St. George and St. Michael Vol. II

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

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Hence Amanda had been born and brought up in falsehood, had been all
her life witness to a straining after the untrue so energetic, as to
assume the appearance of conscience; while such was the tenor and
spirit of the remarks she was constantly hearing, that she grew up
with the ingrained undisputed idea that she and her mother, whom she
had only known as a widow, had been wronged, spoiled indeed of their
lawful rights, by a combination of their rich relatives; whereas in
truth they had been the objects of very considerable generosity,
which they resented the more that it had been chiefly exercised by
such of the family as could least easily afford it, yet accepted in
their hearts, if not in their words, as their natural right. The
intercession through which Amanda had been received into lady
Margaret's household, was the contribution towards their maintenance
of one of their richer connections: the marquis himself, although
distantly related, not having previously been aware of their
existence.

But Amanda felt degraded by her position, and was unaware that to
herself alone she owed the degradation: she had not yet learned that
the only service which can degrade is that which is unwillingly
rendered. To be paid for such, is degradation in its very essence.
Every one who grumbles at his position as degrading, yet accepts the
wages thereof, brands himself a slave.

The evil tendencies which she had inherited, had then been nourished
in her from her very birth--chief of these envy, and a strong
tendency to dislike. Mean herself, she was full of suspicions with
regard to others, and found much pleasure in penetrating what she
took to be disguise, and laying bare the despicable motives which
her own character enabled her either to discover or imagine, and
which, in other people, she hated. Moderately good people have no
idea of the vileness of which their own nature is capable, or which
has been developed in not a few who pass as respectable persons, and
have not yet been accused either of theft or poisoning. Such as St.
Paul alone can fully understand the abyss of moral misery from which
the in-dwelling spirit of God has raised them.

The one redeeming element in Amanda was her love to her mother, but
inasmuch as it was isolated and self-reflected, their mutual
attachment partook of the nature of a cultivated selfishness, and
had lost much of its primal grace. The remaining chance for such a
woman, so to speak, seems--that she should either fall in love with
a worthy man, if that be still possible to her, or, by her own
conduct, be brought into dismal and incontrovertible disgrace.

She had stood in the hall within a few yards of Dorothy, and had
intently watched her face all the time Richard was before the
marquis. But not because she watched the field of their play was
Amanda able to read the heart whence ascended those strangely
alternating lights and shadows. She had, by her own confession,
conceived a strong dislike to Dorothy the moment she saw her, and
without love there can be no understanding. Hate will sharpen
observation to the point of microscopic vision, affording
opportunity for many a shrewd guess, and revealing facts for the
construction of the cleverest and falsest theories, but will leave
the observer as blind as any bat to the scope of the whole, or the
meaning of the parts which can be understood only from the whole;
for love alone can interpret.

As she gazed on the signs of conflicting emotion in Dorothy's
changes of colour and expression, Amanda came quickly enough to the
conclusion that nothing would account for them but the assumption
that the sly puritanical minx was in love with the handsome young
roundhead. How else could the deathly pallor of her countenance
while she fixed her eyes wide and unmoving upon his face, and the
flush that ever and anon swept its red shadow over the pallor as she
cast them on the ground at some brave word from the lips of the
canting psalm-singer, be in the least intelligible? Then came the
difficulty: how in that case was her share in his capture to be
explained? But here Amanda felt herself in her own province, and
before the marquis rose, had constructed a very clever theory, in
which exercise of ingenuity, however, unluckily for its truth, she
had taken for granted that Dorothy's nature corresponded to her own,
and reasoned freely from the character of the one to the conduct of
the other. This was her theory: Dorothy had expected Richard, and
contrived his admission. His presence betrayed by the mastiff, and
his departure challenged by the warder, she had flown instantly to
the alarm-bell, to screen herself in any case, and to secure the
chance, if he should be taken, of liberating him without suspicion
under cover of the credit of his capture. The theory was a bold one,
but then it accounted for all the points--amongst the rest, how he
had got the password and why he would not tell--and was indeed in
the fineness of its invention equally worthy of both the heart and
the intellect of the theorist.

