St. George and St. Michael

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When Caspar saw what was going on, he judged it prudent to turn and
drive his cart into the quarry, and having there secured it, went
back and entered the castle. There was a great divided torrent of
humanity rushing and lingering through the various lines of rooms,
here meeting in whirlpools, there parted into mere rivulets--man and
woman searching for whatever might look valuable in his or her eyes.
Things that nowadays would fetch their weight in silver, some of
them even in gold, were passed by as worthless, or popped into a bag
to be carried home for the amusement of cottage children. The noises
of hobnailed shoes on the oak floors, and of unrestrained clownish
and churlish voices everywhere, were tremendous. Here a fat cottager
might be seen standing on a lovely quilt of patchwork brocade,
pulling down, rough in her cupidity, curtains on which the new-born
and dying eyes of generations of nobles had rested, henceforth to
adorn a miserable cottage, while her husband was taking down the
bed, larger perhaps, than the room itself in which they would in
vain try to set it up, or cruelly forcing a lid, which, having a
spring lock, had closed again after the carved chest had been
already rifled by the commissioner or his men. The kitchen was full
of squabbling women, and the whole place in the agonies of
dissolution. But there was a small group of persons, fortuitously
met, but linked together by an old painful memory of the place
itself, strongly revived by their present meeting, to whom a
fanatical hatred of everything catholic, coupled with a profound
sense of personal injury, had prevailed over avarice, causing them
to leave the part of acquisition to their wives, and aspire to that
of pure destruction. It was the same company, almost to a man, whose
misadventures in their search of Raglan for arms, under the
misguidance of Tom Fool, I have related in an early chapter. In
their hearts they nursed a half-persuasion that Raglan had fallen
because of their wrongs within its walls, and the shame that there
had been heaped upon the godly.

These men, happening to meet, as I say, in the midst of the
surrounding tumult, had fallen into a conversation chiefly occupied
with reminiscences of that awful experience, whose terrors now
looked like an evil dream, and, in a place thus crowded with men and
women, buzzing with voices, and resounding with feet, as little
likely to return as a vanished thundercloud. In the course of their
conversation, therefore, they grew valiant; grew conscious next of a
high calling, and resolved therewith to take to themselves the
honour of giving the first sweep of the besom of destruction to
Raglan Castle. Satisfying themselves first therefore that their
wives were doing their duty for their household,--mistress Upstill
was as good as two men at least at appropriation,--they set out,
Cast-down taking the lead, master Sycamore, John Croning, and the
rest following, armed with crowbars, for the top of the great tower,
ambitious to commence the overthrow by attacking the very summit,
the high places of wickedness, the crown of pride; and after some
devious wandering, at length found the way to the stair.

When Caspar Kaltoff entered the castle, he made straight for the
keep, and to his delight found no one in the lower part. To make
certain however that he was alone in the place, ere he secured
himself from intrusion, he ran up the stair, gave a glance at the
doors as he ran, and reached the top just as Upstill in fierce
discrowning pride was heaving the first capstone from between two
battlements. Casper was close by the cocks; instantly he turned one,
and as the dislodged stone struck the water of the moat, a sudden
hollow roaring invaded their ears, and while they stood aghast at
the well-remembered sound, and ere yet the marrow had time to freeze
in their stupid bones, the very moat itself into which they had cast
the insulted stone, storming and spouting, seemed to come rushing up
to avenge it upon them were they stood. The moment he turned the
cock, Casper shot half-way down the stair, but as quietly as he
could, and into a little chamber in the wall, where stood two great
vessels through which the pipes of the fire-engine inside had
communicated with the pipes in the wall outside. There he waited
until the steps which, long before he reached his refuge, he heard
come thundering down the stairs after him, had passed in headlong
haste, when he sprang up again to save the water for another end,
and to attach the drawbridge to the sluice, so that it would raise
it to its full height. Then he hurried down to the water trap under
the bridge and set it, after which he could hardly help wasting a
little of his precious time, lurking in a convenient corner to watch
the result.

