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St. George and St. Michael

by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #5753 · 919,232 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: St. George and St. Michael

Author: George MacDonald


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5753]
                Most recently updated: June 21, 2011

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Distributed Proofreading Team








ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL

BY GEORGE MACDONALD

IN THREE VOLUMES

LONDON

1876




CONTENTS OF VOL. I.


CHAPTER I. DOROTHY AND RICHARD.

CHAPTER II. RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.

CHAPTER III. THE WITCH.

CHAPTER IV. A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.

CHAPTER V. ANIMADVERSIONS.

CHAPTER VI. PREPARATIONS.

CHAPTER VII. REFLECTIONS.

CHAPTER VIII. AN ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER IX. LOVE AND WAR.

CHAPTER X. DOROTHY'S REFUGE.

CHAPTER XI. RAGLAN CASTLE.

CHAPTER XII. THE TWO MARQUISES.

CHAPTER XIII. THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.

CHAPTER XIV. SEVERAL PEOPLE.

CHAPTER XV. HUSBAND AND WIFE.

CHAPTER XVI. DOROTHY'S INITIATION.




CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


CHAPTER XVII. THE FIRE-ENGINE.

CHAPTER XVIII. MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOSSOMS.

CHAPTER XIX. THE ENCHANTED CHAIR.

CHAPTER XX. MOLLY AND THE WHITE HORSE.

CHAPTER XXI. THE DAMSEL WHICH FELL SICK.

CHAPTER XXII. THE CATARACT.

CHAPTER XXIII. AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE GREAT MOGUL.

CHAPTER XXV. RICHARD HEYWOOD.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE WITCH'S COTTAGE.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE MOAT OF THE KEEP.

CHAPTER XXVIII. RAGLAN STABLES.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE APPARITION.

CHAPTER XXX. RICHARD AND THE MARQUIS.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE SLEEPLESS.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE TURRET CHAMBER.

CHAPTER XXXIII. JUDGE GOUT.

CHAPTER XXXIV. AN EVIL TIME.

CHAPTER XXXV. THE DELIVERER.

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE DISCOVERY.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE HOROSCOPE.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE EXORCISM.




CONTENTS OF VOL. III.


CHAPTER XXXIX. NEWBURY.

CHAPTER XL. DOROTHY AND ROWLAND.

CHAPTER XLI. GLAMORGAN.

CHAPTER XLII. A NEW SOLDIER.

CHAPTER XLIII. LADY AND BISHOP.

CHAPTER XLIV. THE KING.

CHAPTER XLV. THE SECRET INTERVIEW.

CHAPTER XLVI. GIFTS OF HEALING.

CHAPTER XLVII. THE POET-PHYSICIAN.

CHAPTER XLVIII. HONOURABLE DISGRACE.

CHAPTER XLIX. SIEGE.

CHAPTER L. A SALLY.

CHAPTER LI. UNDER THE MOAT.

CHAPTER LII. THE UNTOOTHSOME PLUM.

CHAPTER LIII. FAITHFUL FOES.

CHAPTER LIV. DOMUS DISSOLVITUR.

CHAPTER LV. R. I. P.

CHAPTER LVI. RICHARD AND CASPAR.

CHAPTER LVII. THE SKELETON.

CHAPTER LVIII. LOVE AND NO LEASING.

CHAPTER LIX. AVE! VALE! SALVE!




ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL.




CHAPTER I.

DOROTHY AND RICHARD.


It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the
lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the slowly
gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung trickling to
the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape beyond, whither the
eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in the distance, which the
dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers bordering the little lawn, or
the honeysuckle covering the wide porch, from which the slow rain
dropped ceaselessly upon the pebble-paving below, could not give--steepy
slopes, hedge-divided into small fields, some green and dotted with red
cattle, others crowded with shocks of bedraggled and drooping corn,
which looked suffering and patient.

The room to which the window having this prospect belonged was large and
low, with a dark floor of uncarpeted oak. It opened immediately upon the
porch, and although a good fire of logs blazed on the hearth, was chilly
to the sense of the old man, who, with his feet on the skin of a
fallow-deer, sat gazing sadly into the flames, which shone rosy through
the thin hands spread out before them. At the opposite corner of the
great low-arched chimney sat a lady past the prime of life, but still
beautiful, though the beauty was all but merged in the loveliness that
rises from the heart to the face of such as have taken the greatest step
in life--that is, as the old proverb says, the step out of doors. She
was plainly yet rather richly dressed, in garments of an old-fashioned
and well-preserved look. Her hair was cut short above her forehead, and
frizzed out in bunches of little curls on each side. On her head was a
covering of dark stuff, like a nun's veil, which fell behind and on her
shoulders. Close round her neck was a string of amber beads, that gave a
soft harmonious light to her complexion. Her dark eyes looked as if they
found repose there, so quietly did they rest on the face of the old man,
who was plainly a clergyman. It was a small, pale, thin, delicately and
symmetrically formed face, yet not the less a strong one, with endurance
on the somewhat sad brow, and force in the closed lips, while a good
conscience looked clear out of the grey eyes.

They had been talking about the fast-gathering tide of opinion which,
driven on by the wind of words, had already begun to beat so furiously
against the moles and ramparts of Church and kingdom. The execution of
lord Strafford was news that had not yet begun to 'hiss the speaker.'

'It is indeed an evil time,' said the old man. 'The world has seldom
seen its like.'

'But tell me, master Herbert,' said the lady, 'why comes it in this our
day? For our sins or for the sins of our fathers?'

'Be it far from me to presume to set forth the ways of Providence!'
returned her guest. 'I meddle not, like some that should be wiser, with
the calling of the prophet. It is enough for me to know that ever and
again the pride of man will gather to "a mighty and a fearful head,"
and, like a swollen mill-pond overfed of rains, burst the banks that
confine it, whether they be the laws of the land or the ordinances of
the church, usurping on the fruitful meadows, the hope of life for man
and beast. Alas!' he went on, with a new suggestion from the image he
had been using, 'if the beginning of strife be as the letting out of
water, what shall be the end of that strife whose beginning is the
letting out of blood?'

'Think you then, good sir, that thus it has always been? that such times
of fierce ungodly tempest must ever follow upon seasons of peace and
comfort?--even as your cousin of holy memory, in his verses concerning
the church militant, writes:

    "Thus also sin and darkness follow still
     The church and sun, with all their power and skill."'

'Truly it seems so. But I thank God the days of my pilgrimage are nearly
numbered. To judge by the tokens the wise man gives us, the mourners are
already going about my streets. The almond-tree flourisheth at least.'

He smiled as he spoke, laying his hand on his grey head.

'But think of those whom we must leave behind us, master Herbert. How
will it fare with them?' said the lady in troubled tone, and glancing in
the direction of the window.

In the window sat a girl, gazing from it with the look of a child who
had uttered all her incantations, and could imagine no abatement in the
steady rain-pour.

'We shall leave behind us strong hearts and sound heads too,' said Mr.
Herbert. 'And I bethink me there will be none stronger or sounder than
those of your young cousins, my late pupils, of whom I hear brave things
from Oxford, and in whose affection my spirit constantly rejoices.'

'You will be glad to hear such good news of your relatives, Dorothy,'
said the lady, addressing her daughter.

Even as she said the words, the setting sun broke through the mass of
grey cloud, and poured over the earth a level flood of radiance, in
which the red wheat glowed, and the drops that hung on every ear flashed
like diamonds. The girl's hair caught it as she turned her face to
answer her mother, and an aureole of brown-tinted gold gleamed for a
moment about her head.

'I am glad that you are pleased, madam, but you know I have never seen
them--or heard of them, except from master Herbert, who has, indeed,
often spoke rare things of them.'

'Mistress Dorothy will still know the reason why,' said the clergyman,
smiling, and the two resumed their conversation. But the girl rose, and,
turning again to the window, stood for a moment rapt in the
transfiguration passing upon the world. The vault of grey was utterly
shattered, but, gathering glory from ruin, was hurrying in rosy masses
away from under the loftier vault of blue. The ordered shocks upon
twenty fields sent their long purple shadows across the flush; and the
evening wind, like the sighing that follows departed tears, was shaking
the jewels from their feathery tops. The sunflowers and hollyhocks no
longer cowered under the tyranny of the rain, but bowed beneath the
weight of the gems that adorned them. A flame burned as upon an altar on
the top of every tree, and the very pools that lay on the distant road
had their message of light to give to the hopeless earth. As she gazed,
another hue than that of the sunset, yet rosy too, gradually flushed the
face of the maiden. She turned suddenly from the window, and left the
room, shaking a shower of diamonds from the honeysuckle as she passed
out through the porch upon the gravel walk.

Possibly her elders found her departure a relief, for although they took
no notice of it, their talk became more confidential, and was soon
mingled with many names both of rank and note, with a familiarity which
to a stranger might have seemed out of keeping with the humbler
character of their surroundings.

But when Dorothy Vaughan had passed a corner of the house to another
garden more ancient in aspect, and in some things quaint even to
grotesqueness, she was in front of a portion of the house which
indicated a far statelier past--closed and done with, like the rooms
within those shuttered windows. The inhabited wing she had left looked
like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land; nor did this
appearance greatly belie the present position of the family. For
generations it had been slowly descending in the scale of worldly
account, and the small portion of the house occupied by the widow and
daughter of sir Ringwood Vaughan was larger than their means could match
with correspondent outlay. Such, however, was the character of lady
Vaughan, that, although she mingled little with the great families in
the neighbourhood, she was so much respected, that she would have been a
welcome visitor to most of them.

The reverend Mr. Matthew Herbert was a clergyman from the Welsh border,
a man of some note and influence, who had been the personal friend both
of his late relative George Herbert and of the famous Dr. Donne.
Strongly attached to the English church, and recoiling with disgust from
the practices of the puritans--as much, perhaps, from refinement of
taste as abhorrence of schism--he had never yet fallen into such a
passion for episcopacy as to feel any cordiality towards the schemes of
the archbishop. To those who knew him his silence concerning it was a
louder protest against the policy of Laud than the fiercest
denunciations of the puritans. Once only had he been heard to utter
himself unguardedly in respect of the primate, and that was amongst
friends, and after the second glass permitted of his cousin George.
'Tut! laud me no Laud,' he said. 'A skipping bishop is worse than a
skipping king.' Once also he had been overheard murmuring to himself by
way of consolement, 'Bishops pass; the church remains.' He had been a
great friend of the late sir Ringwood; and although the distance from
his parish was too great to be travelled often, he seldom let a year go
by without paying a visit to his friend's widow and daughter.

Turning her back on the cenotaph of their former greatness, Dorothy
dived into a long pleached alley, careless of the drip from overhead,
and hurrying through it came to a circular patch of thin grass, rounded
by a lofty hedge of yew-trees, in the midst of which stood what had once
been a sun-dial. It mattered little, however, that only the stump of a
gnomon was left, seeing the hedge around it had grown to such a height
in relation to the diameter of the circle, that it was only for a very
brief hour or so in the middle of a summer's day, when, of all periods,
the passage of Time seems least to concern humanity, that it could have
served to measure his march. The spot had, indeed, a time-forsaken look,
as if it lay buried in the bosom of the past, and the present had
forgotten it.

Before emerging from the alley, she slackened her pace, half-stopped,
and, stooping a little in her tucked-up skirt, threw a bird-like glance
around the opener space; then stepping into it, she looked up to the
little disc of sky, across which the clouds, their roses already
withered, sailed dim and grey once more, while behind them the stars
were beginning to recall their half-forgotten message from regions
unknown to men. A moment, and she went up to the dial, stood there for
another moment, and was on the point of turning to leave the spot, when,
as if with one great bound, a youth stood between her and the entrance
of the alley.

'Ah ha, mistress Dorothy, you do not escape me so!' he cried, spreading
out his arms as if to turn back some runaway creature.

But mistress Dorothy was startled, and mistress Dorothy did not choose
to be startled, and therefore mistress Dorothy was dignified, if not
angry.

'I do not like such behaviour, Richard,' she said. 'It ill suits with
the time. Why did you hide behind the hedge, and then leap forth so
rudely?'

'I thought you saw me,' answered the youth. 'Pardon my heedlessness,
Dorothy. I hope I have not startled you too much.'

As he spoke he stooped over the hand he had caught, and would have
carried it to his lips, but the girl, half-pettishly, snatched it away,
and, with a strange mixture of dignity, sadness, and annoyance in her
tone, said--

'There has been something too much of this, Richard, and I begin to be
ashamed of it.'

'Ashamed!' echoed the youth. 'Of what? There is nothing but me to be
ashamed of, and what can I have done since yesterday?'

'No, Richard; I am not ashamed of you, but I am ashamed of--of--this way
of meeting--and--and----'

'Surely that is strange, when we can no more remember the day in which
we have not met than that in which we met first! No, dear Dorothy----'

'It is not our meeting, Richard; and if you would but think as honestly
as you speak, you would not require to lay upon me the burden of
explanation. It is this foolish way we have got into of late--kissing
hands--and--and--always meeting by the old sun-dial, or in some other
over-quiet spot. Why do you not come to the house? My mother would give
you the same welcome as any time these last--how many years, Richard?'

'Are you quite sure of that, Dorothy?'

'Well--I did fancy she spoke with something more of ceremony the last
time you met. But, consider, she has seen so much less of you of late.
Yet I am sure she has all but a mother's love in her heart towards you.
For your mother was dear to her as her own soul.'

'I would it were so, Dorothy! For then, perhaps, your mother would not
shrink from being my mother too. When we are married, Dorothy--'

'Married!' exclaimed the girl. 'What of marrying, indeed!' And she
turned sideways from him with an indignant motion. 'Richard,' she went
on, after a marked and yet but momentary pause, for the youth had not
had time to say a word, 'it has been very wrong in me to meet you after
this fashion. I know it now, for see what such things lead to! If you
knew it, you have done me wrong.'

'Dearest Dorothy!' exclaimed the youth, taking her hand again, of which
this time she seemed hardly aware, 'did you not know from the very
vanished first that I loved you with all my heart, and that to tell you
so would have been to tell the sun that he shines warm at noon in
midsummer? And I did think you had a little--something for me, Dorothy,
your old playmate, that you did not give to every other acquaintance.
Think of the houses we have built and the caves we have dug together--of
our rabbits, and urchins, and pigeons, and peacocks!'

'We are children no longer,' returned Dorothy. 'To behave as if we were
would be to keep our eyes shut after we are awake. I like you, Richard,
you know; but why this--where is the use of all this--new sort of thing?
Come up with me to the house, where master Herbert is now talking to my
mother in the large parlour. The good man will be glad to see you.'

'I doubt it, Dorothy. He and my father, as I am given to understand,
think so differently in respect of affairs now pending betwixt the
parliament and the king, that--'

'It were more becoming, Richard, if the door of your lips opened to the
king first, and let the parliament follow.'

'Well said!' returned the youth with a smile. 'But let it be my excuse
that I speak as I am wont to hear.'

The girl's hand had lain quiet in that of the youth, but now it started
from it like a scared bird. She stepped two paces back, and drew herself
up.

'And you, Richard?' she said, interrogatively.

'What would you ask, Dorothy?' returned the youth, taking a step nearer,
to which she responded by another backward ere she replied.

'I would know whom you choose to serve--whether God or Satan; whether
you are of those who would set at nought the laws of the land----'

'Insist on their fulfilment, they say, by king as well as people,'
interrupted Richard.

'They would tear their mother in pieces----'

'Their mother!' repeated Richard, bewildered.

'Their mother, the church,' explained Dorothy.

'Oh!' said Richard. 'Nay, they would but cast out of her the wolves in
sheep's clothing that devour the lambs.'

The girl was silent. Anger glowed on her forehead and flashed from her
grey eyes. She stood one moment, then turned to leave him, but half
turned again to say scornfully--

'I must go at once to my mother! I knew not I had left her with such a
wolf as master Herbert is like to prove!'

'Master Herbert is no bishop, Dorothy!'

'The bishops, then, are the wolves, master Heywood?' said the girl, with
growing indignation.

'Dear Dorothy, I am but repeating what I hear. For my own part, I know
little of these matters. And what are they to us if we love one
another?'

'I tell you I am a child no longer,' flamed Dorothy.

'You were seventeen last St. George's Day, and I shall be nineteen next
St. Michael's.'

'St. George for merry England!' cried Dorothy.

'St. Michael for the Truth!' cried Richard.

'So be it. Good-bye, then,' said the girl, going.

'What DO you mean, Dorothy?' said Richard; and she stood to hear, but
with her back towards him, and, as it were, hovering midway in a pace.
'Did not St. Michael also slay his dragon? Why should the knights part
company? Believe me, Dorothy, I care more for a smile from you than for
all the bishops in the church, or all the presbyters out of it.'

'You take needless pains to prove yourself a foolish boy, Richard; and
if I go not to my mother at once, I fear I shall learn to despise
you--which I would not willingly.'

'Despise me! Do you take me for a coward then, Dorothy?'

'I say not that. I doubt not, for the matter of swords and pistols, you
are much like other male creatures; but I protest I could never love a
man who preferred my company to the service of his king.'

