brief inundation
ceased, would have surely indicated the direction in which they had
sought refuge.

The acme of terror happily endured but a moment. The sound of his
departing footsteps took the ghoul from their hearts; they began to
breathe, and to hope that the danger was gone. But they waited long
ere at last they ventured, like wild animals overtaken by the
daylight, to creep out of their shelter and steal back like
shadows--but separately, Amanda first, and Scudamore some slow
minutes after--to their different quarters. The tracks they could
not help leaving in-doors were dried up before the morning.

Rowland had greater reason to fear discovery than any one else in
the castle, save one, would in like circumstances have had, and that
one was his bedfellow in the ante-chamber to his master's bedroom.
Through this room his lordship had to pass to reach his own; but so
far was he from suspecting Rowland, or indeed any gentleman of his
retinue, that he never glanced in the direction of his bed, and so
could not discover that he was absent from it. Had Rowland but
caught a glimpse of his own figure as he sneaked into that room five
minutes after the marquis had passed through it, believing his
master was still in his study, where he had left his candles
burning, he could hardly for some time have had his usual success in
regarding himself as a fine gentleman.

Amanda Serafina did not show herself for several days. A bad cold in
her head luckily afforded sufficient pretext for the concealment of
a bad bruise upon her cheek. Other bruises she had also, but they,
although more severe, were of less consequence.

For a whole fortnight the lovers never dared exchange a word.

In the morning the marquis was in no mood to set any inquiry on
foot. His little lamb had vanished from his fold, and he was sad and
lonely. Had it been otherwise, possibly the shabby doublet in which
Scudamore stood behind his chair the next morning, might have set
him thinking; but as it was, it fell in so well with the gloom in
which his own spirit shrouded everything, that he never even marked
the change, and ere long Rowland began to feel himself safe.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.

So also did Amanda; but not the less did she cherish feelings of
revenge against her whom she more than suspected of having been the
contriver of her harmful discomfiture. She felt certain that Dorothy
had laid the snare into which they had fallen, with the hope if not
the certainty of catching just themselves two in it, and she read in
her, therefore, jealousy and cruelty as well as coldness and
treachery. Rowland on the other hand was inclined to attribute the
mishap to the displeasure of lord Herbert, whose supernatural
acquirements, he thought, had enabled him both to discover and
punish their intrusion. Amanda, nevertheless, kept her own opinion,
and made herself henceforth all eyes and ears for Dorothy, hoping
ever to find a chance of retaliating, if not in kind yet in
plentiful measure of vengeance. Dorothy's odd ways, lawless
movements, and what the rest of the ladies counted her vulgar
tastes, had for some time been the subject of remark to the
gossiping portion of the castle community; and it seemed to Amanda
that in watching and discovering what she was about when she
supposed herself safe from the eyes of her equals and superiors, lay
her best chance of finding a mode of requital. Nor was she satisfied
with observation, but kept her mind busy on the trail, now of one,
now of another vague-bodied revenge.

The charge of low tastes was founded upon the fact that there was
not an artisan about the castle, from Caspar downwards, whom Dorothy
did not know and address by his name; but her detractors, in drawing
their conclusions from it, never thought of finding any related
significance in another fact, namely, that there was not a single
animal either, of consequence enough to have a name, which did not
know by it. There were very few of the animals indeed which did not
know her in return, if not by her name, yet by her voice or her
presence--some of them even by her foot or her hand. She would
wander about the farmyard and stables for an hour at a time,
visiting all that were there, and specially her little horse, which
she had long, oh, so long ago! named Dick, nor had taken his name
from him any more than from Marquis.

The charge of lawlessness in her movements was founded on another
fact as well, namely, that she was often seen in the court after
dusk, and that not merely in running across to the keep, as she
would be doing at all hours, but loitering about, in full view of
the windows. It was not denied that this took place only when the
organ was playing--but then who played the organ? Was not the poor
afflicted boy, barring the blank of his eyes, beautiful as an angel?
And was not mistress Dorothy too deep to be fathomed? And so the
tattling streams flowed on, and the ears of mistress Amanda
willingly listened to their music, nor did she disdain herself to
contribute to the reservoir in which those of the castle whose souls
thirsted after the minutiae of live biography, accumulated their
stores of fact and fiction, conjecture and falsehood.

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