St. George and St. Michael Vol. I

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

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'Dorothy!' cried the youth, turning pale with agony to find on the
brink of what an abyss of loss his zeal had set him, 'wilt thou,
then, never speak to me more, and I love thee as the daylight?'

'Never more till thou repent and turn. I will but give thee one
piece of counsel, and then leave thee--if for ever, that rests with
thee. There has lately appeared, like the frog out of the mouth of
the dragon, a certain tractate or treatise, small in bulk, but large
with the wind of evil doctrine. Doubtless it will reach your
father's house ere long, if it be not, as is more likely, already
there, for it is the vile work of one they call a puritan, though
where even the writer can vainly imagine the purity of such work to
lie, let the pamphlet itself raise the question. Read the evil
thing--or, I will not say read it, but glance the eye over it. It is
styled "Animadversions upon--." Truly, I cannot recall the
long-drawn title. It is filled, even as a toad with poison, so full
of evil and scurrilous sayings against good men, rating and abusing
them as the very off-scouring of the earth, that you cannot yet be
so far gone in evil as not to be reclaimed by seeing whither such
men and their inspiration would lead you. Farewell, Richard.'

With the words, and without a look, Dorothy, who had been standing
sideways in act to go, swept up the pleached alley, her step so
stately and her head so high that Richard, slowly as she walked
away, dared not follow her, but stood 'like one forbid.' When she
had vanished, and the light shone in full at the far end, he gave a
great sigh and turned away, and the old dial was forsaken.

The scrap of title Dorothy had given was enough to enable Richard to
recognise the pamphlet as one a copy of which his father had
received only a few days before, and over the reading of which they
had again and again laughed unrestrainedly. As he walked home he
sought in vain to recall anything in it deserving of such
reprobation as Dorothy had branded it withal. Had it been written on
the other side no search would have been necessary, for party spirit
(from which how could such a youth be free, when the greatest men of
his time were deeply tainted?), while it blinds the eyes in one
direction, makes them doubly keen in another. As it was, the abuse
in the pamphlet referred to, appeared to him only warrantable
indignation; and, the arrogance of an imperfect love leading him to
utter desertion of his newly-adopted principles, he scorned as
presumptuous that exercise of her own judgment on the part of
Dorothy which had led to their separation, bitterly resenting the
change in his playmate, who, now an angry woman, had decreed his
degradation from the commonest privileges of friendship, until such
time as he should abjure his convictions, become a renegade to the
truth, and abandon the hope of resulting freedom which the strife of
parties held out--an act of tyranny the reflection upon which raised
such a swelling in his throat as he had never felt but once before,
when a favourite foal got staked in trying to clear a fence. Having
neither friend nor sister to whom to confess that he was in
trouble--have confided it he could not in any case, seeing it
involved blame of the woman his love for whom now first, when on the
point of losing her for ever, threatened to overmaster him--he
wandered to the stables, which he found empty of men and nearly so
of horses, half-involuntarily sought the stall of the mare his
father had given him on his last birthday, laid his head on the neck
bent round to greet him, and sighed a sore response to her soft,
low, tremulous whinny.

As he stood thus, overcome by the bitter sense of wrong from the one
he loved best in the world, something darkened the stable-door, and
a voice he knew reached his ear. Mistaking the head she saw across
an empty stall for that of one of the farm-servants, Goody Rees was
calling aloud to know if he wanted a charm for the toothache.

Richard looked up.

'And what may your charm be, mistress Rees?' he asked.

'Aha! is it thou, young master?' returned the woman. 'Thou wilt
marvel to see me about the place so soon again, but verily desired
to know how that godly man, Faithful Stopchase, found himself after
his fall.'

'Nay, mistress Rees, make no apology for coming amongst thy friends.
I warrant thee against further rudeness of man or beast. I have
taken them to task, and truly I will break his head who wags tongue
against thee. As for Stopchase, he does well enough in all except
owing thee thanks which he declines to pay. But for thy charm, good
mistress Rees, what is it--tell me ?'

She took a step inside the door, sent her small eyes peering first
into every corner her sight could reach, and then said:

'Are we alone--we two, master Richard?'

'There's a cat in the next stall, mistress: if she can hear, she
can't speak.'

'Don't be too sure of that, master Richard. Be there no one else?'