She glided into the alley and sped along its vaulted twilight, her white
dress gleaming and clouding by fits as she went.

The youth stood for a moment petrified, then started to overtake her,
but stood stock-still at the entrance of the alley, and followed her
only with his eyes as she went.

When Dorothy reached the house, she did not run up to her room that she
might weep unseen. She was still too much annoyed with Richard to regret
having taken such leave of him. She only swallowed down a little
balloonful of sobs, and went straight into the parlour, where her mother
and Mr. Herbert still sat, and resumed her seat in the bay window. Her
heightened colour, an occasional toss of her head backwards, like that
with which a horse seeks ease from the bearing-rein, generally followed
by a renewal of the attempt to swallow something of upward tendency,
were the only signs of her discomposure, and none of them were observed
by her mother or her guest. Could she have known, however, what feelings
had already begun to rouse themselves in the mind of him whose
boyishness was an offence to her, she would have found it more difficult
to keep such composure.

Dorothy's was a face whose forms were already so decided that, should no
softening influences from the central regions gain the ascendancy,
beyond a doubt age must render it hard and unlovely. In all the
roundness and freshness of girlhood, it was handsome rather than
beautiful, beautiful rather than lovely. And yet it was strongly
attractive, for it bore clear indication of a nature to be trusted. If
her grey eyes were a little cold, they were honest eyes, with a rare
look of steadfastness; and if her lips were a little too closely
pressed, it was clearly from any cause rather than bad temper. Neither
head, hands, nor feet were small, but they were fine in form and
movement; and for the rest of her person, tall and strong as Richard
was, Dorothy looked further advanced in the journey of life than he.

She needed hardly, however, have treated his indifference to the
politics of the time with so much severity, seeing her own acquaintance
with and interest in them dated from that same afternoon, during which,
from lack of other employment, and the weariness of a long morning of
slow, dismal rain, she had been listening to Mr. Herbert as he dwelt
feelingly on the arrogance of puritan encroachment, and the grossness of
presbyterian insolence both to kingly prerogative and episcopal
authority, and drew a touching picture of the irritant thwartings and
pitiful insults to which the gentle monarch was exposed in his attempts
to support the dignity of his divine office, and to cast its protecting
skirt over the defenceless church; and if it was with less sympathy that
he spoke of the fears which haunted the captive metropolitan, Dorothy at
least could detect no hidden sarcasm in the tone in which he expressed
his hope that Laud's devotion to the beauty of holiness might not result
in the dignity of martyrdom, as might well be feared by those who were
assured that the whole guilt of Strafford lay in his return to his duty,
and his subsequent devotion to the interests of his royal master: to all
this the girl had listened, and her still sufficiently uncertain
knowledge of the affairs of the nation had, ere the talk was over,
blossomed in a vague sense of partizanship. It was chiefly her desire
after the communion of sympathy with Richard that had led her into the
mistake of such a hasty disclosure of her new feelings.

But her following words had touched him--whether to fine issues or not
remained yet poised on the knife-edge of the balancing will. His first
emotion partook of anger. As soon as she was out of sight a spell seemed
broken, and words came.

'A boy, indeed, mistress Dorothy!' he said. 'If ever it come to what
certain persons prophesy, you may wish me in truth, and that for the
sake of your precious bishops, the boy you call me now. Yes, you are
right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so! Boy
indeed I am--or have been--without a thought in my head but of her. The
sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the winnowing
fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me take a side,
though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I shall take the side
that seems to me the right one, were all the fair Dorothies of the
universe on the other. In very truth I should be somewhat sorry to find
the king and the bishops in the right, lest my lady should flatter
herself and despise me that I had chosen after her showing, forsooth!
This is master Herbert's doing, for never before did I hear her speak
after such fashion.'

While he thus spoke with himself, he stood, like the genius of the spot,
a still dusky figure on the edge of the night, into which his dress of
brown velvet, rich and sombre at once in the sunlight, all but merged.
Nearly for the first time in his life he was experiencing the difficulty
of making up his mind, not, however, upon any of the important
questions, his inattention to which had exposed him to such sudden and
unexpected severity, but merely as to whether he should seek her again
in the company of her mother and Mr. Herbert, or return home. The result
of his deliberation, springing partly, no doubt, from anger, but that of
no very virulent type, was, that he turned his back on the alley, passed
through a small opening in the yew hedge, crossed a neglected corner of
woodland, by ways better known to him than to any one else, and came out
upon the main road leading to the gates of his father's park.




CHAPTER II.

RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.


Richard Heywood, as to bodily fashion, was a tall and already powerful
youth. The clear brown of his complexion spoke of plentiful sunshine and
air. A merry sparkle in the depths of his hazel eyes relieved the
shadows of rather notably heavy lids, themselves heavily
overbrowed--with a suggestion of character which had not yet asserted
itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his nose, although
of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than clearness of line
or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness along with a
definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had not yet begun to
compress and straighten out. His chin was at least large enough not to
contradict the promise of his face; his shoulders were square, and his
chest and limbs well developed: altogether it was at present a fair
tabernacle--of whatever sort the indwelling divinity might yet turn out,
fashioning it further after his own nature.

His father and he were the only male descendants of an old Monmouthshire
family, of neither Welsh nor Norman, but as pure Saxon blood as might be
had within the clip of the ocean. Roger, the father, had once only or
twice in his lifetime been heard boast, in humorous fashion, that
although but a simple squire, he could, on this side the fog of
tradition, which nearer or further shrouds all origin, count a longer
descent than any of the titled families in the county, not excluding the
earl of Worcester himself. His character also would have gone far to
support any assertion he might have chosen to make as to the purity of
his strain. A notable immobility of nature--his friends called it
firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others
might think of him; a certain sternness of manner--an unreadiness, as it
were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with
which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him,
when he seemed always to give heed to the looks rather than the words of
him who spoke; these peculiarities had combined to produce a certain awe
of him in his inferiors, and a dislike, not unavowed, in his equals.
With his superiors he came seldom in contact, and to them his behaviour
was still more distant and unbending. But, although from these causes he
was far from being a favourite in the county, he was a man of such known
and acknowledged probity that, until of late, when party spirit ran high
and drew almost everybody, whether of consequence or not, to one side or
the other, there was nobody who would not have trusted Roger Heywood to
the uttermost. Even now, foes as well as friends acknowledged that he
was to be depended upon; while his own son looked up to him with a
reverence that in some measure overshadowed his affection. Such a
character as this had necessarily been slow in formation, and the
opinions which had been modified by it and had reacted upon it, had been
as unalterably as deliberately adopted. But affairs had approached a
crisis between king and parliament before one of his friends knew that
there were in his mind any opinions upon them in process of
formation--so reserved and monosyllabic had been his share in any
conversation upon topics which had for a long time been growing every
hour of more and more absorbing interest to all men either of
consequence, intelligence, property, or adventure. At last, however, it
had become clear, to the great annoyance of not a few amongst his
neighbours, that Heywood's leanings were to the parliament. But he had
never yet sought to influence his son in regard to the great questions
at issue.

His house was one of those ancient dwellings which have grown under the
hands to fit the wants of successive generations, and look as if they
had never been other than old; two-storied at most, and many-gabled,
with marvellous accretions and projections, the haunts of yet more
wonderful shadows. There, in a room he called his study, shabby and
small, containing a library more notable for quality and selection than
size, Richard the next morning sought and found him.

'Father!' he said, entering with some haste after the usual request for
admission.

'I am here, my son,' answered Roger, without lifting his eyes from the
small folio in which he was reading.

'I want to know, father, whether, when men differ, a man is bound to
take a side.'

'Nay, Richard, but a man is bound NOT to take a side save upon reasons
well considered and found good.'

'It may be, father, if you had seen fit to send me to Oxford, I should
have been better able to judge now.'

'I had my reasons, son Richard. Readier, perhaps, you might have been,
but fitter--no. Tell me what points you have in question.'

'That I can hardly say, sir. I only know there are points at issue
betwixt king and parliament which men appear to consider of mightiest
consequence. Will you tell me, father, why you have never instructed me
in these affairs of church and state? I trust it is not because you
count me unworthy of your confidence.'

'Far from it, my son. My silence hath respect to thy hearing and to the
judgment yet unawakened in thee. Who would lay in the arms of a child
that which must crush him to the earth? Years did I take to meditate ere
I resolved, and I know not yet if thou hast in thee the power of
meditation.'

'At least, father, I could try to understand, if you would unfold your
mind.'

'When you know what the matters at issue are, my son,--that is, when you
are able to ask me questions worthy of answer, I shall be ready to
answer thee, so far as my judgment will reach.'

'I thank you, father. In the meantime I am as one who knocks, and the
door is not opened unto him.'

'Rather art thou as one who loiters on the door-step, and lifts up
neither ring nor voice.'

'Surely, sir, I must first know the news.'

'Thou hast ears; keep them open. But at least you know, my son, that on
the twelfth day of May last my lord of Strafford lost his head.'

'Who took it from him, sir? King or parliament?'

'Even that might be made a question; but I answer, the High Court of
Parliament, my son.'

'Was the judgment a right one or a wrong, sir? Did he deserve the doom?'

'Ah, there you put a question indeed! Many men say RIGHT, and many men
say WRONG. One man, I doubt me much, was wrong in the share HE bore
therein.'

'Who was he, sir?'

'Nay, nay, I will not forestall thine own judgment. But, in good sooth,
I might be more ready to speak my mind, were it not that I greatly doubt
some of those who cry loudest for liberty. I fear that had they once the
power, they would be the first to trample her under foot. Liberty with
some men means MY liberty to do, and THINE to suffer. But all in good
time, my son! The dawn is nigh.'

'You will tell me at least, father, what is the bone of contention?'

'My son, where there is contention, a bone shall not fail. It is but a
leg-bone now; it will be a rib to-morrow, and by and by doubtless it
will be the skull itself.'

'If you care for none of these things, sir, will not master Flowerdew
have a hard name for you? I know not what it means, but it sounds of the
gallows,' said Richard, looking rather doubtful as to how his father
might take it.

'Possibly, my son, I care more for the contention than the bone, for
while thieves quarrel honest men go their own ways. But what ignorance I
have kept thee in, and yet left thee to bear the reproach of a puritan!'
said the father, smiling grimly. 'Thou meanest master Flowerdew would
call me a Gallio, and thou takest the Roman proconsul for a
gallows-bird! Verily thou art not destined to prolong the renown of thy
race for letters. I marvel what thy cousin Thomas would say to the
darkness of thy ignorance.'

'See what comes of not sending me to Oxford, sir: I know not who is my
cousin Thomas.'

'A man both of learning and wisdom, my son, though I fear me his diet is
too strong for the stomach of this degenerate age, while the dressing of
his dishes is, on the other hand, too cunningly devised for their
liking. But it is no marvel thou shouldest be ignorant of him, being as
yet no reader of books. Neither is he a close kinsman, being of the
Lincolnshire branch of the Heywoods.'

'Now I know whom you mean, sir; but I thought he was a writer of stage
plays, and such things as on all sides I hear called foolish, and
mummery.'

'There be among those who call themselves the godly, who will endure no
mummery but of their own inventing. Cousin Thomas hath written a
multitude of plays, but that he studied at Cambridge, and to good
purpose, this book, which I was reading when you entered, bears good
witness.'

'What is the book, father?'

'Stay, I will read thee a portion. The greater part is of learning
rather than wisdom--the gathered opinions of the wise and good
concerning things both high and strange; but I will read thee some
verses bearing his own mind, which is indeed worthy to be set down with
theirs.'

He read that wonderful poem ending the second Book of the Hierarchy, and
having finished it looked at his son.

'I do not understand it, sir,' said Richard.

'I did not expect you would,' returned his father. 'Here, take the book,
and read for thyself. If light should dawn upon the page, as thou
readest, perhaps thou wilt understand what I now say--that I care but
little for the bones concerning which king and parliament contend, but I
do care that men--thou and I, my son--should be free to walk in any path
whereon it may please God to draw us. Take the book, my son, and read
again. But read no farther save with caution, for it dealeth with many
things wherein old Thomas is too readily satisfied with hearsay for
testimony.'

Richard took the small folio and carried it to his own chamber, where he
read and partly understood the poem. But he was not ripe enough either
in philosophy or religion for such meditations. Having executed his
task, for as such he regarded it, he turned to look through the strange
mixture of wisdom and credulity composing the volume. One tale after
another, of witch, and demon, and magician, firmly believed and honestly
recorded by his worthy relative, drew him on, until he sat forgetful of
everything but the world of marvels before him--to none of which,
however, did he accord a wider credence than sprung from the interest of
the moment. He was roused by a noise of quarrel in the farmyard, towards
which his window looked, and, laying aside reading, hastened out to
learn the cause.




CHAPTER III.

THE WITCH.


It was a bright Autumn morning. A dry wind had been blowing all night
through the shocks, and already some of the farmers had begun to carry
to their barns the sheaves which had stood hopelessly dripping the day
before. Ere Richard reached the yard, he saw, over the top of the wall,
the first load of wheat-sheaves from the harvest-field, standing at the
door of the barn, and high-uplifted thereon the figure of Faithful
Stopchase, one of the men, a well-known frequenter of puritan assemblies
all the country round, who was holding forth, and that with much
freedom, in tones that sounded very like vituperation, if not
malediction, against some one invisible. He soon found that the object
of his wrath was a certain Welshwoman, named Rees, by her neighbours
considered objectionable on the ground of witchcraft, against whom this
much could with truth be urged, that she was so far from thinking it
disreputable, that she took no pains to repudiate the imputation of it.
Her dress, had it been judged by eyes of our day, would have been
against her, but it was only old-fashioned, not even antiquated: common
in Queen Elizabeth's time, it lingered still in remote country places--a
gown of dark stuff, made with a long waist and short skirt over a huge
farthingale; a ruff which stuck up and out, high and far, from her
throat; and a conical Welsh hat invading the heavens. Stopchase, having
descried her in the yard, had taken the opportunity of breaking out upon
her in language as far removed from that of conventional politeness as
his puritanical principles would permit. Doubtless he considered it a
rebuking of Satan, but forgot that, although one of the godly, he could
hardly on that ground lay claim to larger privilege in the use of bad
language than the archangel Michael. For the old woman, although too
prudent to reply, she scorned to flee, and stood regarding him fixedly.
Richard sought to interfere and check the torrent of abuse, but it had
already gathered so much head, that the man seemed even unaware of his
attempt. Presently, however, he began to quail in the midst of his
storming. The green eyes of the old woman, fixed upon him, seemed to be
slowly fascinating him. At length, in the very midst of a volley of
scriptural epithets, he fell suddenly silent, turned from her, and, with
the fork on which he had been leaning, began to pitch the sheaves into
the barn. The moment he turned his back, Goody Rees turned hers, and
walked slowly away.

She had scarcely reached the yard gate, however, before the cow-boy, a
delighted spectator and auditor of the affair, had loosed the fierce
watch-dog, which flew after her. Fortunately Richard saw what took
place, but the animal, which was generally chained up, did not heed his
recall, and the poor woman had already felt his teeth, when Richard got
him by the throat. She looked pale and frightened, but kept her
composure wonderfully, and when Richard, who was prejudiced in her
favour from having once heard Dorothy speak friendlily to her, expressed
his great annoyance that she should have been so insulted on his
father's premises, received his apologies with dignity and good faith.
He dragged the dog back, rechained him, and was in the act of
administering sound and righteous chastisement to the cow-boy, when
Stopchase staggered, tumbled off the cart, and falling upon his head,
lay motionless. Richard hurried to him, and finding his neck twisted and
his head bent to one side, concluded he was killed. The woman who had
accompanied him from the field stood for a moment uttering loud cries,
then, suddenly bethinking herself, sped after the witch. Richard was
soon satisfied he could do nothing for him.

Presently the woman came running back, followed at a more leisurely pace
by Goody Rees, whose countenance was grave, and, even to the twitch
about her mouth, inscrutable. She walked up to where the man lay, looked
at him for a moment or two as if considering his case, then sat down on
the ground beside him, and requested Richard to move him so that his
head should lie on her lap. This done, she laid hold of it, with a hand
on each ear, and pulled at his neck, at the same time turning his head
in the right direction. There came a snap, and the neck was straight.
She then began to stroke it with gentle yet firm hand. In a few moments
he began to breathe. As soon as she saw his chest move, she called for a
wisp of hay, and having shaped it a little, drew herself from under his
head, substituting the hay. Then rising without a word she walked from
the yard. Stopchase lay for a while, gradually coming to himself, then
scrambled all at once to his feet, and staggered to his pitchfork, which
lay where it had fallen. 'It is of the mercy of the Lord that I fell not
upon the prongs of the pitchfork,' he said, as he slowly stooped and
lifted it. He had no notion that he had lain more than a few seconds;
and of the return of Goody Rees and her ministrations he knew nothing;
while such an awe of herself and her influences had she left behind her,
that neither the woman nor the cow-boy ventured to allude to her, and
even Richard, influenced partly, no doubt, by late reading, was more
inclined to think than speak about her. For the man himself, little
knowing how close death had come to him, but inwardly reproached because
of his passionate outbreak, he firmly believed that he had had a narrow
escape from the net of the great fowler, whose decoy the old woman was,
commissioned not only to cause his bodily death, but to work in him
first such a frame of mind as should render his soul the lawful prey of
the enemy.