Nor were mistress Fuller's resolves behind her conclusions in merit:
of all times since first she had learned to mistrust her, this night
must Dorothy be watched; and it was with a gush of exultation over
her own acuteness that she saw her follow the men who bore Richard
from the hall.

If Dorothy knew more of her own feelings than she who watched her,
she was far less confident that she understood them. Indeed she
found them strangely complicated, and as difficult to control as to
understand, while she stood gazing on the youth who through her
found himself helpless and wounded in the hands of his enemies. He
was all in the wrong, no doubt--a rebel against his king, and an
apostate from the church of his country; but he was the same Richard
with whom she had played all her childhood, whom her mother had
loved, and between whom and herself had never fallen shadow before
that cast by the sudden outblaze of the star of childish preference
into the sun of youthful love. And was it not when the very mother
of shadows, the blackness of darkness itself, swept between them and
separated them for ever, that first she knew how much she had loved
him? What if not with the love that could listen entranced to its
own echo!--love of child or love of maiden, Dorothy never asked
herself which it had been, or which it was now. She was not given to
self-dissection. The cruel fingers of analysis had never pulled her
flower to pieces, had never rubbed the bloom from the sun-dyed glow
of her feelings. But now she could not help the vaporous rise of a
question: all was over, for Richard had taken the path of
presumption, rebellion, and violence--how then came it that her
heart beat with such a strange delight at every answer he made to
the expostulations or enticements of the marquis? How was it that
his approval of the intruder, not the less evident that it was
unspoken, made her heart swell with pride and satisfaction, causing
her to forget the rude rebellion housed within the form whose youth
alone prevented it from looking grand in her eyes?

For the moment her heart had the better of--her conscience, shall I
say? Yes, of that part of her conscience, I will allow, which had
grown weak by the wandering of its roots into the poor soil of
opinion. In the delight which the manliness of the young fanatic
awoke in her, she even forgot the dull pain which had been gnawing
at her heart ever since first she saw the blood streaming down his
face as he passed her in the gateway. But when at length he fell
fainting in the arms of his captors, and the fear that she had slain
him writhed sickening through her heart, it was with a grim struggle
indeed that she kept silent and conscious. The voice of the marquis,
committing him to the care of mistress Watson instead of the rough
ministrations of the guard, came with the power of a welcome
restorative, and she hastened after his bearers to satisfy herself
that the housekeeper was made understand that he was carried to her
at the marquis's behest. She then retired to her own chamber,
passing in, the corridor Amanda, whose room was in the, same
quarter, with a salute careless from weariness and preoccupation.

The moment her head was on her pillow the great fight began--on that
only battle-field of which all others are but outer types and
pictures, upon which the thoughts of the same spirit are the
combatants, accusing and excusing one another.

She had done her duty, but what a remorseless thing that duty was!
She did not, she could not, repent that she had done it, but her
heart WOULD complain that she had had it to do. To her, as to
Hamlet, it was a cursed spite. She had not yet learned the mystery
of her relation to the Eternal, whose nature in his children it is
that first shows itself in the feeling of duty. Her religion had not
as yet been shaken, to test whether it was of the things that remain
or of those that pass. It is easy for a simple nature to hold by
what it has been taught, so long as out of that faith springs no
demand of bitter obedience; but when the very hiding place of life
begins to be laid bare under the scalpel of the law, when the heart
must forego its love, when conscience seems at war with kindness,
and duty at strife with reason, then most good people, let their
devotion to what they call their religion be what it may, prove
themselves, although generally without recognising the fact, very
much of pagans after all. And good reason why! For are they not
devoted to their church or their religion tenfold more than to the
living Love, the father of their spirits? and what else is that, be
the church or religion what it will, but paganism? Gentle and strong
at once as Dorothy was, she was not yet capable of knowing that,
however like it may look to a hardship, no duty can be other than a
privilege. Nor was it any wonder if she did not perceive that she
was already rewarded for the doing of the painful task, at the
memory of which her heart ached and rebelled, by the fresh outburst
in that same troubled heart of the half-choked spring of her love to
the playmate of her childhood. Had it fallen, as she would have
judged so much fairer, to some one else of the many in the populous
place to defeat Richard's intent and secure his person, she would
have both suffered and loved less. The love, I repeat, was the
reward of the duty done.