He had not to wait long. The shrieks of the yokels as they ran, and
their looks of horror when they appeared, quickly gathered around
them a gaping crowd to hear their tale, the more foolhardy in which,
partly doubting their word, for the fountains no longer played, and
partly ambitious of showing their superior courage, rushed to the
Gothic bridge. Down came the drawbridge with a clang, and with it in
sheer descent a torrent of water fit to sweep a regiment away, which
shot along the stone bridge and dashed them from it bruised and
bleeding, and half drowned with the water which in their terror and
surprise found easy way into their bodies. Casper withdrew
satisfied, for he now felt sure of all the time he required to get
some other things he had thought of saving down into the shaft with
the cabinet and chest.

Having effected this, and with much labour and difficulty, aided by
rollers, got all into the quarry and then into the cart, he did not
resist the temptation to go again amongst the crowd, and enjoy
listening to the various remarks and conjectures and terrors to
which doubtless his trick had given rise. He therefore got a great
armful of trampled corn from the field above, and laid it before his
patient horse, then ran round and re-entered the castle by the main
gate.

He had not been in the crowd many minutes, however, when he saw
indications of suspicion ripening to conviction. What had given
ground for it he could not tell, but at some point he must have been
seen on the other side of the tower-moat. All this time Upstill and
his party had been recounting with various embellishment their
adventures both former and latter, and when Kaltoff was recognised,
or at least suspected in the crowd, the rumour presently arose and
spread that he was either the devil himself, or an accredited agent
of that potentate.

'Be it then the old Satan himself?' Caspar heard a man say anxiously
to his neighbour, as he tried to get a look at his feet, which was
not easy in such a press. Caspar, highly amused, and thinking such
evil reputation would rather protect than injure him, showed some
anxiety about his feet, and made as if he would fain keep them out
of the field of observation. But thereupon he saw the faces and
gestures of the younger men begin to grow threatening; evidently
anger was succeeding to fear, and some of them, fired with the
ambition possibly of thrashing the devil, ventured to give him a
rough shove or two from behind. Neither outbreak of sulphurous
flashes nor even kick of cloven hoof following, they proceeded with
the game, and rapidly advanced to such extremities, expostulation in
Caspar's broken English, for such in excitement it always became,
seeming only to act as fresh incitement and justification, that at
length he was compelled in self-defence to draw a dagger. This
checked them a little, and ere audacity had had time to recover
itself, a young man came shoving through the crowd, pushing them all
right and left until he reached Caspar, and stood by his side. Now
there was that about Richard Heywood to give him influence with a
crowd: he was a strong man and a gentleman, and they drew back.

'De fools dink I was de tuyfel!' said Caspar.

Richard turned upon them with indignation.

'You Englishmen!' he cried, 'and treat a foreigner thus!'

But there was nothing about him to show that he was a roundhead, and
from behind rose the cry: 'A malignant! A royalist!' and the fellows
near began again to advance threateningly.

'Mr. Heywood,' said Caspar hurriedly, for he recognised his helper
from the time he had seen him a prisoner, 'let us make for the hall.
I know the place and can bring us both off safe.'

It was one of Richard's greatest virtues that he could place much
confidence. He gave one glance at his companion, and said, 'I will
do as thou sayest.'

'Follow me then, sir,' said Caspar, and turning with brandished
dagger, he forced his way to the hall-door, Richard following with
fists, his sole weapons, defending their rear.

There were but few in the hall, and although their enemies came
raging after them, they were impeded by the crowd, so that there was
time as they crossed it for Caspar to say:

'Follow me over the bridge, but, for God's sake, put your feet
exactly where I put mine as we cross. You will see why in a moment
after.'

'I will,' said Richard, and, delayed a little by needful care,
gained the other side just as the foremost of their pursuers rushed
on the bridge, and with a clang and a roar were swept from it by the
descending torrent.

They lost no time in explanations. Caspar hurried Richard to the
workshop, down the shaft, through the passage, and into the quarry,
whence, taking no notice of his cart, he went with him to the White
Horse, where Lady was waiting him.