CHAPTER IV.

A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.


The same afternoon, as it happened, a little company of rustics, who had
just issued from the low hatch-door of the village inn, stood for a
moment under the sign of the Crown and Mitre, which swung huskily
creaking from the bough of an ancient thorn tree, then passed on to the
road, and took their way together.

'Hope you then,' said one of them, as continuing their previous
conversation, 'that we shall escape unhurt? It is a parlous business.
Not as one of us is afeard as I knows on. But the old earl, he do have a
most unregenerate temper, and you had better look to 't, my masters.'

'I tell thee, master Upstill, it's not the old earl as I'm afeard on,
but the young lord. For thou knows as well as ere a one it be not
without cause that men do call him a wizard, for a wizard he be, and
that of the worst sort.'

'We shall be out again afore sundown, shannot we?' said another. 'That I
trust.'

'Up to the which hour the High Court of Parliament assembled will have
power to protect its own--eh, John Croning?'

'Nay, that I cannot tell. It be a parlous job, and for mine own part,
whether for the love I bear to the truth, or the hatred I cherish toward
the scarlet Antichrist, with her seven tails--'

'Tush, tush, John! Seven heads, man, and ten horns. Those are the
numbers master Flowerdew read.'

'Nay, I know not for your horns; but for the rest I say seven tails. Did
not honest master Flowerdew set forth unto us last meeting that the
scarlet woman sat upon seven hills--eh? Have with you there, master
Sycamore!'

'Well, for the sake of sound argument, I grant you. But we ha' got to do
with no heads nor no tails, neither--save and except as you may say the
sting is in the tail; and then, or I greatly mistake, it's not seven
times seven as will serve to count the stings, come of the tails what
may.'

'Very true,' said another; 'it be the stings and not the tails we want
news of. But think you his lordship will yield them up without
gainsaying to us the messengers of the High Parliament now assembled?'

'For mine own part,' said John Croning, 'though I fear it come of the
old Adam yet left in me, I do count it a sorrowful thing that the earl
should be such a vile recusant. He never fails with a friendly word, or
it may be a jest--a foolish jest--but honest, for any one gentle or
simple he may meet. More than once has he boarded me in that fashion.
What do you think he said to me, now, one day as I was a mowin' of the
grass in the court, close by the white horse that spout up the water
high as a house from his nose-drills? Says he to me--for he come down
the grand staircase, and steps out and spies me at the work with my old
scythe, and come across to me, and says he, "Why, Thomas," says he, not
knowin' of my name, "Why, Thomas," says he, "you look like old Time
himself a mowing of us all down," says he. "For sure, my lord," says I,
"your lordship reads it aright, for all flesh is grass, and all the
glory of man is as the flower of the field." He look humble at that,
for, great man as he be, his earthly tabernacle, though more than
sizeable, is but a frail one, and that he do know. And says he, "Where
did you read that, Thomas?" "I am not a larned man, please your
lordship," says I, "and I cannot honestly say I read it nowheres, but I
heerd the words from a book your lordship have had news of: they do call
it the Holy Bible. But they tell me that they of your lordship's
persuasion like it not." "You are very much mistaken there, Thomas,"
says he. "I read my Bible most days, only not the English Bible, which
is full of errors, but the Latin, which is all as God gave it," says he.
And thereby I had not where to answer withal.'

'I fear you proved a poor champion of the truth, master Croning.'

'Confess now, Cast-down Upstill, had he not both sun and wind of
me--standing, so to say, on his own hearth-stone? Had it not been so, I
could have called hard names with the best of you, though that is by
rights the gift of the preachers of the truth. See how the good master
Flowerdew excelleth therein, sprinkling them abroad from the
watering-pot of the gospel. Verily, when my mind is too feeble to grasp
his argument, my memory lays fast hold upon the hard names, and while I
hold by them, I have it all in a nutshell.'

Fortified occasionally by a pottle of ale, and keeping their spirits
constantly stirred by much talking, they had been all day occupied in
searching the Catholic houses of the neighbourhood for arms. What
authority they had for it never came to be clearly understood. Plainly
they believed themselves possessed of all that was needful, or such men
would never have dared it. As it was, they prosecuted it with such a
bold front, that not until they were gone did it occur to some, who had
yielded what arms they possessed, to question whether they had done
wisely in acknowledging such fellows as parliamentary officials without
demanding their warrant. Their day's gleanings up to this point--of
swords and pikes, guns and pistols, they had left in charge of the host
of the inn whence they had just issued, and were now bent on crowning
their day's triumph with a supreme act of daring--the renown of which
they enlarged in their own imaginations, while undermining the courage
needful for its performance, by enhancing its terrors as they went.

At length two lofty hexagonal towers appeared, and the consciousness
that the final test of their resolution drew nigh took immediate form in
a fluttering at the heart, which, however, gave no outward sign but that
of silence; and indeed they were still too full of the importance of
unaccustomed authority to fear any contempt for it on the part of
others.

It happened that at this moment Raglan Castle was full of merry-making
upon occasion of the marriage of one of lady Herbert's
waiting-gentlewomen to an officer of the household; and in these
festivities the earl of Worcester and all his guests were taking a part.

Among the numerous members of the household was one who, from being a
turnspit, had risen, chiefly in virtue of an immovably lugubrious
expression of countenance, to be the earl's fool. From this peculiarity
his fellow-servants had given him the nickname of The Hangman; but the
man himself had chosen the role of a puritan parson, as affording the
best ground-work for the display of a humour suitable to the expression
of countenance with which his mother had endowed him. That mother was
Goody Rees, concerning whom, as already hinted, strange things were
whispered. In the earlier part of his career the fool had not
unfrequently found his mother's reputation a sufficient shelter from
persecution; and indeed there might have been reason to suppose that it
was for her son's sake she encouraged her own evil repute, a distinction
involving considerable risk, seeing the time had not yet arrived when
the disbelief in such powers was sufficiently advanced for the safety of
those reported to possess them. In her turn, however, she ran a risk
somewhat less than ordinary from the fact that her boy was a domestic in
the family of one whose eldest son, the heir to the earldom, lay under a
similar suspicion; for not a few of the household were far from
satisfied that lord Herbert's known occupations in the Yellow Tower were
not principally ostensible, and that he and his man had nothing to do
with the black art, or some other of the many regions of occult science
in which the ambition after unlawful power may hopefully exercise
itself.

Upon occasion of a family fete, merriment was in those days carried
further, on the part of both masters and servants, than in the greatly
altered relations and conditions of the present day would be desirable,
or, indeed, possible. In this instance, the fun broke out in the
arranging of a mock marriage between Thomas Rees, commonly called Tom
Fool, and a young girl who served under the cook. Half the jest lay in
the contrast between the long face of the bridegroom, both congenitally
and wilfully miserable, and that of the bride, broad as a harvest moon,
and rosy almost to purple. The bridegroom never smiled, and spoke with
his jaws rather than his lips; while the bride seldom uttered a syllable
without grinning from ear to ear, and displaying a marvellous
appointment of huge and brilliant teeth. Entering solemnly into the
joke, Tom expressed himself willing to marry the girl, but represented,
as an insurmountable difficulty, that he had no clothes for the
occasion. Thereupon the earl, drawing from his pocket his bunch of keys,
directed him to go and take what he liked from his wardrobe. Now the
earl was a man of large circumference, and the fool as lank in person as
in countenance.

Tom took the keys and was some time gone, during which many conjectures
were hazarded as to the style in which he would choose to appear. When
he re-entered the great hall, where the company was assembled, the roar
of laughter which followed his appearance made the glass of its great
cupola ring again. For not merely was he dressed in the earl's beaver
hat and satin cloak, splendid with plush and gold and silver lace, but
he had indued a corresponding suit of his clothes as well, even to his
silk stockings, garters, and roses, and with the help of many pillows
and other such farcing, so filled the garments which otherwise had hung
upon him like a shawl from a peg, and made of himself such a 'sweet
creature of bombast' that, with ludicrous unlikeness of countenance, he
bore in figure no distant resemblance to the earl himself.

Meantime lady Elizabeth had been busy with the scullery-maid, whom she
had attired in a splendid brocade of her grandmother's, with all
suitable belongings of ruff, high collar, and lace wings, such as Queen
Elizabeth is represented with in Oliver's portrait. Upon her appearance,
a few minutes after Tom's, the laughter broke out afresh, in redoubled
peals, and the merriment was at its height, when the warder of one of
the gates entered and whispered in his master's ear the arrival of the
bumpkins, and their mission announced, he informed his lordship, with
all the importance and dignity they knew how to assume. The earl burst
into a fresh laugh. But presently it quavered a little and ceased, while
over the amusement still beaming on his countenance gathered a slight
shade of anxiety, for who could tell what tempest such a mere whirling
of straws might not forerun?

A few words of the warder's had reached Tom where he stood a little
aside, his solemn countenance radiating disapproval of the tumultuous
folly around him. He took three strides towards the earl.

'Wherein lieth the new jest?' he asked, with dignity.

'A set of country louts, my lord,' answered the earl, 'are at the gate,
affirming the right of search in this your lordship's house of Raglan.'

'For what?'

'Arms, my lord.'

'And wherefore? On what ground?'

'On the ground that your lordship is a vile recusant--a papist, and
therefore a traitor, no doubt, although they use not the word,' said the
earl.

'I shall be round with them,' said Tom, embracing the assumed
proportions in front of him, and turning to the door.

Ere the earl had time to conceive his intent, he had hurried from the
hall, followed by fresh shouts of laughter. For he had forgotten to
stuff himself behind, and, when the company caught sight of his back as
he strode out, the tenuity of the foundation for such a 'huge hill of
flesh' was absurd as Falstaff's ha'p'orth of bread to the 'intolerable
deal of sack.'

But the next moment the earl had caught the intended joke, and although
a trifle concerned about the affair, was of too mirth-loving a nature to
interfere with Tom's project, the result of which would doubtless be
highly satisfactory--at least to those not primarily concerned. He
instantly called for silence, and explained to the assembly what he
believed to be Tom Fool's intent, and as there was nothing to be seen
from the hall, the windows of which were at a great height from the
floor, and Tom's scheme would be fatally imperilled by the visible
presence of spectators, from some at least of whom gravity of demeanour
could not be expected, gave hasty instructions to several of his sons
and daughters to disperse the company to upper windows having a view of
one or the other court, for no one could tell where the fool's humour
might find its principal arena. The next moment, in the plain dress of
rough brownish cloth, which he always wore except upon state occasions,
he followed the fool to the gate, where he found him talking through the
wicket-grating to the rustics, who, having passed drawbridge and
portcullises, of which neither the former had been raised nor the latter
lowered for many years, now stood on the other side of the gate
demanding admittance. In the parley, Tom Fool was imitating his master's
voice and every one of the peculiarities of his speech to perfection,
addressing them with extreme courtesy, as if he took them for gentlemen
of no ordinary consideration,--a point in his conception of his part
which he never forgot throughout the whole business. To the dismay of
his master he was even more than admitting, almost boasting, that there
was an enormous quantity of weapons in the castle--sufficient at least
to arm ten thousand horsemen!--a prodigious statement, for, at the
uttermost, there was not more than the tenth part of that amount--still
a somewhat larger provision no doubt than the intruders had expected to
find! The pseudo-earl went on to say that the armoury consisted of one
strong room only, the door of which was so cunningly concealed and
secured that no one but himself knew where it was, or if found could
open it. But such he said was his respect to the will of the most august
parliament, that he would himself conduct them to the said armoury, and
deliver over upon the spot into their safe custody the whole mass of
weapons to carry away with them. And thereupon he proceeded to open the
gate.

By this time the door of the neighbouring guard-room was crowded with
the heads of eager listeners, but the presence of the earl kept them
quiet, and at a sign from him they drew back ere the men entered. The
earl himself took a position where he would be covered by the opening
wicket.

Tom received them into bodily presence with the notification that,
having suspected their object, he had sent all his people out of the
way, in order to avoid the least danger of a broil. Bowing to them with
the utmost politeness as they entered, he requested them to step forward
into the court while he closed the wicket behind them, but took the
opportunity of whispering to one of the men just inside the door of the
guardhouse, who, the moment Tom had led the rustics away, approached the
earl, and told him what he had said.

'What can the rascal mean?' said the earl to himself; but he told the
man to carry the fool's message exactly as he had received it, and
quietly followed Tom and his companions, some of whom, conceiving fresh
importance from the overstrained politeness with which they had been
received, were now attempting a transformation of their usual loundering
gait into a martial stride, with the result of a foolish strut, very
unlike the dignified progress of the sham earl, whose weak back roused
in them no suspicion, and who had taken care they should not see his
face. Across the paved court, and through the hall to the inner court,
Tom led them, and the earl followed.

The twilight was falling. The hall was empty of life, and filled with a
sombre dusk, echoing to every step as they passed through it. They did
not see the flash of eyes and glimmer of smiles from the minstrel's
gallery, and the solitude, size, and gloom had, even on their dull
natures, a palpable influence. The whole castle seemed deserted as they
followed the false earl across the second court--with the true one
stealing after them like a knave--little imagining that bright eyes were
watching them from the curtains of every window like stars from the
clear spaces and cloudy edges of heaven. To the north-west corner of the
court he led them, and through a sculptured doorway up the straight wide
ascent of stone called the grand staircase. At the top he turned to the
right, along a dim corridor, from which he entered a suite of bedrooms
and dressing-rooms, over whose black floors he led the trampling
hob-nailed shoes without pity either for their polish or the labour of
the housemaids in restoring it.

In this way he reached the stair in the bell-tower, ascending which he
brought them into a narrow dark passage ending again in a downward
stair, at the foot of which they found themselves in the long
picture-gallery, having entered it in the recess of one of its large
windows. At the other end of the gallery he crossed into the
dining-room, then through an ante-chamber entered the drawing-room,
where the ladies, apprised of their approach, kept still behind curtains
and high chairs, until they had passed through, on their way to cross
the archway of the main entrance, and through the library gain the
region of household economy and cookery. Thither I will not drag my
reader after them. Indeed the earl, who had been dogging them like a
Fate, ever emerging on their track but never beheld, had already began
to pay his part of the penalty of the joke in fatigue, for he was not
only unwieldy in person, but far from robust, being very subject to
gout. He owed his good spirits to a noble nature, and not to animal
well-being. When they crossed from the picture-gallery to the
dining-room, he went down the stair between, and into the oak-parlour
adjoining the great hall. There he threw himself into an easy chair
which always stood for him in the great bay window, looking over the
moat to the huge keep of the castle, and commanding through its western
light the stone bridge which crossed it. There he lay back at his ease,
and, instructed by the message Tom had committed to the serjeant of the
guard, waited the result.

As for his double, he went stalking on in front of his victims, never
turning to show his face; he knew they would follow, were it but for the
fear of being left alone. Close behind him they kept, scarce daring to
whisper from growing awe of the vast place. The fumes of the beer had by
this time evaporated, and the heavy obscurity which pervaded the whole
building enhanced their growing apprehensions. On and on the fool led
them, up and down, going and returning, but ever in new tracks, for the
marvellous old place was interminably burrowed with connecting passages
and communications of every sort--some of them the merest ducts which
had to be all but crept through, and which would have certainly arrested
the progress of the earl had he followed so far: no one about the place
understood its "crenkles" so well as Tom. For the greater part of an
hour he led them thus, until, having been on their legs the whole day,
they were thoroughly wearied as well as awe-struck. At length, in a
gloomy chamber, where one could not see the face of another, the
pseudo-earl turned full upon them, and said in his most solemn tones:--

'Arrived thus far, my masters, it is borne in upon me with rebuke, that
before undertaking to guide you to the armoury, I should have acquainted
you with the strange fact that at times I am myself unable to find the
place of which we are in search; and I begin to fear it is so now, and
that we are at this moment the sport of a certain member of my family of
whom it may be your worships have heard things not more strange than
true. Against his machinations I am powerless. All that is left us is to
go to him and entreat him to unsay his spells.'

A confused murmur of objections arose.

'Then your worships will remain here while I go to the Yellow Tower, and
come to you again?' said the mock earl, making as if he would leave
them.

But they crowded round him with earnest refusals to be abandoned; for in
their very souls they felt the fact that they were upon enchanted
ground--and in the dark.

'Then follow me,' he said, and conducted them into the open air of the
inner court, almost opposite the archway in its buildings leading to the
stone bridge, whose gothic structure bestrid the moat of the keep.