For a long time she tossed sleepless, for what she had just passed
through had so thorougly possessed her imagination that, ever as her
wearied brain was sinking under the waves of sleep, up rose the face
of Richard from its depths, deathlike, with matted curls and
bloodstained brow, and drove her again ashore on the rocks of
wakefulness. By and by the form of her suffering changed, and then
instead of the face of Richard it was his voice, ever as she reached
the point of oblivion, calling aloud for help in a tone of mingled
entreaty and reproach, until at last she could no longer resist the
impression that she was warned to go and save him from some
impending evil. This once admitted, not for a moment would she delay
response. She rose, threw on a dressing-gown, and set out in the
dim light of the breaking day to find again the room into which she
had seen him carried.

There was yet another in the house who could not sleep, and that was
Tom Fool. He had a strong suspicion that Richard had learned the
watchword from his mother, who, like most people desirous of a
reputation for superior knowledge, was always looking out for scraps
and orts of peculiar information. In such persons an imagination
after its kind has considerable play, and when mother Rees had
succeeded, without much difficulty on her own, or sense of risk on
her son's part, in drawing from him the watchword of the week, she
was aware in herself of a huge accession of importance; she felt as
if she had been intrusted with the keys of the main entrance, and
trod her clay floor as if the fate of Raglan was hid in her bosom,
and the great pile rested in safety under the shadow of her wings.
But her imagined gain was likely to prove her son's loss; for, as he
reasoned with himself, would Mr. Heywood, now that he knew him for
the thief of his mare, persist, upon reflection, in refusing to
betray his mother? If not, then the fault would at once be traced to
him, with the result at the very least, of disgraceful expulsion
from the marquis's service. Almost any other risk would be
preferable.

But he had yet another ground for uneasiness. He knew well his
mother's attachment to young Mr. Heywood, and had taken care she
should have no suspicion of the way he was going after leaving her
the night he told her the watchword; for such was his belief in her
possession of supernatural powers, that he feared the punishment she
would certainly inflict for the wrong done to Richard, should it
come to her knowledge, even more than the wrath of the marquis. For
both of these weighty reasons therefore he must try what could be
done to strengthen Richard in his silence, and was prepared with an
offer, or promise at least, of assistance in making his escape.

As soon as the house was once more quiet, he got up, and, thoroughly
acquainted with the "crenkles" of it, took his way through dusk and
dark, through narrow passage and wide chamber, without encountering
the slightest risk of being heard or seen, until at last he stood,
breathless with anxiety and terror, at the door of the
turret-chamber, and laid his ear against it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE TURRET CHAMBER.

When mistress Watson had, as gently as if she had been his mother,
bound up Richard's wounded head, she gave him a composing draught,
and sat down by his bedside. But as soon as she saw it begin to take
effect, she withdrew, in the certainty that he would not move for
some hours at least. Although he did fall asleep, however, Richard's
mind was too restless and anxious to yield itself to the natural
influence of the potion. He had given his word to his father that he
would ride on the morrow; the morrow had come, and here he was!
Hence the condition which the drug superinduced was rather that of
dreaming than sleep, the more valuable element, repose, having
little place in the result.

The key was in the lock, and Tom Fool as he listened softly turned
it, then lifted the latch, peeped in, and entered. Richard started
to his elbow, and stared wildly about him. Tom made him an anxious
sign, and, fevered as he was and but half awake, Richard, whether he
understood it or not, anyhow kept silence, while Tom Fool approached
the bed, and began to talk rapidly in a low voice, trembling with
apprehension. It was some time, however, before Richard began to
comprehend even a fragment here and there of what he was saying.
When at length he had gathered this much, that his visitor was
running no small risk in coming to him, and was in mortal dread of
discovery, he needed but the disclosure of who he was, which
presently followed, to spring upon him and seize him by the throat
with a gripe that rendered it impossible for him to cry out, had he
been so minded.