'Not a body; soul there may be--who knows?'

'I know there is none. I will tell thee my charm, or what else I may
that thou would wish to know; for he is a true gentleman who will
help a woman because she is a woman, be she as old and ugly as Goody
Rees herself. Hearken, my pretty sir: it is the tooth of a corpse,
drawn after he hath lain a se'en-night in the mould: wilt buy, my
master? Or did not I see thee now asking comfort from thy horse for
the--'

She paused a moment, peered narrowly at him from under lowered
eyebrows, and went on:

'--heartache, eh, master Richard? Old eyes can see through velvet
doublets.'

'All the world knows yours can see farther than other people's,'
returned Richard. 'Heaven knows whence they have their sharpness.
But suppose it were a heartache now, have you got e'er a charm to
cure that?'

'The best of all charms, my young master, is a kiss from the maiden;
and what would thou give me for the spell that should set her by thy
side at the old dial, under a warm harvest moon, all the long hours
'twixt midnight and the crowing of the black cock--eh, my master?
What wilt thou give me?'

'Not a brass farthing, if she came not of her own good will,'
murmured Richard, turning towards his mare. 'But come, mistress
Rees, you know you couldn't do it, even if you were the black witch
the neighbours would have you--though I, for my part, will not hear
a word against you--never since you set my poor old dog upon his
legs again--though to be sure he will die one of these days, and
that no one can help--dogs have such short lives, poor fools!'

'Thou knows not what old mother Rees can do. Tell me, young master,
did she ever say and not do--eh, now?'

'You said you would cure my dog, and you did,' answered Richard.

'And I say now, if thou will, I will set thee and her together by
the old dial to-morrow night, and it shall be a warm and moonlit
night on purpose for ye, an ye will.'

'It were to no good purpose, mistress Rees, for we parted this
day--and that for ever, I much fear me,' said Richard with a deep
sigh, but getting some little comfort even out of a witch's
sympathy.

'Tut, tut, tut! Lovers' quarrels! Who knows not what they mean?
Crying and kissing--crying and kissing--that's what they mean. Come
now--what did thou and she quarrel about?'

The old woman, if not a witch, at least looked very like one, with
her two hands resting on the wide round ledge of her farthingale,
her head thrown back, and from under her peaked hat that pointed
away behind, her two greenish eyes peering with a half-coaxing, yet
sharp and probing gaze into those of the youth.

But how could he make a confidante of one like her? What could she
understand of such questions as had raised the wall of partition
betwixt him and Dorothy? Unwilling to offend her, however, he
hesitated to give her offer a plain refusal, and turning away in
silence, affected to have caught sight of something suspicious about
his mare's near hock.

'I see, I see!' said the old woman grimly, but not ill-naturedly,
and nodded her head, so that her hat described great arcs across the
sky; 'thou art ashamed to confess that thou lovest thy father's
whims more than thy lady's favours. Well, well! Such lovers are
hardly for my trouble!'

But here came the voice of Mr. Heywood, calling his groom. She
started, glanced around her as if seeking a covert, then peered from
the door, and glided noiselessly out.

CHAPTER VI.

PREPARATIONS.

Great was the merriment in Raglan Castle over the discomfiture of
the bumpkins, and many were the compliments Tom received in parlour,
nursery, kitchen, guard-room, everywhere, on the success of his
hastily-formed scheme for the chastisement of their presumption. The
household had looked for a merry time on the occasion of the
wedding, but had not expected such a full cup of delight as had been
pressed out for them betwixt the self-importance of the overweening
yokels and the inventive faculties of Tom Fool. All the evening, one
standing in any open spot of the castle might have heard, now on the
one, now on the other side, renewed bursts of merriment ripple the
air; but as the still autumn night crept on, the intervals between
grew longer and longer, until at length all sounds ceased, and
silence took up her ancient reign, broken only by the occasional
stamp of a horse or howl of a watch-dog.