For Raglan Castle had this peculiarity, that its keep was surrounded by
a moat of its own, separating it from the rest of the castle, so that,
save by bridge, no one within any more than without the walls could
reach it. On to the bridge Tom led the way, followed by his dupes--now
full in the view of the earl where he sat in his parlour window. When
they had reached the centre of it, however, and glancing up at the awful
bulk of stone towering above them, its walls strangely dented and
furrowed, so as to such as they, might well suggest frightful means to
wicked ends, they stood stock-still, refusing to go a step further;
while their chief speaker, Upstill, emboldened by anger, fear, and the
meek behaviour of the supposed earl, broke out in a torrent of
arrogance, wherein his intention was to brandish the terrors of the High
Parliament over the heads of his lordship of Worcester and all
recusants. He had not got far, however, before a shrill whistle pierced
the air, and the next instant arose a chaos of horrible, appalling, and
harrowing noises, 'such a roaring,' in the words of their own report of
the matter to the reverend master Flowerdew, 'as if the mouth of hell
had been wide open, and all the devils conjured up'--doubtless they
meant by the arts of the wizard whose dwelling was that same tower of
fearful fame before which they now stood. The skin-contracting chill of
terror uplifted their hair. The mystery that enveloped the origin of the
sounds gave them an unearthliness which froze the very fountains of
their life, and rendered them incapable even of motion. They stared at
each other with a ghastly observance, which descried no comfort, only
like images of horror. 'Man's hand is not able to taste' how long they
might have thus stood, nor 'his tongue to conceive' what the
consequences might have been, had not a more healthy terror presently
supervened. Across the tumult of sounds, like a fiercer flash through
the flames of a furnace, shot a hideous, long-drawn yell, and the same
instant came a man running at full speed through the archway from the
court, casting terror-stricken glances behind him, and shouting with a
voice half-choked to a shriek--

'Look to yourselves, my masters; the lions are got loose!'

All the world knew that ever since King James had set the fashion by
taking so much pleasure in the lions at the Tower, strange beasts had
been kept in the castle of Raglan.

The new terror broke the spell of the old, and the parliamentary
commissioners fled. But which was the way from the castle? Which the
path to the lions' den? In an agony of horrible dread, they rushed
hither and thither about the court, where now the white horse, as steady
as marble, should be when first they crossed it, was, to their excited
vision, prancing wildly about the great basin from whose charmed circle
he could not break, foaming, at the mouth, and casting huge water-jets
from his nostrils into the perturbed air; while from the surface of the
moat a great column of water shot up nearly as high as the citadel,
whose return into the moat was like a tempest, and with all the
elemental tumult was mingled the howling of wild beasts. The doors of
the hall and the gates to the bowling green being shut, the poor
wretches could not find their way out of the court, but ran from door to
door like madmen, only to find all closed against them. From every
window around the court--from the apartments of the waiting gentlewomen,
from the picture-gallery, from the officers' rooms, eager and merry eyes
looked down on the spot, themselves unseen and unsuspected, for all
voices were hushed, and for anything the bumpkins heard or saw they
might have been in a place deserted of men, and possessed only by evil
spirits, whose pranks were now tormenting them. At last Upstill, who had
fallen on the bridge at his first start, and had ever since been rushing
about with a limp and a leap alternated, managed to open the door of the
hall, and its eastern door having been left open, shot across and into
the outer court, where he made for the gate, followed at varied distance
by the rest of the routed commissioners of search, as each had
discovered the way his forerunner fled. With trembling hands Upstill
raised the latch of the wicket, and to his delight found it unlocked. He
darted through, passed the twin portcullises, and was presently
thundering over the drawbridge, which, trembling under his heavy steps,
seemed on the point of rising to heave him back into the jaws of the
lion, or, worse still, the clutches of the enchanter. Not one looked
behind him, not even when, having passed through the white stone gate,
also purposely left open for their escape, and rattled down the
multitude of steps that told how deep was the moat they had just
crossed, where the last of them nearly broke his neck by rolling almost
from top to bottom, they reached the outermost, the brick gate, and so
left the awful region of enchantment and feline fury commingled. Not
until the castle was out of sight, and their leader had sunk senseless
on the turf by the roadside, did they dare a backward look. The moment
he came to himself they started again for home, at what poor speed they
could make, and reached the Crown and Mitre in sad plight, where,
however, they found some compensation in the pleasure of setting forth
their adventures--with the heroic manner in which, although vanquished
by the irresistible force of enchantment, they had yet brought off their
forces without the loss of a single man. Their story spread over the
country, enlarged and embellished at every fresh stage in its progress.

When the tale reached mother Rees, it filled her with fresh awe of the
great magician, the renowned lord Herbert. She little thought the whole
affair was a jest of her own son's. Firmly believing in all kinds of
magic and witchcraft, but as innocent of conscious dealing with the
powers of ill as the whitest-winged angel betwixt earth's garret and
heaven's threshold, she owed her evil repute amongst her neighbours to a
rare therapeutic faculty, accompanied by a keen sympathetic instinct,
which greatly sharpened her powers of observation in the quest after
what was amiss; while her touch was so delicate, so informed with
present mind, and came therefore into such rapport with any living
organism, the secret of whose suffering it sought to discover, that
sprained muscles, dislocated joints, and broken bones seemed at its soft
approach to re-arrange their disturbed parts, and yield to the power of
her composing will as to a re-ordering harmony. Add to this, that she
understood more of the virtues of some herbs than any doctor in the
parish, which, in the condition of general practice at the time, is not
perhaps to say much, and that she firmly believed in the might of
certain charms, and occasionally used them--and I have given reason
enough why, while regarded by all with disapprobation--she should be by
many both courted and feared. For her own part she had a leaning to the
puritans, chiefly from respect to the memory of a good-hearted, weak,
but intellectually gifted, and, therefore, admired husband; but the
ridicule of her yet more gifted son had a good deal shaken this
predilection, so that she now spent what powers of discrimination and
choice she possessed solely upon persons, heedless of principles in
themselves, and regarding them only in their vital results. Hence, it
was a matter of absolute indifference to her which of the parties now
dividing the country was in the right, or which should lose, which win,
provided no personal evil befel the men or women for whom she cherished
a preference. Like many another, she was hardly aware of the
jurisdiction of conscience, save in respect of immediate personal
relations.




CHAPTER V.

ANIMADVERSIONS.


From the time when the conversation recorded had in some measure
dispelled the fog between them, Roger and Richard Heywood drew rapidly
nearer to each other. The father had been but waiting until his son
should begin to ask him questions, for watchfulness of himself and
others had taught him how useless information is to those who have not
first desired it, how poor in influence, how soon forgotten; and now
that the fitting condition had presented itself, he was ready: with less
of reserve than in the relation between them was common amongst the
puritans, he began to pour his very soul into that of his son. All his
influence went with that party which, holding that the natural flow of
the reformation of the church from popery had stagnated in episcopacy,
consisted chiefly of those who, in demanding the overthrow of that form
of church government, sought to substitute for it what they called
presbyterianism; but Mr. Heywood belonged to another division of it
which, although less influential at present, was destined to come by and
by to the front, in the strength of the conviction that to stop with
presbyterianism was merely to change the name of the swamp--a party
whose distinctive and animating spirit was the love of freedom, which
indeed, degenerating into a passion among its inferior members, broke
out, upon occasion, in the wildest vagaries of speech and doctrine, but
on the other hand justified itself in its leaders, chief amongst whom
were Milton and Cromwell, inasmuch as they accorded to the consciences
of others the freedom they demanded for their own--the love of liberty
with them not meaning merely the love of enjoying freedom, but that
respect for the thing itself which renders a man incapable of violating
it in another.

Roger Heywood was, in fact, already a pupil of Milton, whose anonymous
pamphlet of 'Reformation touching Church Discipline' had already reached
him, and opened with him the way for all his following works.

Richard, with whom my story has really to do, but for the understanding
of whom it is necessary that the character and mental position of his
father should in some measure be set forth, proved an apt pupil, and was
soon possessed with such a passion for justice and liberty, as embodied
in the political doctrines now presented for his acceptance, that it was
impossible for him to understand how any honest man could be of a
different mind. No youth, indeed, of simple and noble nature, as yet
unmarred by any dominant phase of selfishness, could have failed to
catch fire from the enthusiasm of such a father, an enthusiasm glowing
yet restrained, wherein party spirit had a less share than
principle--which, in relation to such a time, is to say much. Richard's
heart swelled within him at the vistas of grandeur opened by his
father's words, and swelled yet higher when he read to him passages from
the pamphlet to which I have referred. It seemed to him, as to most
young people under mental excitement, that he had but to tell the facts
of the case to draw all men to his side, enlisting them in the army
destined to sweep every form of tyranny, and especially spiritual
usurpation and arrogance, from the face of the earth.

Being one who took everybody at the spoken word, Richard never thought
of seeking Dorothy again at their former place of meeting. Nor, in the
new enthusiasm born in him, did his thoughts for a good many days turn
to her so often, or dwell so much upon her, as to cause any keen sense
of their separation. The flood of new thoughts and feelings had
transported him beyond the ignorant present. In truth, also, he was a
little angry with Dorothy for showing a foolish preference for the
church party, so plainly in the wrong was it! And what could SHE know
about the question by his indifference to which she had been so
scandalised, but to which he had been indifferent only until rightly
informed thereon! If he had ever given her just cause to think him
childish, certainly she should never apply the word to him again! If he
could but see her, he would soon convince her--indeed he MUST see
her--for the truth was not his to keep, but to share! It was his duty to
acquaint her with the fact that the parliament was the army of God,
fighting the great red dragon, one of whose seven heads was prelacy, the
horn upon it the king, and Laud its crown. He wanted a stroll--he would
take the path through the woods and the shrubbery to the old sun-dial.
She would not be there, of course, but he would walk up the pleached
alley and call at the house.

Reasoning thus within himself one day, he rose and went. But, as he
approached the wood, Dorothy's great mastiff, which she had reared from
a pup with her own hand, came leaping out to welcome him, and he was
prepared to find her not far off.

When he entered the yew-circle, there she stood leaning on the dial, as
if, like old Time, she too had gone to sleep there, and was dreaming
ancient dreams over again. She did not move at the first sounds of his
approach; and when at length, as he stood silent by her side, she lifted
her head, but without looking at him, he saw the traces of tears on her
cheeks. The heart of the youth smote him.

'Weeping, Dorothy?' he said.

'Yes,' she answered simply.

'I trust I am not the cause of your trouble, Dorothy?'

'You!' returned the girl quickly, and the colour rushed to her pale
cheeks. 'No, indeed. How should you trouble me? My mother is ill.'

Considering his age, Richard was not much given to vanity, and it was
something better that prevented him from feeling pleased at being thus
exonerated: she looked so sweet and sad that the love which new
interests had placed in abeyance returned in full tide. Even when a
child, he had scarcely ever seen her in tears; it was to him a new
aspect of her being.

'Dear Dorothy!' he said, 'I am very much grieved to learn this of your
beautiful mother.'

'She IS beautiful,' responded the girl, and her voice was softer than he
had ever heard it before; 'but she will die, and I shall be left alone.'

'No, Dorothy! that you shall never be,' exclaimed Richard, with a
confidence bordering on presumption.

'Master Herbert is with her now,' resumed Dorothy, heedless of his
words.

'You do not mean her life is even now in danger?' said Richard, in a
tone of sudden awe.

'I hope not, but, indeed, I cannot tell. I left master Herbert
comforting her with the assurance that she was taken away from the evil
to come. "And I trust, madam," the dear old man went on to say, "that my
departure will not long be delayed, for darkness will cover the earth,
and gross darkness the people." Those were his very words.'

'Nay, nay!' said Richard, hastily; 'the good man is deceived; the people
that sit in darkness shall see a great light.'

The girl looked at him with strange interrogation.

'Do not be angry, sweet Dorothy,' Richard went on. 'Old men may mistake
as well as youths. As for the realm of England, the sun of righteousness
will speedily arise thereon, for the dawn draws nigh; and master Herbert
may be just as far deceived concerning your mother's condition, for she
has been but sickly for a long time, and yet has survived many winters.'

Dorothy looked at him still, and was silent. At length she spoke, and
her words came slowly and with weight.

'And what prophet's mantle, if I may make so bold, has fallen upon
Richard Heywood, that the word in his mouth should outweigh that of an
aged servant of the church? Can it be that the great light of which he
speaks is Richard Heywood himself?'

'As master Herbert is a good man and a servant of God,' said Richard,
coldly, stung by her sarcasm, but not choosing to reply to it, 'his word
weighs mightily; but as a servant of the church his word is no weightier
than my father's, who is also a minister of the true tabernacle, that
wherein all who are kings over themselves are priests unto God--though
truly he pretends to no prophecy beyond the understanding of the signs
of the times.'

Dorothy saw that a wonderful change, such as had been incredible upon
any but the witness of her own eyes and ears, had passed on her old
playmate. He was in truth a boy no longer. Their relative position was
no more what she had been of late accustomed to consider it. But with
the change a gulf had begun to yawn between them.

'Alas, Richard!' she said, mistaking what he meant by the signs of the
times, 'those who arrogate the gift of the Holy Ghost, while their sole
inspiration is the presumption of their own hearts and an overweening
contempt of authority, may well mistake signs of their own causing for
signs from heaven. I but repeat the very words of good master Herbert.'

'I thought such swelling words hardly sounded like your own, Dorothy.
But tell me, why should the persuasion of man or woman hang upon the
words of a fellow-mortal? Is not the gift of the Spirit free to each who
asks it? And are we not told that each must be fully persuaded in his
own mind?'

'Nay, Richard, now I have thee! Hang you not by the word of your father,
who is one, and despise the authority of the true church, which is
many?'

'The true church were indeed an authority, but where shall we find it?
Anyhow, the true church is one thing, and prelatical episcopacy another.
But I have yet to learn what authority even the true church could have
over a man's conscience.'

'You need to be reminded, Richard, that the Lord of the church gave
power to his apostles to bind or loose.'

'I do not need to be so reminded, Dorothy, but I do not need to be shown
first that that power was over men's consciences; and second, that it
was transmitted to others by the apostles waiving the question as to the
doubtful ordination of English prelates.'

Fire flashed from Dorothy's eyes.

'Richard Heywood,' she said, 'the demon of spiritual pride has already
entered into you, and blown you up with a self-sufficiency which I never
saw in you before, or I would never, never have companied with you, as I
am now ashamed to think I have done so long, even to the danger of my
soul's health.'

'In that case I may comfort myself, mistress Dorothy Vaughan,' said
Richard, 'that you will no longer count me a boy! But do you then no
longer desire that I should take one part OR the other and show myself a
man? Am I man enough yet for the woman thou art, Dorothy?--But,
Dorothy,' he added, with sudden change of tone, for she had in anger
turned to leave him, 'I love you dearly, and I am truly sorry if I have
spoken so as to offend you. I came hither eager to share with you the
great things I have learned since you left me with just contempt a
fortnight ago.'

'Then it is I whose foolish words have cast you into the seat of the
scorner! Alas! alas! my poor Richard! Never, never more, while you thus
rebel against authority and revile sacred things, will I hold counsel
with you.'

And again she turned to go.

'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 comes 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.




CHAPTER VIII.

AN ADVENTURE.


When he reached the spot at which he usually turned off by a gap in the
hedge to NEEDLE his way through the unpathed wood, he yielded to the
impulses of memory and habit, and sought the yew-circle, where for some
moments he stood by the dumb, disfeatured stone, which seemed to slumber
in the moonlight, a monument slowly vanishing from above a vanished
grave. Indeed it might well have been the grave of buried Time, for what
fitter monument could he have than a mutilated sun-dial, what better
enclosure than such a hedge of yews, and more suitable light than that
of the dying moon? Or was it but that the heart of the youth, receiving
these things as into a concave mirror, reprojected them into space, all
shadowy with its own ghostliness and gloom? Close by the dial, like the
dark way into regions where time is not, yawned the mouth of the
pleached alley. Beyond that was her window, on which the moon must now
be shining. He entered the alley, and walked softly towards the house.
Suddenly, down the dark tunnel came rushing upon him Dorothy's mastiff,
with a noise as of twenty soft feet, and a growl as if his throat had
been full of teeth--changing to a boisterous welcome when he discovered
who the stranger was. Fearful of disturbing the household, Richard soon
quieted the dog, which was in the habit of obeying him almost as readily
as his mistress, and, fearful of disturbing sleepers or watchers,
approached the house like a thief. To gain a sight of Dorothy's window
he had to pass that of the parlour, and then the porch, which he did on
the grass, that his steps might be noiseless. But here the dog started
from his heel, and bounded into the porch, leading after him the eyes of
Richard, who thereupon saw what would have else remained
undiscovered--two figures, namely, standing in its deep shadow. Judging
it his part, as a friend of the family, to see who, at so late an hour,
and so near the house, seemed thus to avoid discovery, Richard drew
nearer, and the next moment saw that the door was open behind them, and
that they were Dorothy and a young man.

'The gates will be shut,' said Dorothy.

'It is no matter; old Eccles will open to me at any hour,' was the
answer.

'Still it were well you went without delay,' said Dorothy; and her voice
trembled a little, for she had caught sight of Richard.