'Master, master!' he gurgled, 'let me go. I will swear any oath you
please--'

'And break it any moment YOU please,' returned Richard through his
set teeth, and caught with his other hand the coverlid, dragged it
from the bed, and, twisting it first round his face, flung the
remainder about his body; then, threatening to knock his brains out
if he made the least noise, proceeded to tie him up in it with his
garters and its own corners. No sound escaped poor Tom beyond a
continuous mumbled entreaty through its folds. Richard laid him on
the floor, pulled all the bedding upon the top of him, and gliding
out, closed the door, but, to Tom's unspeakable relief, as his ears,
agonizedly listening, assured him, did not lock it behind him.

Tom's sole anxiety was now to get back to his garret unseen, and
nothing was farther from his thoughts than giving the alarm. The
moment Richard was out of hearing--out of sight he had been for some
stifling minutes--he devoted his energies to getting clear of his
entanglement, which he did not find very difficult; then stepping
softly from the chamber, he crept with a heavy heart back as he had
come through a labyrinth of by-ways.

About half an hour after, Dorothy came gliding through the house,
making a long circuit of corridors. Gladly would she have avoided
passing Amanda's door, and involuntarily held her breath as she
approached it, stepping as lightly as a thief. But alas! nothing
save incorporeity could have availed her. The moment she had passed,
out peeped Amanda and crept after her barefooted, saw her to her joy
enter the chamber and close the door behind her, then 'like a tiger
of the wood,' made one noiseless bound, turned the key, and sped
back to her own chamber--with the feeling of Mark Antony when he
said, 'Now let it work!'

Dorothy was startled by a slight click, but concluded at once that
it was nothing but a further fall of the latch, and was glad it was
no louder. The same moment she saw, by the dim rushlight, the signs
of struggle which the room presented, and discovered that Richard
was gone. Her first emotion was an undefined agony: they had
murdered him, or carried him off to a dungeon! There were the
bedclothes in a tumbled heap upon the floor! And--yes--it was blood
with which they were marked! Sickening at the thought, and
forgetting all about her own situation, she sank on the chair by the
bedside.

Knowing the castle as she did, a very little reflection convinced
her that if he had met with violence it must have been in attempting
to escape; and if he had made the attempt, might he not have
succeeded? There had certainly been no fresh alarm given. But upon
this consoling supposition followed instantly the pang of the
question: what was now required of her? The same hard thing as
before? Ought she not again to give the alarm, that the poor wounded
boy might be recaptured? Alas! had not evil enough already befallen
him at her hand? And if she did--horrible thought!--what account
could she give this time of her discovery? What indeed but the
truth? And to what vile comments would not the confession of her
secret visit in the first grey of the dawn to the chamber of the
prisoner expose her? Would it not naturally rouse such suspicion as
any modest woman must shudder to face, if but for the one moment
between utterance and refutation. And what refutation could there be
for her, so long as the fact remained? If he had escaped, the alarm
would serve no good end, and her shame could be spared; but he might
be hiding somewhere about the castle, and she must choose between
treachery to the marquis--was it?--on the one hand, and renewed
hurt, wrong, perhaps, to Richard, coupled with the bitterest
disgrace to herself, on the other. To weigh such a question
impartially was impossible; for in the one alternative no hurt would
befall the marquis, while from the other her very soul recoiled
sickening. Thus tortured, she sat motionless in the very den of the
dragon, the one moment vainly endeavouring to rouse up her courage
and look her duty in the face that she might know with certainty
what it was; the next, feeling her whole nature rise rebellious
against the fate that demanded such a sacrifice. Ought she to be
thus punished for an intent of the purest humanity?

There came a lull, and with the lull a sense of her position: she
sat in the very, jaws of slander! Any moment mistress Watson or
another might enter and find her there, and what then more natural
or irrefutable than the accusation of having liberated him? She
sprang to her feet, and darted to the door. It was locked!