And Richard was well rewarded for the kindness he had shown, for ere
they said good bye, the German, whose heart was full of Dorothy, and
understood, as indeed every one in the castle did, something of her
relation to Richard, had told him all he knew about her life in the
castle, and how she had been both before and during the siege a
guardian angel, as the marquis himself had said, to Raglan. Nor was
the story of her attempted visit to her old playfellow in the turret
chamber, or the sufferings she had to endure in consequence,
forgotten; and when Caspar and he parted, Richard rode home with
fresh strength and light and love in his heart, and Lady shared in
them all somehow, for she constantly reflected, or imaged rather,
the moods of her master. As much as ever he believed Dorothy
mistaken, and yet could have kneeled in reverence before her. He had
himself tried to do the truth, and no one but he who tries to do the
truth can perceive the grandeur of another who does the same. Alive
to his own shortcomings, such a one the better understands the
success of his brother or sister: there the truth takes to him
shape, and he worships at her shrine. He saw more clearly than
before what he had been learning ever since she had renounced him,
that it is not correctness of opinion--could he be SURE that his
own opinions were correct?--that constitutes rightness, but that
condition of soul which, as a matter of course, causes it to move
along the lines of truth and duty--the LIFE going forth in motion
according to the law of light: this alone places a nature in harmony
with the central Truth. It was in the doing of the will of his
Father that Jesus was the son of God--yea the eternal son of the
eternal Father.

Nor was this to make little of the truth intellectually
considered--of the FACT of things. The greatest fact of all is that
we are bound to obey the truth, and that to the full extent of our
knowledge thereof, however LITTLE that may be. This obligation
acknowledged and OBEYED, the road is open to all truth--and the ONLY
road. The way to know is to do the known.

Then why, thought Richard with himself, should he and Dorothy be
parted? Why should Dorothy imagine they should? All depended on
their common magnanimity, not the magnanimity that pardons faults,
but the magnanimity that recognises virtues. He who gladly kneels
with one who thinks largely wide from himself, in so doing draws
nearer to the Father of both than he who pours forth his soul in
sympathetic torrent only in the company of those who think like
himself. If a man be of the truth, then and only then is he of those
who gather with the Lord.

In forms natural to the age and his individual thought, if not
altogether in such as I have here put down, Richard thus fashioned
his insights as he sauntered home upon Lady, his head above the
clouds, and his heart higher than his head--as it ought to be once
or twice a day at least. Poor indeed is any worldly success compared
to a moment's breathing in divine air, above the region where the
miserable word SUCCESS yet carries a meaning.

CHAPTER LVII.

THE SKELETON.

The death of the marquis took place in December, long before which
time the second marquis of Worcester, ever busy in the king's
affairs, and unable to show himself with safety in England, or there
be useful, had gone from Ireland to Paris.

As the country was now a good deal quieter, and there was nothing to
detain her in London, and much to draw her to Wyfern, Dorothy
resolved to go home, and there, if possible, remain. Indeed, there
was now nothing else she could well do, except visit Mr. Herbert at
Llangattock. But much as she revered and loved the old man, and
would have enjoyed his company, she felt now such a longing for
activity, that she must go and look after her affairs. What with the
words of the good marquis and her own late experiences and
conflicts, Dorothy had gained much enlightenment. She had learned
that well-being is a condition of inward calm, resting upon yet
deeper harmonies of being, and resulting in serene activity, the
prevention of which natural result reacts in perturbation and
confusion of thought and feeling. But for many sakes the thought of
home was in itself precious and enticing to her. It was full of
clear memories of her mother, and vague memories of her father, not
to mention memories of the childhood Richard and she had spent
together, from which the late mists had begun to rise, and reveal
them sparkling with dew and sunshine. As soon, therefore, as marquis
Henry had gone to countess Anne, Dorothy took her leave, with many
kind words between, of the ladies Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary, and set
out, attended by her old bailiff and some of the men of her small
tenantry, who having fought the king's battle in vain, had gone home
again to fight their own.

At Wyfern she found everything in rigid order, almost cataleptic
repose. How was it ever to be home again? What new thing could
restore the homefulness where the revered over-life had vanished?
And how shall the world be warmed and brightened to him who knows no
greater or better man than himself therein--no more skilful workman,
no diviner thinker, no more godlike doer than himself? And what can
the universe have in it of home, of country, nay even of world, to
him who cannot believe in a soul of souls, a heart of hearts? I
should fall out with the very beating of the heart within my bosom,
did I not believe it the pulse of the infinite heart, for how else
should it be heart of MINE? I made it not, and any moment it may
SEEM to fail me, yet never, if it be what I think it, can it betray
me. It is no wonder then, that, with only memories of what had been
to render it lovely in her eyes, Dorothy should have soon begun to
feel the place lonely.