Now not only are anger and stupidity near of kin, but when a man whose
mental movements are naturally deliberate, is suddenly spurred, he is in
great danger of acting like a fool, and Richard did act like a fool. He
strode up to the entrance of the porch, and said,

'Do you not hear the lady, sir? She tells you to go.'

A voice as cool and self-possessed as the other was hasty and perturbed,
replied,

'I am much in the wrong, sir, if the lady do not turn the command upon
yourself. Until you have obeyed it, she may perhaps see reason for
withdrawing it in respect of me.'

Richard stepped into the porch, but Dorothy glided between them, and
gently pushed him out.

'Richard Heywood!' she said.

'Whew!' interjected the stranger, softly.

'You can claim no right,' she went on, 'to be here at this hour. Pray
go; you will disturb my mother.'

'Who is this man, then, whose right seems acknowledged?' asked Richard,
in ill-suppressed fury.

'When you address me like a gentleman, such as I used to believe you--'

'May I presume to ask when you ceased to regard me as a gentleman,
mistress Dorothy?'

'As soon as I found that you had learned to despise law and religion,'
answered the girl. 'Such a one will hardly succeed in acting the part of
a gentleman, even had he the blood of the Somersets in his veins.'

'I thank you, mistress Dorothy,' said the stranger, 'and will profit by
the plain hint. Once more tell me to go, and I will obey.'

'He must go first,' returned Dorothy.

Richard had been standing as if stunned, but now with an effort
recovered himself.

'I will wait for you,' he said, and turned away.

'For whom, sir?' asked Dorothy, indignantly.

'You have refused me the gentleman's name,' answered Richard: 'perhaps I
may have the good fortune to persuade himself to be more obliging.'

'I shall not keep you waiting long,' said the young man significantly,
as Richard walked away.

To do Richard justice, and greatly he needs it, I must make the remark
that such had been the intimacy betwixt him and Dorothy, that he might
well imagine himself acquainted with all the friends of her house. But
the intimacy had been confined to the children; the heads of the two
houses, although good neighbours, had not been drawn towards each other,
and their mutual respect had not ripened into friendship. Hence many of
the family and social relations of each were unknown to the other; and
indeed both families led such a retired life that the children knew
little of their own relatives even, and seldom spoke of any.

Lady Scudamore, the mother of the stranger, was first cousin to lady
Vaughan. They had been very intimate as girls, but had not met for
years--hardly since the former married sir John, the son of one of King
James's carpet-knights. Hearing of her cousin's illness, she had come to
visit her at last, under the escort of her son. Taken with his new
cousin, the youth had lingered and lingered; and in fact Dorothy had
been unable to get rid of him before an hour strange for leave-taking in
such a quiet and yet hospitable neighbourhood.

Richard took his stand on the side of the public road opposite the gate;
but just ere Scudamore came, which was hardly a minute after, a cloud
crept over the moon, and, as he happened to stand in a line with the
bole of a tree, Scudamore did not catch sight of him. When he turned to
walk along the road, Richard thought he avoided him, and, making a great
stride or two after him, called aloud--

'Stop, sir, stop. You forget your appointments over easily, I think.'

'Oh, you ARE there!' said the youth, turning.

'I am glad you acknowledge my presence,' said Richard, not the better
pleased with his new acquaintance that his speech and behaviour had an
easy tone of superiority, which, if indefinably felt by the home-bred
lad, was not therefore to be willingly accorded. His easy carriage, his
light step, his still shoulders and lithe spine, indicated both birth
and training.

'Just the night for a serenade,' he went on, heedless of Richard's
remark, '--bright, but not too bright; cloudy, but not too cloudy.'

'Sir!' said Richard, amazed at his coolness.

'Oh, you want to quarrel with me!' returned the youth. 'But it takes two
to fight as well as to kiss, and I will not make one to-night. I know
who you are well enough, and have no quarrel with you, except indeed it
be true--as indeed it must, for Dorothy tells me so--that you have
turned roundhead as well as your father.'

'What right have you to speak so familiarly of mistress Dorothy?' said
Richard.

'It occurs to me,' replied Scudamore, airily, 'that I had better ask you
by what right you haunt her house at midnight. But I would not willingly
cross you in cold blood. I wish you good a night, and better luck next
time you go courting.'

The moon swam from behind a cloud, and her over ripe and fading light
seemed to the eyes of Richard to gather upon the figure before him and
there revive. The youth had on a doublet of some reddish colour, ill
brought out by the moonlight, but its silver lace and the rapier hilt
inlaid with silver shone the keener against it. A short cloak hung from
his left shoulder, trimmed also with silver lace, and a little cataract
of silver fringe fell from the edges of his short trousers into the wide
tops of his boots, which were adorned with ruffles. He wore a large
collar of lace, and cuffs of the same were folded back from his bare
hands. A broad-brimmed beaver hat, its silver band fastened with a jewel
holding a plume of willowy feathers, completed his attire, which he wore
with just the slightest of a jaunty air. It was hardly the dress for a
walk at midnight, but he had come in his mother's carriage, and had to
go home without it.

Alas now for Richard's share in the freedom to which he had of late
imagined himself devoted! No sooner had the words last spoken entered
his ears than he was but a driven slave ready to rush into any quarrel
with the man who spoke them. Ere he had gone three paces he had stepped
in front of him.

'Whatever rights mistress Dorothy may have given you,' he said, 'she had
none to transfer in respect of my father. What do you mean by calling
him a roundhead?'

'Why, is he not one?' asked the youth, simply, keeping his ground, in
spite of the unpleasant proximity of Richard's person. 'I am sorry to
have wronged him, but I mistook him for a ringleader of the same name. I
heartily beg your pardon.'

'You did not mistake,' said Richard stupidly.

'Then I did him no wrong,' rejoined the youth, and once more would have
gone his way.

But Richard, angrier than ever at finding he had given him such an easy
advantage, moved with his movement, and kept rudely in front of him,
provoking a quarrel--in clownish fashion, it must be confessed.

'By heaven,' said Scudamore, 'if Dorothy had not begged me not to fight
with you--,' and as he spoke he slipped suddenly past his antagonist,
and walked swiftly away. Richard plunged after him, and seized him
roughly by the shoulder. Instantaneously he wheeled on the very foot
whence he was taking the next stride, and as he turned his rapier
gleamed in the moonlight. The same moment it left his hand, he scarce
knew how, and flew across the hedge. Richard, who was unarmed, had
seized the blade, and, almost by one and the same movement of his wrist,
wrenched the hilt from the grasp of his adversary, and flung the thing
from him. Then closing with the cavalier, slighter and less skilled in
such encounters, the roundhead almost instantly threw him upon the turf
that bordered the road.

'Take that for drawing on an unarmed man,' he said.

No reply came. The youth lay stunned.

Then compassion woke in the heart of the angry Richard, and he hastened
to his help. Ere he reached him, however, he made an attempt to rise,
but only to stagger and fall again.

'Curse you for a roundhead!' he cried; 'you've twisted some of my
tackle. I can't stand.'

'I'm sorry,' returned Richard, 'but why did you bare bilbo on a naked
man? A right malignant you are!'

'Did I?' returned Scudamore. 'You laid hands on me so suddenly! I ask
your pardon.'

Accepting the offered aid of Richard, he rose; but his right knee was so
much hurt that he could not walk a step without great pain. Full of
regret for the suffering he had caused, Richard lifted him in his arms,
and seated him on a low wall of earth, which was all that here inclosed
lady Vaughan's shrubbery; then, breaking through the hedge on the
opposite side of the way, presently returned with the rapier, and handed
it to him. Scudamore accepted it courteously, with difficulty replaced
it in its sheath, rose, and once more attempted to walk, but gave a
groan, and would have fallen had not Richard caught him.

'The devil is in it!' he cried, with more annoyance than anger. 'If I am
not in my place at my lord's breakfast to-morrow, there will be
questioning. That I had leave to accompany my mother makes the mischief.
If I had stole away, it would be another matter. It will be hard to bear
rebuke, and no frolic.'

'Come home with me,' said Richard. 'My father will do his best to atone
for the wrong done by his son.'

'Set foot across the threshold of a roundhead fanatic! In the way of
hospitality! Not if the choice lay betwixt that and my coffin!' cried
the cavalier.

'Then let me carry you back to lady Vaughan's,' said Richard, with a
torturing pang of jealousy, which only his sense of right, now
thoroughly roused, enabled him to defy.

'I dare not. I should terrify my mother, and perhaps kill my cousin.'

'Your mother! your cousin!' cried Richard.

'Yes,' returned Scudamore; 'my mother is there, on a visit to her cousin
lady Vaughan.'

'Alas, I am more to blame than I knew!' said Richard.

'No,' Scudamore went on, heedless of Richard's lamentation. 'I must
crawl back to Raglan as I may. If I get there before the morning, I
shall be able to show reason why I should not wait upon my lord at his
breakfast.'

'You belong to the earl's household, then?' said Richard.

'Yes; and I fear I shall be grey-headed before I belong to anything
else. He makes much of the ancient customs of the country: I would he
would follow them. In the good old times I should have been a squire at
least by now, if, indeed, I had not earned my spurs; but his lordship
will never be content without me to hand him his buttered egg at
breakfast, and fill his cup at dinner with his favourite claret. And so
I am neither more nor less than a page, which rhymes with my age better
than suits it. But the earl has a will of his own. He is a master worth
serving though. And there is my lady Elizabeth and my lady Mary--not to
mention my lord Herbert!--But,' he concluded, rubbing his injured knee
with both hands, 'why do I prate of them to a roundhead?'

'Why indeed?' returned Richard. 'Are they not, the earl and all his
people, traitors, and that of the worst? Are they not the enemies of the
truth--worshippers of idols, bowing the knee to a woman, and kissing the
very toes of an old man so in love with ignorance, that he tortures the
philosopher who tells him the truth about the world and its motions?'

'Go on, master Roundhead! I can chastise you, and that you know. This
cursed knee--'

'I will stand unarmed within your thrust, and never budge a foot,' said
Richard. 'But no,' he added, 'I dare not, lest I should further injure
one I have wronged already. Let there be a truce between us.'

'I am no papist,' returned Scudamore. 'I speak only as one of the earl's
household--true men all. For them I cast the word in your teeth, you
roundhead traitor! For myself I am of the English church.'

'It is but the wolf and the wolf's cub,' said. Richard. 'Prelatical
episcopacy is but the old harlot veiled, or rather, forsooth, her bloody
scarlet blackened in the sulphur fumes of her coming desolation.'

'Curse on, roundhead,' sighed the youth; 'I must crawl home.'

Once more he rose and made an effort to walk. But it was of no use: walk
he could not.

'I must wait till the morning,' he said, 'when some Christian waggoner
may be passing. Leave me in peace.'

'Nay, I am no such boor!' said Richard. 'Do you think you could ride?'

'I could try.'

'I will bring you the best mare in Gwent. But tell me your name, that I
may know with whom I have the honour of a feud.'

'My name is Rowland Scudamore,' answered the youth. 'Yours I know
already, and roundhead as you are, you have some smatch of honour in
you.'

With an air of condescension he held out his hand, which his adversary,
oppressed with a sense of the injury he had done him, did not refuse.

Richard hurried home, and to the stable, where he saddled his mare. But
his father, who was still in his study, heard the sound of her hoofs in
the paved yard, and met him as he led her out on the road, with an
inquiry as to his destination at such an hour. Richard told him that he
had had a quarrel with a certain young fellow of the name of Scudamore,
a page of the earl of Worcester, whom he had met at lady Vaughan's: and
recounted the result.

'Was your quarrel a just one, my son?'

'No sir. I was in the wrong.'

'Then you are so far in the right now. And you are going to help him
home?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Have you confessed yourself in the wrong?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then go, my son, but beware of private quarrel in such a season of
strife. This youth and thyself may meet some day in mortal conflict on
the battle-field; and for my part--I know not how it may be with
another--in such a case I would rather slay my friend than my enemy.'

Enlightened by the inward experience of the moment, Richard was able to
understand and respond to the feeling. How different a sudden action
flashed off the surface of a man's nature may be from that which, had
time been given, would have unfolded itself from its depths!

Bare-headed, Roger Heywood walked beside his son as he led the mare to
the spot where Scudamore perforce awaited his return. They found him
stretched on the roadside, plucking handfuls of grass, and digging up
the turf with his fingers, thus, and thus alone, betraying that he
suffered. Mr. Heywood at first refrained from any offer of hospitality,
believing he would be more inclined to accept it after he had proved the
difficulty of riding, in which case a previous refusal might stand in
the way. But although a slight groan escaped as they lifted him to the
saddle, he gathered up the reins at once, and sat erect while they
shortened the stirrup-leathers. Lady seemed to know what was required of
her, and stood as still as a vaulting horse until Richard took the
bridle to lead her away.

'I see!' said Scudamore; 'you can't trust me with your horse!'

'Not so, sir,' answered Mr. Heywood. 'We cannot trust the horse with
you. It is quite impossible for you to ride so far alone. If you will
go, you must submit to the attendance of my son, on which I am sorry to
think you have so good a claim. But will you not yet change your mind
and be our guest--for the night at least? We will send a messenger to
the castle at earliest dawn.'

Scudamore declined the invitation, but with perfect courtesy, for there
was that about Roger Heywood which rendered it impossible for any man
who was himself a gentleman, whatever his judgment of him might be, to
show him disrespect. And the moment the mare began to move, he felt no
further inclination to object to Richard's company at her head, for he
perceived that, should she prove in the least troublesome, it would be
impossible for him to keep his seat. He did not suffer so much, however,
as to lose all his good spirits, or fail in his part of a conversation
composed chiefly of what we now call chaff, both of them for a time
avoiding all such topics as might lead to dispute, the one from a sense
of wrong already done, the other from a vague feeling that he was under
the protection of the foregone injury.

'Have you known my cousin Dorothy long?' asked Scudamore.

'Longer than I can remember,' answered Richard.

'Then you must be more like brother and sister than lovers.'

'That, I fear, is her feeling,' replied Richard, honestly.

'You need not think of me as a rival,' said Scudamore. 'I never saw the
young woman in my life before, and although anything of yours, being a
roundhead's, is fair game--'

'Your humble servant, sir Cavalier!' interjected Richard. 'Pray use your
pleasure.'

'I tell you plainly,' Scudamore went on, without heeding the
interruption, 'though I admire my cousin, as I do any young woman, if
she be but a shade beyond the passable--'

'The ape! The coxcomb!' said Richard to himself.

'I am not, therefore, dying for her love; and I give you this one honest
warning that, though I would rather see mistress Dorothy in her
winding-sheet than dame to a roundhead, I should be--yes, I MAY be a
more dangerous rival in respect of your mare, than of any lady YOU are
likely to set eyes upon.'

'What do you mean?' said Richard gruffly.

'I mean that, the king having at length resolved to be more of a monarch
and less of a saint--'

'A saint!' echoed Richard, but the echo was rather a loud one, for it
startled his mare and shook her rider.

'Don't shout like that!' cried the cavalier, with an oath. 'Saint or
sinner, I care not. He is my king, and I am his soldier. But with this
knee you have given me, I shall be fitter for garrison than
field-duty--damn it.'

'You do not mean that his majesty has declared open war against the
parliament?' exclaimed Richard.

'Faithless puritan, I do,' answered Scudamore. 'His majesty has at
length--with reluctance, I am sorry to hear--taken up arms against his
rebellious subjects. Land will be cheap by-and-by.'

'Many such rumours have reached us,' returned Richard, quietly. 'The
king spares no threats; but for blows--well!'

'Insolent fanatic!' shouted Vaughan, 'I tell you his majesty is on his
way from Scotland with an army of savages; and London has declared for
the king.'

Richard and his mare simultaneously quickened their pace.

'Then it is time you were in bed, Mr Scudamore, for my mare and I will
be wanted,' he cried. 'God be praised! I thank you for the good news. It
makes me young again to hear it.'

'What the devil do you mean by jerking this cursed knee of mine so?'
shouted Scudamore. 'Faith, you were young enough in all conscience
already, you fool! You want to keep me in bed, as well as send me there!
Well out of the way, you think! But I give you honest warning to look
after your mare, for I vow I have fallen in love with her. She's worth
three, at least, of your mistress Dorothies.'

'You talk like a Dutch boor,' said Richard.

'Saith an English lout,' retorted Scudamore. 'But, all things being
lawful in love and war, not to mention hate and rebellion, this mare, if
I am blessed with a chance, shall be--well, shall be translated.'

'You mean from Redware to Raglan.'

'Where she shall be entertained in a manner worthy of her, which is
saying no little, if all her paces and points be equal to her walk and
her crest.'

'I trust you will be more pitiful to my poor Lady,' said Richard,
quietly. 'If all they say be true, Raglan stables are no place for a
mare of her breeding.'

'What do you mean, roundhead?'

'Folk say your stables at Raglan are like other some Raglan matters--of
the infernal sort.'

Scudamore was silent for a moment.

'Whether the stables be under the pavement or over the leads,' he
returned at last, 'there are not a few in them as good as she--of which
I hope to satisfy my Lady some day,' he added, patting the mare's neck.