But the earl, who, from simplicity of nature and peace of conscience
combined, was perhaps better fitted for the enjoyment of the joke,
in a time when such ludifications were not yet considered unsuitable
to the dignity of the highest position, than any other member of his
household, had, through it all, showed a countenance in which,
although eyes, lips, and voice shared in the laughter, there yet
lurked a thoughtful doubt concerning the result. For he knew that,
in some shape or other, and that certainly not the true one, the
affair would be spread over the country, where now prejudice against
the Catholics was strong and dangerous in proportion to the unreason
of those who cherished it. Now, also, it was becoming pretty plain
that except the king yielded every prerogative, and became the
puppet which the mingled pride and apprehension of the Parliament
would have him, their differences must ere long be referred to the
arbitration of the sword, in which case there was no shadow of doubt
in the mind of the earl as to the part befitting a peer of the
realm. The king was a protestant, but no less the king; and not this
man, but his parents, had sinned in forsaking the church--of which
sin their offspring had now to bear the penalty, reaping the
whirlwind sprung from the stormy seeds by them sown. For what were
the puritans but the lawfully-begotten children of the so called
reformation, whose spirit they inherited, and in whose footsteps
they so closely followed? In the midst of such reflections, dawned
slowly in the mind of the devout old man the enchanting hope that
perhaps he might be made the messenger of God to lead back to the
true fold the wandering feet of his king. But, fail or speed in any
result, so long as his castle held together, it should stand for the
king. Faithful catholic as he was, the brave old man was English to
the backbone.

And there was no time to lose. This visit of search, let it have
originated how it might, and be as despicable in itself as it was
ludicrous in its result, showed but too clearly how strong the
current of popular feeling was setting against all the mounds of
social distinction, and not kingly prerogative alone. What
preparations might be needful, must be prudent.

That same night, then, long after the rest of the household had
retired, three men took advantage of a fine half-moon to make a
circuit of the castle, first along the counterscarp of the moat, and
next along all accessible portions of the walls and battlements.
They halted often, and, with much observation of the defences, held
earnest talk together, sometimes eagerly contending rather than
disputing, but far more often mutually suggesting and agreeing. At
length one of them, whom the others called Caspar, retired, and the
earl was left with his son Edward, lord Herbert, the only person in
the castle who had gone to neither window nor door to delight
himself with the discomfiture of the parliamentary commissioners.

They entered the long picture gallery, faintly lighted from its
large windows to the court, but chiefly from the oriel which formed
the northern end of it, where they now sat down, the earl being, for
the second time that night, weary. Behind them was a long dim line
of portraits, broken only by the great chimney-piece supported by
human figures, all of carved stone, and before them, nearly as dim,
was the moon-massed landscape--a lovely view of the woodland,
pasture, and red tilth to the northward of the castle.

They sat silent for a while, and the younger said:

'I fear you are fatigued, my lord. It is late for you to be out of
bed; nature is mortal.'

'Thou sayest well; nature is mortal, my son. But therein lies the
comfort--it cannot last. It were hard to say whether of the two
houses stands the more in need of the hand of the maker.'

'Were it not for villanous saltpetre, my lord, the castle would hold
out well enough.'

'And were it not for villanous gout, which is a traitor within it, I
see not why this other should not hold out as long. Be sure,
Herbert, I shall not render the keep for the taking of the
outworks.'

'I fear,' said his son, wishing to change the subject, 'this part
where we now are is the most liable to hurt from artillery.'

'Yes, but the ground in front is not such as they would readiest
plant it upon,' said the earl. 'Do not let us forecast evil, only
prepare for it.'

'We shall do our best, my lord--with your lordship's good counsel to
guide us.'

'You shall lack nothing, Herbert, that either counsel or purse of
mine may reach unto.'

'I thank your lordship, for much depends upon both. And so I fear
will his majesty find--if it conies to the worst.'

A brief pause followed.

'Thinkest thou not, Herbert,' said the earl, slowly and
thoughtfully, 'it ill suits that a subject should have and to spare,
and his liege go begging?'

'My father is pleased to say so.'

'I am but evil pleased to say so. Bethink thee, son--what man can be
pleased to part with his money? And while my king is poor, I must be
rich for him. Thou wilt not accuse me, Herbert, after I am gone to
the rest, that I wasted thy substance, lad?'

'So long as you still keep wherewithal to give, I shall be content,
my lord.'

'Well, time will show. I but tell thee what runneth in my mind, for
thou and I, Herbert, have bosomed no secrets. I will to bed. We must
go the round again to-morrow--with the sun to hold as a candle.'