The very next morning after her rather late arrival, she sent to
saddle Dick once more, called Marquis, and with no other attendant,
set out to see what they had done to dear old Raglan. Marquis had
been chained up almost all the time they were in London, and freedom
is blessed even to a dog: Dick was ever joyful under his mistress,
and now was merry with the keen invigorating air of a frosty
December morning, and frolicsome amidst the early snow, which lay
unusually thick on the ground, notwithstanding his hundred and
twenty miles' ride, for they had taken nearly a week to do it; so
that between them they soon raised Dorothy's spirits also, and she
turned to her hopes, and grew cheerful.

This mood made her the less prepared to encounter the change that
awaited her. What a change it was! While she approached, what with
the trees left, and the towers, the rampart, and the outer shell of
the courts--little injured to the distant eye, she had not an idea
of the devastation within. But when she rode through one entrance
after another with the gates torn from their hinges, crossed the
moat by a mound of earth instead of the drawbridge, and rode through
the open gateway, where the portcullises were wedged up in their
grooves and their chains gone, into the paved court, she beheld a
desolation, at sight of which her heart seemed to stand still in her
bosom. The rugged horror of the heaps of ruins was indeed softly
covered with snow, but what this took from the desolation in
harshness, it added in coldness and desertion and hopelessness. She
felt like one who looks for the corpse of his friend, and finds but
his skeleton.

The broken bones of the house projected gaunt and ragged. Its eyes
returned no shine--they did not even stare, for not a pane of glass
was left in a window: they were but eye-holes, black and blank with
shadow and no-ness. The roofs were gone--all but that of the great
hall, which they had not dared to touch. She climbed the grand
staircase, open to the wind and slippery with ice, and reached her
own room. Snow lay on the floor, which had swollen and burst upwards
with November rains. Through room after room she wandered with a
sense of loneliness and desolation and desertion such as never
before had she known, even in her worst dreams. Yet was there to
her, in the midst of her sorrow and loss, a strange fascination in
the scene. Such a hive of burning human life now cold and silent!
Even Marquis appeared aware of the change, for with tucked-in tail
he went about sadly sniffing, and gazing up and down. Once indeed,
and only once, he turned his face to the heavens, and gave a strange
protesting howl, which made Dorothy weep, and a little relieved her
oppressed heart.

She would go and see the workshop. On the way, she would first visit
the turret chamber. But so strangely had destruction altered the
look of what it had spared, that it was with difficulty she
recognised the doors and ways of the house she had once known so
well. Here was a great hole to the shining snow where once had been
a dark corner; there a heap of stones where once had been a carpeted
corridor. All the human look of indwelling had past away. Where she
had been used to go about as if by instinct, she had now to fall
back upon memory, and call up again, with an effort sometimes
painful in its difficulty, that which had vanished altogether except
from the minds of its scattered household.

She found the door of the turret chamber, but that was all she
found: the chamber was gone. Nothing was there but the blank gap in
the wall, and beyond it, far down, the nearly empty moat of the
tower. She turned, frightened and sick at heart, and made her way to
the bridge. That still stood, but the drawbridge above was gone.

She crossed the moat and entered the workshop. A single glance took
in all that was left of the keep. Not a floor was between her and
the sky! The reservoir, great as a little mountain-tarn, had
vanished utterly! All was cleared out; and the white wintry clouds
were sailing over her head. Nearly a third part of the walls had
been brought within a few feet of the ground. The furnace was
gone--all but its mason-work. It was like the change of centuries
rather than months. The castle had half-melted away. Its idea was
blotted out, save from the human spirit. She turned from the
workshop, in positive pain of body at the sight, and wandered she
hardly knew whither, till she found herself in lady Glamorgan's
parlour. There was left a single broken chair: she sat down on it,
closed her eyes, and laid back her head.

She opened them with a slight start: there stood Richard a yard or
two away.

He had heard of her return, and gone at once to Wyfern. There
learning whither she had betaken herself, he had followed, and
tracking what of her footsteps he could discover, had at length
found her.

CHAPTER LVIII.

LOVE AND NO LEASING.

Their eyes met in the flashes of a double sunrise. Their hands met,
but the hand of each grasped the heart of the other. Two honester
purer souls never looked out of their windows with meeting gaze. Had
there been no bodies to divide them, they would have mingled in a
rapture of faith and high content.