'Wert thou not hurt already, I would pitch thee out of the saddle,' said
Richard.

'Were I not hurt in the knee, thou couldst not,' said Scudamore.

'I need not lay hand upon thee. Wert thou as sound in limb as thou art
in wind, thou wouldst feel thyself on the road ere thou knewest thou
hadst taken leave of the saddle--did I but give the mare the sign she
knows.'

'By God's grace,' said the cavalier, 'she shall be mine, and teach me
the trick of it.'

Richard answered only with a grim laugh, and again, but more gently this
time, quickened the mare's pace. Little more had passed between them
when the six-sided towers of Raglan rose on their view.

Richard had, from childhood, been familiar with their aspect, especially
that of the huge one called the Yellow Tower, but he had never yet been
within the walls that encircled them. At any time during his life,
almost up to the present hour, he might have entered without question,
for the gates were seldom closed and never locked, the portcullises,
sheathed in the wall above, hung moveless in their rusty chains, and the
drawbridges spanned the moat from scarp to counterscarp, as if from the
first their beams had rested there in solid masonry. And still, during
the day, there was little sign of change, beyond an indefinable presence
of busier life, even in the hush of the hot autumnal noon. But at night
the drawbridges rose and the portcullises descended--each with its own
peculiar creak, and jar, and scrape, setting the young rooks cawing in
reply from every pinnacle and tree-top--never later than the last moment
when the warder could see anything larger than a cat on the brow of the
road this side the village. For who could tell when, or with what force
at their command, the parliament might claim possession? And now another
of the frequent reports had arrived, that the king had at length
resorted to arms. It was altogether necessary for such as occupied a
stronghold, unless willing to yield it to the first who demanded
entrance, to keep watch and ward.

Admitted at the great brick gate, the outermost of all, and turning
aside from the steps leading up to the white stone gate and main
entrance beyond, with its drawbridge and double portcullis, Richard, by
his companion's directions, led his mare to the left, and, rounding the
moat of the citadel, sought the western gate of the castle, which seemed
to shelter itself under the great bulk of the Yellow Tower, the cannon
upon more than one of whose bastions closely commanded it, and made up
for its inferiority in defence of its own.

Scudamore had scarcely called, ere the warder, who had been waked by the
sound of the horse's feet, began to set the machinery of the portcullis
in motion.

'What! wounded already, master Scudamore!' he cried, as they rode under
the archway.

'Yes, Eccles,' answered Scudamore, '--wounded and taken prisoner, and
brought home for ransom!'

As they spoke, Richard made use of his eyes, with a vague notion that
some knowledge of the place might one day or other be of service, but it
was little he could see. The moon was almost down, and her low light,
prolific of shadows, shone straight in through the lifted portcullis,
but in the gateway where they stood, there was nothing for her to show
but the groined vault, the massy walls, and the huge iron-studded gate
beyond.

'Curse you for a roundhead!' cried Scudamore, in the wrath engendered of
a fierce twinge, as Heywood sought to help his lamed leg over the
saddle.

'Dismount on this side then,' said Richard, regardless of the insult.

But the warder had caught the word.

'Roundhead!' he exclaimed.

Scudamore did not answer until he found himself safe on his feet, and by
that time he had recovered his good manners.

'This is young Mr. Heywood of Redware,' he said, and moved towards the
wicket, leaning on Richard's arm.

But the old warder stepped in front, and stood between them and the
gate.

'Not a damned roundhead of the pack shall set foot across this
door-sill, so long as I hold the gate,' he cried, with a fierce gesture
of the right arm. And therewith he set his back to the wicket.

'Tut, tut, Eccles!' returned Scudamore impatiently. 'Good words are
worth much, and cost little.'

'If the old dog bark, he gives counsel,' rejoined Eccles, immovable.

Heywood was amused, and stood silent, waiting the result. He had no
particular wish to enter, and yet would have liked to see what could be
seen of the court.

'Where the doorkeeper is a churl, what will folk say of the master of
the house?' said Scudamore.

'They may say as they list; it will neither hurt him nor me,' said
Eccles.

'Make haste, my good fellow, and let us through,' pleaded Scudamore. 'By
Saint George! but my leg is in great pain. I fear the knee-cap is
broken, in which case I shall not trouble thee much for a week of
months.'

As he spoke, he stood leaning on Richard's arm, and behind them stood
Lady, still as a horse of bronze.

'I will but drop the portcullis,' said the warder, 'and then I will
carry thee to thy room in my arms. But not a cursed roundhead shall
enter here, I swear.'

'Let us through at once,' said Scudamore, trying the imperative.

'Not if the earl himself gave the order,' persisted the man.

'Ho! ho! what is that you say? Let the gentlemen through,' cried a voice
from somewhere.

The warder opened the wicket immediately, stepped inside, and held it
open while they entered, nor uttered another word. But as soon as
Richard had got Scudamore clear of the threshold, to which he lent not a
helping finger, he stepped quietly out again, closed the wicket behind
him, and taking Lady by the bridle, led her back over the bridge towards
the bowling-green.

Scudamore had just time to whisper to Heywood, 'It is my master, the
earl himself,' when the voice came again.

'What! wounded, Rowland? How is this? And who have you there?'

But that moment Richard heard the sound of his mare's hoofs on the
bridge, and leaving Scudamore to answer for them both, bounded back to
the wicket, darted through, and called her by name. Instantly she stood
stock still, notwithstanding a vicious kick in the ribs from Eccles, not
unseen of Heywood. Enraged at the fellow's insolence, he dealt him a
sudden blow that stretched him at the mare's feet, vaulted into the
saddle, and had reached the outer gate before he had recovered himself.
The sleepy porter had just let him through, when the warder's signal to
let no one out reached him. Richard turned with a laugh.

'When next you catch a roundhead,' he said, 'keep him;' and giving Lady
the rein, galloped off, leaving the porter staring after him through the
bars like a half-roused wild beast.

Not doubting the rumour of open hostilities, the warder's design had
been to secure the mare, and pretend she had run away, for a good horse
was now more precious than ever.

The earl's study was over the gate, and as he suffered much from gout
and slept ill, he not unfrequently sought refuge in the night-watches
with his friends Chaucer, Gower, and Shakspere.

Richard drew rein at the last point whence the castle would have been
visible in the daytime. All he saw was a moving light. The walls whence
it shone were one day to be as the shell around the kernel of his
destiny.




CHAPTER IX.

LOVE AND WAR.


When Richard reached home and recounted the escape he had had, an
imprecation, the first he had ever heard him utter, broke from his
father's lips. With the indiscrimination of party spirit, he looked upon
the warder's insolence and attempted robbery as the spirit and behaviour
of his master, the earl being in fact as little capable of such conduct
as Mr. Heywood himself.

Immediately after their early breakfast the next morning, he led his son
to a chamber in the roof, of the very existence of which he had been
ignorant, and there discovered to him good store of such armour of both
kinds as was then in use, which for some years past he had been quietly
collecting in view of the time--which, in the light of the last rumour,
seemed to have at length arrived--when strength would have to decide the
antagonism of opposed claims. Probably also it was in view of this time,
seen from afar in silent approach, that, from the very moment when he
took his education into his own hands, he had paid thorough attention to
Richard's bodily as well as mental accomplishment, encouraging him in
all manly sports, such as wrestling, boxing, and riding to hounds, with
the more martial training of sword-exercises, with and without the
target, and shooting with the carbine and the new-fashioned flint-lock
pistols.

The rest of the morning Richard spent in choosing a headpiece, and mail
plates for breast, back, neck, shoulders, arms, and thighs. The next
thing was to set the village tailor at work upon a coat of that thick
strong leather, dressed soft and pliant, which they called buff, to wear
under his armour. After that came the proper equipment of Lady, and that
of the twenty men whom his father expected to provide from amongst his
own tenants, and for whom he had already a full provision of clothing
and armour; they had to be determined on, conferred with, and fitted,
one by one, so as to avoid drawing attention to the proceeding. Hence
both Mr. Heywood and Richard had enough to do, and the more that
Faithful Stopchase, on whom was their chief dependence, had not yet
recovered sufficiently from the effects of his fall to be equal to the
same exertion as formerly--of which he was the more impatient that he
firmly believed he had been a special object of Satanic assault, because
of the present value of his counsels, and the coming weight of his deeds
on the side of the well-affected. Thus occupied, the weeks passed into
months.

During this time Richard called again and again upon Dorothy, ostensibly
to inquire after her mother. Only once, however, did she appear, when
she gave him to understand she was so fully occupied, that, although
obliged by his attention, he must not expect to see her again.

'But I will be honest, Richard,' she added, 'and let you know plainly
that, were it otherwise in respect of my mother, I yet should not see
you, for you and I have parted company, and are already so far asunder
on different roads that I must bid you farewell at once while yet we can
hear each other speak.'

There was no anger, only a cold sadness in her tone and manner, while
her bearing was stately as towards one with whom she had never had
intimacy. Even her sadness seemed to Richard to have respect to the
hopeless condition of her mother's health, and not at all to the changed
relation between him and her.

'I trust, at least, mistress Dorothy,' he said, with some bitterness,
'you will grant me the justice that what I do, I do with a good
conscience. After all that has been betwixt us I ask for no more.'

'What more could the best of men ask for?'

'I, who am far from making any claim to rank with such--'

'I am glad to know it,' interjected Dorothy.

'--am yet capable of hoping that an eye at once keener and kinder than
yours may see conscience at the very root of the actions which you,
Dorothy, will doubtless most condemn.'

Was this the boy she had despised for indifference?

'Was it conscience drove you to sprain my cousin Rowland's knee?' she
asked.

Richard was silent for a moment. The sting was too cruel.

'Pray hesitate not to say so, if such be your conviction,' added
Dorothy.

'No,' replied Richard, recovering himself. 'I trust it is not such a
serious matter as you say; but any how it was not conscience but
jealousy and anger that drove me to that wrong.'

'Did you see the action such at the time?'

'No, surely; else I would not have been guilty of that for which I am
truly sorry now.'

'Then, perhaps, the day will come when, looking back on what you do now,
you will regard it with the like disapprobation.--God grant it may!' she
added, with a deep sigh.

'That can hardly be, mistress Dorothy. I am, in the matters to which you
refer, under the influence of no passion, no jealousy, no self-seeking,
no--'

'Perhaps a deeper search might discover in you each and all of the
bosom-sins you so stoutly abjure,' interrupted Dorothy. 'But it is
needless for you to defend yourself to me; I am not your judge.'

'So much the better for me!' returned Richard; 'I should else have an
unjust as well as severe one. I, on my part, hope the day may come when
you will find something to repent of in such harshness towards an old
friend whom you choose to think in the wrong.'

'Richard Heywood, God is my witness it is no choice of mine. I have no
choice: what else is there to think? I know well enough what you and
your father are about. But there is nothing save my own conscience and
my mother's love I would not part with to be able to believe you
honourably right in your own eyes--not in mine--God forbid! That can
never be--not until fair is foul and foul is fair.'

So saying, she held out her hand.

'God be between thee and me, Dorothy!' said Richard, with solemnity, as
he took it in his.

He spoke with a voice that seemed to him far away and not his own. Until
now he had never realized the idea of a final separation between him and
Dorothy; and even now, he could hardly believe she was in earnest, but
felt, rather, like a child whose nurse threatens to forsake him on the
dark road, and who begins to weep only from the pitiful imagination of
the thing, and not any actual fear of her carrying the threat into
execution. The idea of retaining her love by ceasing to act on his
convictions--the very possibility of it--had never crossed the horizon
of his thoughts. Had it come to him as the merest intellectual notion,
he would have perceived at once, of such a loyal stock did he come, and
so loyal had he himself been to truth all his days, that to act upon her
convictions instead of his own would have been to widen a gulf at least
measurable, to one infinite and impassable.

She withdrew the hand which had solemnly pressed his, and left the room.
For a moment he stood gazing after her. Even in that moment, the vague
fear that she would not come again grew to a plain conviction, and
forcibly repressing the misery that rose in bodily presence from his
heart to his throat, he left the house, hurried down the pleached alley
to the old sun-dial, threw himself on the grass under the yews, and wept
and longed for war.

But war was not to be just yet. Autumn withered and sank into winter.
The rain came down on the stubble, and the red cattle waded through red
mire to and from their pasture; the skies grew pale above, and the earth
grew bare beneath; the winds grew sharp and seemed unfriendly; the
brooks ran foaming to the rivers, and the rivers ran roaring to the
ocean. Then the earth dried a little, and the frost came, and swelled
and hardened it; the snow fell and lay, vanished and came again. But
even out of the depth of winter, quivered airs and hints of spring,
until at last the mighty weakling was born. And all this time rumour
beat the alarum of war, and men were growing harder and more determined
on both sides--some from self-opinion, some from party spirit, some from
prejudice, antipathy, animosity, some from sense of duty, mingled more
and less with the alloys of impulse and advantage. But he who was most
earnest on the one side was least aware that he who was most earnest on
the other was honest as himself. To confess uprightness in one of the
opposite party, seemed to most men to involve treachery to their own; or
if they were driven to the confession, it was too often followed with an
attempt at discrediting the noblest of human qualities.

The hearts of the two young people fared very much as the earth under
the altered skies of winter, and behaved much as the divided nation. A
sense of wrong endured kept both from feeling at first the full sorrow
of their separation; and by the time that the tide of memory had flowed
back and covered the rock of offence, they had got a little used to the
dulness of a day from which its brightest hour had been blotted. Dorothy
learned very soon to think of Richard as a prodigal brother beyond seas,
and when they chanced to meet, which was but seldom, he was to her as a
sad ghost in a dream. To Richard, on the other hand, she looked a lovely
but scarce worshipful celestial, with merely might enough to hold his
heart, swelling with a sense of wrong, in her hand, and squeeze it very
hard. His consolation was that he suffered for the truth's sake, for to
decline action upon such insight as he had had, was a thing as
impossible as to alter the relations between the parts of a sphere.
Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens of
the church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about the paled
yard of obedience, picking up the barley of righteousness; Richard
longed for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her sons together--to a
war whose battles should never cease until men were free to worship God
after the light he had lighted within them, and the dragon of priestly
authority should breathe out his last fiery breath, no more to drive the
feebler brethren to seek refuge in the house of hypocrisy.

At home Dorothy was under few influences except those of her mother,
and, through his letters, of Mr. Matthew Herbert. Upon the former a
lovely spiritual repose had long since descended. Her anxieties were
only for her daughter, her hopes only for the world beyond the grave.
The latter was a man of peace, who, having found in the ordinances of
his church everything to aid and nothing to retard his spiritual
development, had no conception of the nature of the puritanical
opposition to its government and rites. Through neither could Dorothy
come to any true idea of the questions which agitated the politics of
both church and state. To her, the king was a kind of demigod, and every
priest a fountain of truth. Her religion was the sedate and dutiful
acceptance of obedient innocence, a thing of small account indeed where
it is rooted only in sentiment and customary preference, but of
inestimable value in such cases as hers, where action followed upon
acceptance.

Richard, again, was under the quickening masterdom of a well-stored,
active mind, a strong will, a judgment that sought to keep its balance
even, and whose descended scale never rebounded, a conscience which,
through all the mists of human judgment, eyed ever the blotted glimmer
of some light beyond; and all these elements of power were gathered in
his own father, in whom the customary sternness of the puritan parent
had at length blossomed in confidence, a phase of love which, to such a
mind as Richard's, was even more enchanting than tenderness. To be
trusted by such a father, to feel his mind and soul present with him,
acknowledging him a fit associate in great hopes and noble aims, was
surely and ought to be, whatever the sentimentalist may say, some
comfort for any sorrow a youth is capable of, such being in general only
too lightly remediable. I wonder if any mere youth ever suffered, from a
disappointment in love, half the sense of cureless pain which, with one
protracted pang, gnaws at the heart of the avaricious old man who has
dropt a sovereign into his draw-well.

But the relation of Dorothy and Richard, although ordinary in outward
appearance, was of no common kind; and while these two thus fell apart
from each other in their outer life, each judging the other insensible
to the call of highest rectitude, neither of them knew how much his or
her heart was confident of the other's integrity. In respect of them,
the lovely simile, in Christabel, of the parted cliffs, may be carried a
little farther, for, under the dreary sea flowing between them, the rock
was one still. Such a faith may sometimes, perhaps often does, lie in
the heart like a seed buried beyond the reach of the sun, thoroughly
alive though giving no sign: to grow too soon might be to die. Things
had indeed gone farther with Dorothy and Richard, but the lobes of their
loves had never been fairly exposed to the sun and wind ere the swollen
clods of winter again covered them.