The next day the same party made a similar circuit three times--in
the morning, at noon, and in the evening--that the full light might
uncover what the shadows had hid, and that the shadows might show
what a perpendicular light could not reveal. There is all the
difference as to discovery whether a thing is lying under the shadow
of another, or casting one of its own.

After this came a review of the outer fortifications--if, indeed,
they were worthy of the name--enclosing the gardens, the old tilting
yard, now used as a bowling-green, the home-farmyard, and other such
outlying portions under the stewardship of sir Ralph Blackstone and
the governorship of Charles Somerset, the earl's youngest son. It
was here that the most was wanted; and the next few days were
chiefly spent in surveying these works, and drawing plans for their
extension, strengthening, and connection--especially about the
stables, armourer's shop, and smithy, where the building of new
defences was almost immediately set on foot.

A thorough examination of the machinery of the various portcullises
and drawbridges followed; next an overhauling of the bolts, chains,
and other defences of the gates. Then came an inspection of the
ordnance, from cannons down to drakes, through a gradation of names
as uncouth to our ears, and as unknown to the artillery descended
from them, as many of the Christian names of the puritans are to
their descendants of the present day. At length, to conclude the
inspection, lord Herbert and the master of the armoury held
consultation with the head armourer, and the mighty accumulation of
weapons of all sorts was passed under the most rigid scrutiny; many
of them were sent to the forge, and others carried to the
ground-floor of the keep.

Presently, things began to look busy in a quiet way about the place.
Men were at work blasting the rocks in a quarry not far off, whence
laden carts went creeping to the castle; but this was oftener in the
night. Some of them drove into the paved court, for here and there a
buttress was wanted inside, and of the battlements not a few were
weather-beaten and out of repair. These the earl would have let
alone, on the ground that they were no longer more than ornamental,
and therefore had better be repaired AFTER the siege, if such should
befall, for the big guns would knock them about like cards; but
Caspar reminded him that every time the ball from a cannon,
culvering, or saker missed the parapet, it remained a sufficient bar
to the bullet that might equally avail to carry off the defenceless
gunner. The earl, however, although he yielded, maintained that the
flying of the wall when struck was a more than counterbalancing
danger.

The stock of provisions began to increase. The dry larder, which lay
under the court, between the kitchen and buttery, was by degrees
filled with gammons and flitches of bacon, well dried and smoked.
Wheat, barley, oats, and pease were stored in the granary, and
potatoes in a pit dug in the orchard.

Strange faces in the guard-room caused wonderings and questions
amongst the women. The stables began to fill with horses, and 'more
man' to go about the farmyard and outhouses.

CHAPTER VII.

REFLECTIONS.

Left alone with Lady, his mare, Richard could not help
brooding--rather than pondering--over what the old woman had said.
Not that for a moment he contemplated as a possibility the
acceptance of the witch's offer. To come himself into any such close
relations with her as that would imply, was in repulsiveness second
only to the idea of subjecting Dorothy to her influences. For
something to occupy his hands, that his mind might be restless at
will, he gave his mare a careful currying, then an extra feed of
oats, and then a gallop; after which it was time to go to bed.

I doubt if anything but the consciousness of crime will keep healthy
youth awake, and as such consciousness is generally far from it,
youth seldom counts the watches of the night. Richard soon fell fast
asleep, and dreamed that his patron saint--alas for his
protestantism!--appeared to him, handed him a lance headed with a
single flashing diamond, and told him to go and therewith kill the
dragon. But just as he was asking the way to the dragon's den, that
he might perform his behest, the saint vanished, and feeling the
lance melting away in his grasp, he gradually woke to find it gone.

After a long talk with his father in the study, he was left to his
own resources for the remainder of the day; and as it passed and the
night drew on, the offer of the witch kept growing upon his
imagination, and his longing to see Dorothy became stronger and
stronger, until at last it was almost too intense to be borne. He
had never before known such a possession, and was more than half
inclined to attribute it to the arts of mother Rees.