Her first thought was relief: she had no longer to decide; her
second, that she was a prisoner--till, horror of horrors! the
soldiers of the guard came to seek Richard and found her, or stern
mistress Watson appeared, grim as one of the Fates; or, perhaps, if
Richard had been carried away, until she was compelled by hunger and
misery to call aloud for release. But no! she would rather die. Now
in this case, now in that, her thoughts pursued the horrible
possibilities, one or other of which was inevitable, through all the
windings of the torture of anticipation, until for a time she must
have lost consciousness, for she had no recollection of falling
where she found herself--on the heap in the middle of the floor. The
gray heartless dawn had begun to peer in through the dull green
glass that closed the one loophole. It grew and grew, and its growth
was the approach of the grinning demon of shame. The nearer a man
can arrive to the knowledge of such feelings as hers is the
conviction that he never can comprehend them. The cruel light seemed
gathering its strength to publish her shame to the universe.
Blameless as she was, she would have gladly accepted death in escape
from the misery that every moment grew nearer. Now and then a faint
glimmer of comfort reached her in the thought that at least the
escape of Richard, if he had escaped, was thus ensured, and that
without any blame to her. And perhaps mistress Watson would be
merciful--only she too had her obligations, and as housekeeper was
severely responsible. And even if she should prove pitiful, there
was the locking of the door! It followed so quickly, that some one
must have seen her enter, and wittingly snared her, believing most
likely that she was not alone in the chamber.

The terrible bolt at length slid back in the lock, gently, yet with
tearing sound; mistress Watson entered, stood, stared. Before her
sat Dorothy by the side of the bedstead, in her dressing-gown, her
hair about her neck, her face like the moon at sunrise, and her
eyelids red and swollen with weeping. She stood speechless, staring
first at the disconsolate maiden, and then at the disorder of the
room. The prisoner was nowhere. What her thoughts were, I must only
imagine. That she should stare and be bewildered, finding Dorothy
where she had left Richard, was at least natural.

The moment Dorothy found herself face to face with her doom, her
presence of mind returned. The blood rushed from her heart to her
brain. She rose, and ere the astonished matron, who stood before her
erect, high-nosed, and open-mouthed like Michael Angelo's Clotho,
could find utterance, said,

'Mistress Watson, I swear to you by the soul of my mother, that
although all seeming is against me, W--'

'Where is the young rebel?' interrupted mistress Watson sternly.

'I know not,' answered Dorothy. 'When first I entered the chamber,
he had already gone.'

'And what then hadst thou to do entering it?' asked the housekeeper,
in a tone that did Dorothy good by angering her.

Mistress Watson was a kind soul in reality, but few natures can
resist the debasing influence of a sudden sense of superiority.
Besides, was not the young gentlewoman in great wrong, and therefore
before her must she not personify an awful Purity?

'That I will tell to none but my lord marquis,' answered Dorothy,
with sudden resolve.

'Oh, by all means, mistress! but an' thou think to lead him by the
nose while I be in Raglan,--'

'Shall I inform his lordship in what high opinion his housekeeper
holds him?' said Dorothy. 'It seems to me he will hardly savour it.'

'It would be an ill turn to do me, but my lord marquis did never
heed a tale-bearer.'

'Then will he not heed the tale thou wouldst yield him concerning
me.'

'What tale should I yield him but that I find--thee here and the
prisoner gone?'

'The tale I read in thy face and thy voice. Thou lookest and talkest
as if I were a false woman.'

'Verily to my eyes the thing looketh ill.'

'It would look ill to any eyes, and therefore I need kind eyes to
read, and just ears to hear my tale. I tell thee this is a matter
for my lord, and if thou spread any report in the castle ere his
lordship hear it, whatever evil springs therefrom it will lie at thy
door.'

'My life! what dost take me for, mistress Dorothy? My age and
holding deserves some consideration at thy hands! Am I one to go
tattling about the courts forsooth?'

'Pardon me, madam, but a maiden's good name may be as precious to
Dorothy Vaughan as a matron's respectability to mistress Watson. An'
you had left me with that look on your face, and had but spoken my
name to it, some one would have guessed ten times more than you
know--or I either for that gear.'

'I must tell the truth,' said mistress Watson, relenting a little.

'Thou must, or I will tell it for thee--but to the marquis. Thou
shalt be there to hear, and if, after that, thou tell it to another,
then hast thou no mother's heart in thee.'

Dorothy gave way at last and burst into tears. Mistress Watson was
touched.

'Nay, child, I would do thee no wrong,' she rejoined. 'Get thee
to bed. I must rouse the guard to go look for the prisoner, but I
will say nothing of thee to any but my lord marquis. When he is
dressed and in his study, I will come for thee myself.'

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