Once, in the cold noon of a lovely day of frost, when the lightest step
crackled with the breaking of multitudinous crystals, when the trees
were fringed with furry white, and the old spider-webs glimmered like
filigrane of fairy silver, they met on a lonely country-road. The sun
shone red through depths of half-frozen vapour, and tinged the whiteness
of death with a faint warmth of feeling and hope. Along the rough lane
Richard walked reading what looked like a letter, but was a copy his
father had procured of a poem still only in manuscript--the Lycidas of
Milton. In the glow to which the alternating hot and cold winds of
enthusiasm and bereavement had fanned the fiery particle within him,
Richard was not only able to understand and enjoy the thought of which
the poem was built, but was borne aloft on its sad yet hopeful melodies
as upon wings of an upsoaring seraph. The flow of his feeling suddenly
broken by an almost fierce desire to share with Dorothy the tenderness
of the magic music of the stately monody, and then, ere the answering
waves of her emotion had subsided, to whisper to her that the marvellous
spell came from the heart of the same wonderful man from whose brain had
issued, like Pallas from Jove's,--what?--Animadversions upon the
Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnus, the pamphlet which had so
roused all the abhorrence her nature was capable of--he lifted his head
and saw her but a few paces from him. Dorothy caught a glimpse of a
countenance radiant with feeling, and eyes flashing through a watery
film of delight; her own eyes fell; she said, 'Good morning, Richard!'
and passed him without deflecting an inch. The bird of song folded its
wings and called in its shining; the sun lost half his red beams; the
sprinkled seed pearls vanished, and ashes covered the earth; he folded
the paper, laid it in the breast of his doublet, and walked home through
the glittering meadows with a fresh hurt in his heart.

Dorothy's time and thoughts were all but occupied with the nursing of
her mother, who, contrary to the expectation of her friends, outlived
the winter, and revived as the spring drew on. She read much to her.
Some of the best books had drifted into the house and settled there,
but, although English printing was now nearly two centuries old, they
were not many. We must not therefore imagine, however, that the two
ladies were ill supplied with spiritual pabulum. There are few houses of
the present day in which, though there be ten times as many books, there
is so much strong food; if there was any lack, it was rather of
diluents. Amongst those she read were Queen Elizabeth's Homilies,
Hooker's Politie, Donne's Sermons, and George Herbert's Temple, to the
dying lady only less dear than her New Testament.

But even with this last, it was only through sympathy with her mother
that Dorothy could come into any contact. The gems of the mind, which
alone could catch and reflect such light, lay as yet under the soil, and
much ploughing and breaking of the clods was needful ere they could come
largely to the surface. But happily for Dorothy, there were amongst the
books a few of those precious little quartos of Shakspere, the first
three books of the Faerie Queene, and the Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia, then much read, if we may judge from the fact that, although it
was not published till after the death of Sidney, the eighth edition of
it had now been nearly ten years in lady Vaughan's possession.

Then there was in the drawing-room an old spinnet, sadly out of tune, on
which she would yet, in spite of the occasional jar and shudder of
respondent nerves, now and then play at a sitting all the little music
she had learned, and with whose help she had sometimes even tried to
find out an air for words that had taken her fancy.

Also, she had the house to look after, the live stock to see to, her dog
to play with and teach, a few sad thoughts and memories to discipline, a
call now and then from a neighbour, or a longer visit from some old
friend of her mother's to receive, and the few cottagers on all that was
left of the estate of Wyfern to care for; so that her time was tolerably
filled up, and she felt little need of anything more to occupy at least
her hours and days.

Meanwhile, through all nature's changes, through calm and tempest, rain
and snow, through dull refusing winter, and the first passing visits of
open-handed spring, the hearts of men were awaiting the outburst of the
thunder, the blue peaks of whose cloud-built cells had long been visible
on the horizon of the future. Every now and then they would start and
listen, and ask each other was it the first growl of the storm, or but
the rumbling of the wheels of the government. To the dwellers in Raglan
Castle it seemed at least a stormy sign--of which the news reached them
in the dull November weather--that the parliament had set a guard upon
Worcester House in the Strand, and searched it for persons suspected of
high treason--lord Herbert, doubtless, first of all, the direction and
strength of whose political drift, suspicious from the first because of
his religious persuasion, could hardly be any longer doubtful to the
most liberal of its members.

The news of the terrible insurrection of the catholics in Ireland
followed.

Richard kept his armour bright, his mare in good fettle, himself and his
men in thorough exercise, read and talked with his father, and waited,
sometimes with patience, sometimes without.

At length, in the early spring, the king withdrew to York, and a
body-guard of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood gathered around him.
Richard renewed the flints of his carbine and pistols.

In April, the king, refused entrance into the town of Hull, proclaimed
the governor a traitor. The parliament declared the proclamation a
breach of its privileges. Richard got new girths.

The summer passed in various disputes. Towards its close the governor of
Portsmouth declined to act upon a commission to organize the new levies
of the parliament, and administered instead thereof an oath of
allegiance to the garrison and inhabitants. Thereupon the place was
besieged by Essex; the king proclaimed him a traitor, and the parliament
retorted by declaring the royal proclamation a libel. Richard had his
mare new-shod.

On a certain day in August, the royal standard, with the motto, 'Give to
Caesar his due,' was set up at Nottingham. Richard mounted his mare, and
taking leave of his father, led Stopchase and nineteen men more, all
fairly mounted, to offer his services to the parliament, as represented
by the earl of Essex.




CHAPTER X.

DOROTHY'S REFUGE.


With the decay of summer, lady Vaughan began again to sink, and became
at length so weak that Dorothy rarely left her room. The departure of
Richard Heywood to join the rebels affected her deeply. The report of
the utter rout of the parliamentary forces at Edgehill, lighted up her
face for the last time with a glimmer of earthly gladness, which the
very different news that followed speedily extinguished; and after that
she declined more rapidly. Mrs. Rees told Dorothy that she would yield
to the first frost. But she lingered many weeks. One morning she signed
to her daughter to come nearer that she might speak to her.

'Dorothy,' she whispered, 'I wish much to see good Mr. Herbert. Prithee
send for him. I know it is an evil time for him to travel, being an old
man and feeble, but he will do his endeavour to come to me, I know, if
but for my husband's sake, whom he loved like a brother. I cannot die in
peace without first taking counsel with him how best to provide for the
safety of my little ewe-lamb until these storms are overblown. Alas!
alas! I did look to Richard Heywood--'

She could say no more.

'Do not take thought about the morrow for me any more than you would for
yourself, madam,' said Dorothy. 'You know master Herbert says the one is
as the other.'

She kissed her mother's hand as she spoke, then hastened from the room,
and despatched a messenger to Llangattock.

Before the worthy man arrived, lady Vaughan was speechless. By signs and
looks, definite enough, and more eloquent than words, she committed
Dorothy to his protection, and died.

Dorothy behaved with much calmness. She would not, in her mother's
absence, act so as would have grieved her presence. Little passed
between her and Mr. Herbert until the funeral was over. Then they talked
of the future. Her guardian wished much to leave everything in charge of
the old bailiff, and take her with him to Llangattock; but he hesitated
a little because of the bad state of the roads in winter, much because
of their danger in the troubled condition of affairs, and most of all
because of the uncertain, indeed perilous position of the Episcopalian
clergy, who might soon find themselves without a roof to shelter them.
Fearing nothing for himself, he must yet, in arranging for Dorothy,
contemplate the worst of threatening possibilities; and one thing was
pretty certain, that matters must grow far worse before they could even
begin to mend.

But they had more time for deliberation given them than they would
willingly have taken. Mr. Herbert had caught cold while reading the
funeral service, and was compelled to delay his return. The cold settled
into a sort of low fever, and for many weeks he lay helpless. During
this time the sudden affair at Brentford took place, after which the
king, having lost by it far more than he had gained, withdrew to Oxford,
anxious to re-open the treaty which the battle had closed.

The country was now in a sad state. Whichever party was uppermost in any
district, sought to ruin all of the opposite faction. Robbery and
plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies or the
route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere marauders, taking
up the cry of the faction that happened in any neighbourhood to have the
ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed travellers, and were guilty of all
sorts of violence. Hence it had become as perilous to stay at home in an
unfortified house as to travel; and many were the terrors which during
the winter tried the courage of the girl, and checked the recovery of
the old man. At length one morning, after a midnight alarm, Mr. Herbert
thus addressed Dorothy, as she waited upon him with his breakfast:

'It fears me much, my dear Dorothy, that the time will be long ere any
but fortified places will be safe abodes. It is a question in my mind
whether it would not be better to seek refuge for you--. But stay; let
me suggest my proposal, rather than startle you with it in sudden form
complete. You are related to the Somersets, are you not?'

'Yes--distantly.'

'Is the relationship recognized by them?'

'I cannot tell, sir. I do not even distinctly know what the relationship
is. And assuredly, sir, you mean not to propose that I should seek
safety from bodily peril with a household which is, to say the least, so
unfriendly to the doctrines you and my blessed mother have always taught
me! You cannot, or indeed, must you not have forgotten that they are
papists?'

Dorothy had been educated in such a fear of the catholics, and such a
profound disapproval of those of their doctrines rejected by the
reformers of the church of England, as was only surpassed in intensity
by her absolute abhorrence of the assumptions and negations of the
puritans. These indeed roused in her a certain sense of disgust which
she had never felt in respect of what were considered by her teachers
the most erroneous doctrines of the catholics. But Mr. Herbert, although
his prejudices were nearly as strong, and his opinions, if not more
indigenous at least far better acclimatised than hers, had yet reaped
this advantage of a longer life, that he was better able to atone his
dislike of certain opinions with personal regard for those who held
them, and therefore did not, like Dorothy, recoil from the idea of
obligation to one of a different creed--provided always that creed was
catholicism and not puritanism. For to the church of England, the
catholics, in the presence of her more rampant foes, appeared harmless
enough now.

He believed that the honourable feelings of lord Worcester and his
family would be hostile to any attempt to proselytize his ward. But as
far as she was herself concerned, he trusted more to the strength of her
prejudices than the rectitude of her convictions, honest as the girl
was, to prevent her from being over-influenced by the change of
spiritual atmosphere; for in proportion to the simplicity of her
goodness must be her capacity for recognizing the goodness of others,
catholics or not, and for being wrought upon by the virtue that went out
from them. His hope was, that England would have again become the abode
of peace, long ere any risk to her spiritual well-being should have been
incurred by this mode of securing her bodily safety and comfort.

But there was another fact, in the absence of which he would have had
far more hesitation in seeking for his ewe-lamb the protection of sheep,
the guardians of whose spiritual fold had but too often proved wolves in
sheep-dogs' clothing: within the last few days the news had reached him
that an old friend named Bayly, a true man, a priest of the English
church and a doctor of divinity, had taken up his abode in Raglan castle
as one of the household--chaplain indeed, as report would have it,
though that was hard of belief, save indeed it were for the sake of the
protestants within its walls. However that might be, there was a true
shepherd to whose care to entrust his lamb; and it was mainly on the
strength of this consideration that he had concluded to make his
proposal to Dorothy--namely, that she should seek shelter within the
walls of Raglan castle until the storm should be so far over-blown, as
to admit either of her going to Llangattock or returning to her own
home. He now discussed the matter with her in full, and, notwithstanding
her very natural repugnance to the scheme, such was Dorothy's confidence
in her friend that she was easily persuaded of its wisdom. What the more
inclined her to yield was, that Mr. Heywood had written her a letter,
hardly the less unwelcome for the kindness of its tone, in which he
offered her the shelter and hospitality of Redware 'until better days.'

'Better days!' exclaimed Dorothy with contempt. 'If such days as he
would count better should ever arrive, his house is the last place where
I would have them find me!'

She wrote a polite but cold refusal, and rejoiced in the hope that he
would soon hear of her having sought and found refuge in Raglan with the
friends of the king.

Meanwhile Mr. Herbert had opened communication with Dr. Bayly, had
satisfied himself that he was still a true son of the church, and had
solicited his friendly mediation towards the receiving of mistress
Dorothy Vaughan into the family of the marquis of Worcester, to the
dignity of which title the earl had now been raised--the parliament, to
be sure, declining to acknowledge the patent conferred by his majesty,
but that was of no consequence in the estimation of those chiefly
concerned.

On a certain spring morning, then, the snow still lying in the hollows
of the hills, Thomas Bayly came to Wyfern to see his old friend Matthew
Herbert. He was a courteous little man, with a courtesy librating on a
knife-edge of deflection towards obsequiousness on the one hand and
condescension on the other, for neither of which, however, was his
friend Herbert an object. His eye was keen, and his forehead good, but
his carriage inclined to the pompous, and his speech to the formal,
ornate, and prolix. The shape of his mouth was honest, but the closure
of the lips indicated self-importance. The greeting between them was
simple and genuine, and ere they parted, Bayly had promised to do his
best in representing the matter to the marquis, his daughter-in-law,
lady Margaret, the wife of lord Herbert, and his daughter, lady Anne,
who, although the most rigid catholic in the house, was already the
doctor's special friend.

It would have been greatly unlike the marquis or any of his family to
refuse such a prayer. Had not their house been for centuries the abode
of hospitality, the embodiment of shelter? On the mere representation of
Dr. Bayly, and the fact of the relationship, which, although distant,
was well enough known, within two days mistress Dorothy Vaughan received
an invitation to enter the family of the marquis, as one of the
gentlewomen of lady Margaret's suite. It was of course gratefully
accepted, and as soon as Mr. Herbert thought himself sufficiently
recovered to encounter the fatigues of travelling, he urged on the
somewhat laggard preparations of Dorothy, that he might himself see her
safely housed on his way to Llangattock, whither he was most anxious to
return.

It was a lovely spring morning when they set out together on horseback
for Raglan. The sun looked down like a young father upon his
earth-mothered children, peeping out of their beds to greet him after
the long winter night. The rooks were too busy to caw, dibbling deep in
the soft red earth with their great beaks. The red cattle, flaked with
white, spotted the clear fresh green of the meadows. The bare trees had
a kind of glory about them, like old men waiting for their youth, which
might come suddenly. A few slow clouds were drifting across the pale
sky. A gentle wind was blowing over the wet fields, but when a cloud
swept before the sun, it blew cold. The roads were bad, but their horses
were used to such, and picked their way with the easy carefulness of
experience. The winter might yet return for a season, but this day was
of the spring and its promises. Earth and air, field and sky were full
of peace. But the heart of England was troubled--troubled with passions
both good and evil--with righteous indignation and unholy scorn, with
the love of liberty and the joy of license, with ambition and
aspiration.

No honest heart could yield long to the comforting of the fair world,
knowing that some of her fairest fields would soon be crimsoned afresh
with the blood of her children. But Dorothy's sadness was not all for
her country in general. Had she put the question honestly to her heart,
she must have confessed that even the loss of her mother had less to do
with a certain weight upon it, which the loveliness of the spring day
seemed to render heavier, than the rarely absent feeling rather than
thought, that the playmate of her childhood, and the offered lover of
her youth, had thrown himself with all the energy of dawning manhood
into the quarrel of the lawless and self-glorifying. Nor was she
altogether free from a sense of blame in the matter. Had she been less
imperative in her mood and bearing, more ready to give than to require
sympathy,--but ah! she could not change the past, and the present was
calling upon her.

At length the towers of Raglan appeared, and a pang of apprehension shot
through her bosom. She was approaching the unknown. Like one on the
verge of a second-sight, her history seemed for a moment about to reveal
itself--where it lay, like a bird in its egg, within those massive
walls, warded by those huge ascending towers. Brought up in a retirement
that some would have counted loneliness, and although used to all gentle
and refined ways, yet familiar with homeliness and simplicity of mode
and ministration, she could not help feeling awed at the prospect of
entering such a zone of rank and stateliness and observance as the
household of the marquis, who lived like a prince in expenditure,
attendance, and ceremony. She knew little of the fashions of the day,
and, like many modest young people, was afraid she might be guilty of
some solecism which would make her appear ill-bred, or at least awkward.
Since her mother left her, she had become aware of a timidity to which
she had hitherto been a stranger. 'Ah!' she said to herself, 'if only my
mother were with me!'

At length they reached the brick gate, were admitted within the outer
wall, and following the course taken by Scudamore and Heywood, skirted
the moat which enringed the huge blind citadel or keep, and arrived at
the western gate. The portcullis rose to admit them, and they rode into
the echoes of the vaulted gateway. Turning to congratulate Dorothy on
their safe arrival, Mr. Herbert saw that she was pale and agitated.

'What ails my child?' he said in a low voice, for the warder was near.

'I feel as if entering a prison,' she replied, with a shiver.

'Is thy God the God of the grange and not of the castle?' returned the
old man.

'But, sir,' said Dorothy, 'I have been accustomed to a liberty such as
few have enjoyed, and these walls and towers--'

'Heed not the look of things,' interrupted her guardian. 'Believe in the
Will that with a thought can turn the shadow of death into the morning,
give gladness for weeping, and the garment of praise for the spirit of
heaviness.'




CHAPTER XI.

RAGLAN CASTLE.