His father was busy in his study below, writing letters--an
employment which now occupied much of his time; and Richard sat
alone in a chamber in the upper part of one of the many gables of
the house, which he had occupied longer than he could remember. Its
one small projecting lozenge-paned window looked towards Dorothy's
home. Some years ago he had been able to see her window, from it
through a gap in the trees, by favour of which, indeed, they had
indulged in a system of communications by means of coloured
flags--so satisfactory that Dorothy not only pressed into the
service all the old frocks she could find, but got into trouble by
cutting up one almost new for the enlargement of the somewhat
limited scope of their telegraphy. In this window he now sat,
sending his soul through the darkness, milky with the clouded light
of half an old moon, towards the ancient sun-dial, where Time stood
so still that sometimes Richard had known an hour there pass in a
moment.

Never until now had he felt enmity in space: it had been hitherto
rather as a bridge to bear him to Dorothy than a gulf to divide him
from her presence; but now, through the interpenetrative power of
feeling, their alienation had affected all around as well as within
him, and space appeared as a solid enemy, and darkness as an
unfriendly enchantress, each doing what it could to separate betwixt
him and the being to whom his soul was drawn as--no, there was no AS
for such drawing. No opposition of mere circumstances could have
created the feeling; it was the sense of an inward separation taking
form outwardly. For Richard was now but too well convinced that he
had no power of persuasion equal to the task of making Dorothy see
things as he saw them. The dividing influence of imperfect opposing
goods is potent as that of warring good and evil, with this
important difference, that the former is but for a season, and will
one day bind as strongly as it parted, while the latter is
essential, absolute, impassible, eternal.

To Dorothy, Richard seemed guilty of overweening arrogance and its
attendant, presumption; she could not see the form ethereal to which
he bowed. To Richard, Dorothy appeared the dupe of superstition; he
could not see the god that dwelt within the idol. To Dorothy,
Richard seemed to be one who gave the holy name of truth to nothing
but the offspring of his own vain fancy. To Richard, Dorothy
appeared one who so little loved the truth that she was ready to
accept anything presented to her as such, by those who themselves
loved the word more than the spirit, and the chrysalis of safety
better than the wings of power. But it is only for a time that any
good can to the good appear evil, and at this very moment, Nature,
who in her blindness is stronger to bind than the farthest-seeing
intellect to loose, was urging him into her presence; and the heart
of Dorothy, notwithstanding her initiative in the separation, was
leaning as lovingly, as sadly after the youth she had left alone
with the defaced sun-dial, the symbol of Time's weariness. Had they,
however, been permitted to meet as they would, the natural result of
ever-renewed dissension would have been a thorough separation in
heart, no heavenly twilights of loneliness giving time for the love
which grows like the grass to recover from the scorching heat of
intellectual jar and friction.

The waning moon at length peered warily from behind a bank of cloud,
and her dim light melting through the darkness filled the night with
a dream of the day. Richard was no more of a poet or dreamer of
dreams than is any honest youth so long as love holds the bandage of
custom away from his eyes. The poets are they who all their life
long contrive to see over or through the bandage; but they would, I
doubt, have but few readers, had not nature decreed that all youths
and maidens shall, for a period, be it long or short, become aware
that they too are of the race of the singers--shall, in the journey
of their life, at least pass through the zone of song: some of them
recognise it as the region of truth, and continue to believe in it
still when it seems to have vanished from around them; others scoff
as it disappears, and curse themselves for dupes. Through this zone
Richard was now passing. Hence the moon wore to him a sorrowful
face, and he felt a vague sympathy in her regard, that of one who
was herself in trouble, half the light of her lord's countenance
withdrawn. For science had not for him interfered with the shows of
things by a partial revelation of their realities. He had not
learned that the face of the moon is the face of a corpse-world;
that the sadness upon it is the sadness of utter loss; that her
light has in it no dissolved smile, is but the reflex from a
lifeless mirror; that of all the orbs we know best she can have
least to do with lovers' longings and losses, she alone having no
love left in her--the cold cinder of a quenched world. Not an
out-burnt cinder, though! she needs but to be cast again into the
furnace of the sun.

As it was, Richard had gazed at her hardly for a minute when he
found the tears running down his face, and starting up, ashamed of
the unmanly weakness, hardly knew what he was doing before he found
himself in the open air. From the hall clock came the first stroke
of twelve as he closed the door behind him. It was the hour at which
mother Rees had offered him a meeting with Dorothy; but it was
assuredly with no expectation of seeing her that he turned his steps
towards her dwelling.

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