The desolation was gone; the desert bloomed and blossomed as the
rose. To Dorothy it was for a moment as if Raglan were rebuilt; the
ruin and the winter had vanished before the creative, therefore
prophetic throb of the heart of love; then her eyes fell, not
defeated by those of the youth, for Dorothy's faith gave her a
boldness that was lovely even against the foil of maidenly reserve,
but beaten down by conscience: the words of the marquis shot like an
arrow into her memory: 'Love outlives all but leasing,' and her eyes
fell before Richard's.

But Richard imagined that something in his look had displeased her,
and was ashamed, for he had ever been, and ever would be, sensitive
as a child to rebuke. Even when it was mistaken or unjust he would
always find within him some ground whereon it MIGHT have alighted.

'Forgive me, Dorothy,' he said, supposing she had found his look
presumptuous.

'Nay, Richard,' returned Dorothy, with her eyes fast on the ground,
whence it seemed rosy mists came rising through her, 'I know no
cause wherefore thou shouldst ask me to forgive thee, but I do know,
although thou knowest not, good cause wherefore I should ask thee to
forgive me. Richard, I will tell thee the truth, and thou wilt tell
me again how I might have shunned doing amiss, and how far my lie
was an evil thing.'

'Lie, Dorothy! Thou hast never lied!'

'Hear me, Richard, first, and then judge. Thou rememberest I did
tell thee that night as we talked in the field, that I had about me
no missives: the word was true, but its purport was false. When I
said that, thou didst hold in thy hand my comb, wherein were
concealed certain papers in cipher.'

'Oh thou cunning one!' cried Richard, half reproachfully, half
humorously, but the amusement overtopped the seriousness.

'My heart did reproach me; but Richard, what WAS I to do?'

'Wherefore did thy heart reproach thee, Dorothy?'

'That I told a falsehood--that I told THEE a falsehood, Richard.'

'Then had it been Upstill, thou wouldst not have minded?'

'Upstill! I would never have told Upstill a falsehood. I would have
beaten him first.'

'Then thou didst think it better to tell a falsehood to me than to
Upstill?'

'I would rather sin against thee, an' it were a sin, Richard. Were
it wrong to think I would rather be in thy hands, sin or none, or
sin and all, than in those of a mean-spirited knave whom I despised?
Besides I might one day, somehow or other, make it up to thee--but I
could not to him. But was it sin, Richard?--tell me that. I have
thought and thought over the matter until my mind is maze. Thou
seest it was my lord marquis's business, not mine, and thou hadst no
right in the matter.'

'Prithee, Dorothy, ask not me to judge.'

'Art thou then so angry with me that thou will not help me to judge
myself aright?'

'Not so, Dorothy, but there is one command in the New Testament for
the which I am often more thankful than for any other.'

'What is that, Richard.'

'JUDGE NOT. Prythee, between whom lieth the quarrel, Dorothy?
Bethink thee.'

'Between thee and me, Richard.'

'No, verily, Dorothy. I accuse thee not.'

Dorothy was silent for a moment, thinking.

'I see, Richard,' she said. 'It lieth between me and my own
conscience.'

'Then who am I, Dorothy, that I should dare step betwixt thee and
thy conscience? God forbid. That were a presumption deserving indeed
the pains of hell.'

'But if my conscience and I seek a daysman betwixt us?'

'Mortal man can never be that daysman, Dorothy. Nay, an' thou need
an umpire, thou must seek to him who brought thee and thy conscience
together and told thee to agree. Let God, over all and in all, tell
thee whether or no thou wert wrong. For me, I dare not. Believe me,
Dorothy, it is sheer presumption for one man to intermeddle with the
things that belong to the spirit of another man.'

'But these are only the things of a woman,' said Dorothy, in pure
childish humility born of love.

'Sure, Dorothy, thou wouldst not jest in such sober matters.'

'God forbid, Richard! I but spoke that which was in me. I see now it
was foolishness.'

'All a man can do in this matter of judgment,' said Richard, 'is to
lead his fellow man, if so be he can, up to the judgment of God. He
must never dare judge him for himself. An' thou cannot tell whether
thou did well or ill in what thou didst, thou shouldst not vex thy
soul. God is thy refuge--even from the wrongs of thine own judgment.
Pray to him to let thee know the truth, that if needful thou mayst
repent. Be patient and not sorrowful until he show thee. Nor fear
that he will judge thee harshly because he must judge thee truly.
That were to wrong God. Trust in him even when thou fearest wrong in
thyself, for he will deliver thee therefrom.'

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