While he yet spoke, their horses, of their own accord, passed through
the gate which Eccles had thrown wide to admit them, and carried them
into the Fountain court. Here, indeed, was a change of aspect! All that
Dorothy had hitherto contemplated was the side of the fortress which
faced the world--frowning and defiant, although here and there on the
point of breaking into a half smile, for the grim, suspicious,
altogether repellent look of the old feudal castle had been gradually
vanishing in the additions and alterations of more civilised times. But
now they were in the heart of the building, and saw the face which the
house of strength turned upon its own people. The spring sunshine filled
half the court; over the rest lay the shadow of the huge keep, towering
massive above the three-storied line of building which formed the side
next it. Here was the true face of the Janus-building, full of eyes and
mouths; for many bright windows looked down into the court, in some of
which shone the smiling faces of children and ladies peeping out to see
the visitors, whose arrival had been announced by the creaking chains of
the portcullis; and by the doors issued and entered, here a lady in rich
attire, there a gentlemen half in armour, and here again a serving man
or maid. Nearly in the centre of the quadrangle, just outside the shadow
of the keep, stood the giant horse, rearing in white marble, almost
dazzling in the sunshine, from whose nostrils spouted the jets of water
which gave its name to the court. Opposite the gate by which they
entered was the little chapel, with its triple lancet windows, over
which lay the picture-gallery with its large oriel lights. Far above
their roof, ascended from behind that of the great hall, with its fine
lantern window seated on the ridge. From the other court beyond the
hall, that upon which the main entrance opened, came the sounds of heavy
feet in intermittent but measured tread, the clanking of arms, and a
returning voice of loud command: the troops of the garrison were being
exercised on the slabs of the pitched court.

From each of the many doors opening into the court they had entered, a
path, paved with coloured tiles, led straight through the finest of turf
to the marble fountain in the centre, into whose shadowed basin the
falling water seemed to carry captive as into a prison the sunlight it
caught above. Its music as it fell made a lovely but strange and sad
contrast with the martial sounds from beyond.

It was but a moment they had to note these things; eyes and ears
gathered them all at once. Two of the warder's men already held their
horses, while two other men, responsive to the warder's whistle, came
running from the hall and helped them to dismount. Hardly had they
reached the ground ere a man-servant came, who led the way to the left
towards a porch of carved stone on the same side of the court. The door
stood open, revealing a flight of stairs, rather steep, but wide and
stately, going right up between two straight walls. At the top stood
lady Margaret's gentleman usher, Mr. Harcourt by name, who received them
with much courtesy, and conducting them to a small room on the left of
the landing, went to announce their arrival to lady Margaret, to whose
private parlour this was the antechamber. Returning in a moment, he led
them into her presence.

She received them with a frankness which almost belied the stateliness
of her demeanour. Through the haze of that reserve which a consciousness
of dignity, whether true or false, so often generates, the genial
courtesy of her Irish nature, for she was an O'Brien, daughter of the
earl of Thomond, shone clear, and justified her Celtic origin.

'Welcome, cousin!' she said, holding out her hand while yet distant half
the length of the room, across which, upborne on slow firm foot, she
advanced with even, stately motion, 'And you also, reverend sir,' she
went on, turning to Mr. Herbert. 'I am told we are indebted to you for
this welcome addition to our family--how welcome none can tell but
ladies shut up like ourselves.'

Dorothy was already almost at her ease, and the old clergyman soon found
lady Margaret so sensible and as well as courteous--prejudiced yet
further in her favour, it must be confessed, by the pleasant pretence
she made of claiming cousinship on the ground of the identity of her
husband's title with his surname--that, ere he left the castle, liberal
as he had believed himself, he was nevertheless astonished to find how
much of friendship had in that brief space been engendered in his bosom
towards a catholic lady whom he had never before seen.

Since the time of Elizabeth, when the fear and repugnance of the nation
had been so greatly and justly excited by the apparent probability of a
marriage betwixt their queen and the detested Philip of Spain, a
considerable alteration had been gradually wrought in the feelings of a
large portion of it in respect of their catholic countrymen--a fact
which gave strength to the position of the puritans in asserting the
essential identity of episcopalian with catholic politics. Almost forty
years had elapsed since the Gunpowder Plot; the queen was a catholic;
the episcopalian party was itself at length endangered by the extension
and development of the very principles on which they had themselves
broken away from the church of Rome; and the catholics were friendly to
the government of the king, under which their condition was one of
comfort if not influence, while under that of the parliament they had
every reason to anticipate a revival of persecution. Not a few of them
doubtless cherished the hope that this revelation of the true spirit of
dissent would result in driving the king and his party back into the
bosom of the church.

The king, on the other hand, while only too glad to receive what aid he
might from the loyal families of the old religion, yet saw that much
caution was necessary lest he should alienate the most earnest of his
protestant friends by giving ground for the suspicion that he was
inclined to purchase their co-operation by a return to the creed of his
Scottish grandmother, Mary Stuart, and his English
great-great-grand-mother, Margaret Tudor.

On the part of the clergy there had been for some time a considerable
tendency, chiefly from the influence of Laud, to cultivate the same
spirit which actuated the larger portion of the catholic priesthood; and
although this had never led to retrograde movement in regard to their
politics, the fact that both were accounted by a third party, and that
far the most dangerous to either of the other two, as in spirit and
object one and the same, naturally tended to produce a more indulgent
regard of each other than had hitherto prevailed. And hence, in part, it
was that it had become possible for episcopalian Dr. Bayly to be an
inmate of Raglan Castle, and for good, protestant Matthew Herbert to
seek refuge for his ward with good catholic lady Margaret.

Eager to return to the duties of his parish, through his illness so long
neglected, Mr. Herbert declined her ladyship's invitation to dinner,
which, she assured him, consulting a watch that she wore in a ring on
her little finger, must be all but ready, seeing it was now a quarter to
eleven, and took his leave, accompanied by Dorothy's servant to bring
back the horse--if indeed they should be fortunate enough to escape the
requisition of both horses by one party or the other. At present,
however, the king's affairs continued rather on the ascendant, and the
name of the marquis in that country was as yet a tower of strength.
Dorothy's horse was included in the hospitality shown his mistress, and
taken to the stables--under the mid-day shadow of the Library Tower.

As soon as the parson was gone, lady Margaret touched a small silver
bell which hung in a stand on the table beside her.

'Conduct mistress Dorothy Vaughan to her room, wait upon her there, and
then attend her hither,' she said to the maid who answered it. 'I would
request a little not unneedful haste, cousin,' she went on, 'for my lord
of Worcester is very precise in all matters of household order, and
likes ill to see any one enter the dining-room after he is seated. It is
his desire that you should dine at his table to-day. After this I must
place you with the rest of my ladies, who dine in the housekeeper's
room.'

'As you think proper, madam,' returned Dorothy, a little disappointed,
but a little relieved also.

'The bell will ring presently,' said lady Margaret, 'and a quarter of an
hour thereafter we shall all be seated.'

She was herself already dressed--in a pale-blue satin, with full skirt
and close-fitting, long-peaked boddice, fastened in front by several
double clasps set with rubies; her shoulders were bare, and her sleeves
looped up with large round star-like studs, set with diamonds, so that
her arms also were bare to the elbows. Round her neck was a short string
of large pearls.

'You take no long time to attire yourself, cousin,' said her ladyship,
kindly, when Dorothy returned.

'Little time was needed, madam,' answered Dorothy; 'for me there is but
one colour. I fear I shall show but a dull bird amidst the gay plumage
of Raglan. But I could have better adorned myself had not I heard the
bell ere I had begun, and feared to lose your ladyship's company, and in
very deed make my first appearance before my lord as a transgressor of
the laws of his household.'

'You did well, cousin Dorothy; for everything goes by law and order
here. All is reason and rhyme too in this house. My lord's father,
although one of the best and kindest of men, is, as I said, somewhat
precise, and will, as he says himself, be king in his own
kingdom--thinking doubtless of one who is not such. I should not talk
thus with you, cousin, were you like some young ladies I know; but there
is that about you which pleases me greatly, and which I take to indicate
discretion. When first I came to the house, not having been accustomed
to so severe a punctuality, I gave my lord no little annoyance; for,
oftener than once or twice, I walked into his dining-room not only after
grace had been said, but after the first course had been sent down to
the hall-tables. My lord took his revenge in calling me the wild
Irishwoman.'

Here she laughed very sweetly.

'The only one,' she resumed, 'who does here as he will, is my husband.
Even lord Charles, who is governor of the castle, must be in his place
to the moment; but for my husband--.'

The bell rang a second time. Lady Margaret rose, and taking Dorothy's
arm, led her from the room into a long dim-lighted corridor. Arrived at
the end of it, where a second passage met it at right angles, she
stopped at a door facing them.

'I think we shall find my lord of Worcester here,' she said in a
whisper, as she knocked and waited a response. 'He is not here,' she
said. 'He expects me to call on him as I pass. We must make haste.'

The second passage, in which were several curves and sharp turns, led
them to a large room, nearly square, in which were two tables covered
for about thirty. By the door and along the sides of the room were a
good many gentlemen, some of them very plainly dressed, and others in
gayer attire, amongst whom Dorothy, as they passed through, recognised
her cousin Scudamore. Whether he saw and knew her she could not tell.
Crossing a small antechamber they entered the drawing-room, where stood
and sat talking a number of ladies and gentlemen, to some of whom lady
Margaret spoke and presented her cousin, greeting others with a familiar
nod or smile, and yet others with a stately courtesy. Then she said,

'Ladies, I will lead the way to the dining-room. My lord marquis would
the less willingly have us late that something detains himself.'

Those who dined in the marquis's room followed her. Scarcely had she
reached the upper end of the table when the marquis entered, followed by
all his gentlemen, some of whom withdrew, their service over for the
time, while others proceeded to wait upon him and his family, with any
of the nobility who happened to be his guests at the first table.

'I am the laggard to-day, my lady,' he said, cheerily, as he bore his
heavy person up the room towards her. 'Ah!' he went on, as lady Margaret
stepped forward to meet him, leading Dorothy by the hand, 'who is this
sober young damsel under my wild Irishwoman's wing? Our young cousin
Vaughan, doubtless, whose praises my worthy Dr. Bayly has been sounding
in my ears?'

He held out his hand to Dorothy, and bade her welcome to Raglan.

The marquis was a man of noble countenance, of the type we are ready to
imagine peculiar to the great men of the time of queen Elizabeth. To
this his unwieldy person did not correspond, although his movements were
still far from being despoiled of that charm which naturally belonged to
all that was his. Nor did his presence owe anything to his dress, which
was of that long-haired coarse woollen stuff they called frieze, worn,
probably, by not another nobleman in the country, and regarded as fitter
for a yeoman. His eyes, though he was yet but sixty-five or so, were
already hazy, and his voice was husky and a little broken--results of
the constantly poor health and frequent suffering he had had for many
years; but he carried it all 'with'--to quote the prince of courtesy,
sir Philip Sydney--'with a right old man's grace, that will seem
livelier than his age will afford him.'

The moment he entered, the sewer in the antechamber at the other end of
the room had given a signal to one waiting at the head of the stair
leading down to the hall, and his lordship was hardly seated,
ere--although the kitchen was at the corner of the pitched court
diagonally opposite--he bore the first dish into the room, followed by
his assistants, laden each with another.

Lady Margaret made Dorothy sit down by her. A place on her other side
was vacant.

'Where is this truant husband of thine, my lady?' asked the marquis, as
soon as Dr. Bayly had said grace. 'Know you whether he eats at all, or
when, or where? It is now three days since he has filled his place at
thy side, yet is he in the castle. Thou knowest, my lady, I deal not
with him, who is so soon to sit in this chair, as with another, but I
like it not. Know you what occupies him to day?'

'I do not, my lord,' answered lady Margaret. 'I have had but one glimpse
of him since the morning, and if he looks now as he looked then, I fear
your lordship would be minded rather to drive him from your table than
welcome him to a seat beside you.'

As she spoke, lady Margaret caught a glimpse of a peculiar expression on
Scudamore's face, where he stood behind his master's chair.

'Your page, my lord,' she said, 'seems to know something of him: if it
pleased you to put him to the question--'

'Hey, Scudamore!' said the marquis without turning his head; 'what have
you seen of my lord Herbert?'

'As much as could be seen of him, my lord,' answered Scudamore. 'He was
new from the powder-mill, and his face and hands were as he had been
blown three times up the hall chimney.'

'I would thou didst pay more heed to what is fitting, thou monkey, and
knewest either place or time for thy foolish jests! It will be long ere
thou soil one of thy white fingers for king or country,' said the
marquis, neither angrily nor merrily. 'Get another flask of claret,' he
added, 'and keep thy wit for thy mates, boy.'

Dorothy cast one involuntary glance at her cousin. His face was red as
fire, but, as it seemed to her, more with suppressed amusement than
shame. She had not been much longer in the castle before she learned
that, in the opinion of the household, the marquis did his best, or
worst rather, to ruin young Scudamore by indulgence. The judgment,
however, was partly the product of jealousy, although doubtless the
marquis had in his case a little too much relaxed the bonds of
discipline. The youth was bright and ready, and had as yet been found
trustworthy; his wit was tolerable, and a certain gay naivete of speech
and manner set off to the best advantage what there was of it; but his
laughter was sometimes mischievous, and on the present occasion Dorothy
could not rid herself of the suspicion that he was laughing in his
sleeve at his master, which caused her to redden in her turn. Scudamore
saw it, and had his own fancies concerning the phenomenon.




CHAPTER XII.

THE TWO MARQUISES.


Dinner over, lady Margaret led Dorothy back to her parlour, and there
proceeded to discover what accomplishments and capabilities she might
possess. Finding she could embroider, play a little on the spinnet, sing
a song, and read aloud both intelligibly and pleasantly, she came to the
conclusion that the country-bred girl was an acquisition destined to
grow greatly in value, should the day ever arrive--which heaven
forbid!--when they would have to settle down to the monotony of a
protracted siege. Remarking, at length, that she looked weary, she sent
her away to be mistress of her time till supper, at half-past five.

Weary in truth with her journey, but still more weary from the multitude
and variety of objects, the talk, and the constant demand of the general
strangeness upon her attention and one form or other of suitable
response, Dorothy sought her chamber. But she scarcely remembered how to
reach it. She knew it lay a floor higher, and easily found the stair up
which she had followed her attendant, for it rose from the landing of
the straight ascent by which she had entered the house. She could hardly
go wrong either as to the passage at the top of it, leading back over
the room she had just left below, but she could not tell which was her
own door. Fearing to open the wrong one, she passed it and went on to
the end of the corridor, which was very dimly lighted. There she came to
an open door, through which she saw a small chamber, evidently not meant
for habitation. She entered. A little light came in through a crossed
loophole, sufficient to show her the bare walls, with the plaster
sticking out between the stones, the huge beams above, and in the middle
of the floor, opposite the loop-hole, a great arblast or cross-bow, with
its strange machinery. She had never seen one before, but she knew
enough to guess at once what it was. Through the loophole came a sweet
breath of spring air, and she saw trees bending in the wind, heard their
faint far-off rustle, and saw the green fields shining in the sun.

Partly from having been so much with Richard, her only playmate, who was
of an ingenious and practical turn, a certain degree of interest in
mechanical forms and modes had been developed in Dorothy, sufficient at
least to render her unable to encounter such an implement without
feeling a strong impulse to satisfy herself concerning its mechanism,
its motion, and its action. Approaching it cautiously and curiously, as
if it were a live thing, which might start up and fly from, or perhaps
at her, for what she knew, she gazed at it for a few moments with eyes
full of unuttered questions, then ventured to lay gentle hold upon what
looked like a handle. To her dismay, a wheezy bang followed, which
seemed to shake the tower. Whether she had discharged an arrow, or an
iron bolt, or a stone, or indeed anything at all, she could not tell,
for she had not got so far in her observations as to perceive even that
the bow was bent. Her heart gave a scared flutter, and she started back,
not merely terrified, but ashamed also that she should initiate her life
in the castle with meddling and mischief, when a low gentle laugh behind
her startled her yet more, and looking round with her heart in her
throat, she perceived in the half-light of the place a man by the wall
behind the arblast watching her. Her first impulse was to run, and the
door was open; but she thought she owed an apology ere she retreated.
What sort of person he was she could not tell, for there was not light
enough to show a feature of his face.

'I ask your pardon,' she said; 'I fear I have done mischief.'

'Not the least,' returned the man, in a gentle voice, with a tone of
amusement in it.

'I had never seen a great cross-bow,' Dorothy went on, anxious to excuse
her meddling. 'I thought this must be one, but I was so stupid as not to
perceive it was bent, and that that was the--the handle--or do you call
it the trigger?--by which you let it go.'

The man, who had at first taken her for one of the maids, had by this
time discovered from her tone and speech that she was a lady.

'It is a clumsy old-fashioned thing,' he returned, 'but I shall not
remove it until I can put something better in its place; and it would be
a troublesome affair to get even a demiculverin up here, not to mention
the bad neighbour it would be to the ladies'chambers. I was just making
a small experiment with it on the force of springs. I believe I shall
yet prove that much may be done with springs--more perhaps, and
certainly at far less expense, than with gunpowder, which costs greatly,
is very troublesome to make, occupies much space, and is always like an
unstable, half-treacherous friend within the gates--to say nothing of
the expense of cannon--ten times that of an engine of timber and
springs. See what a strong chain your shot has broken! Shall I show you
how the thing works?'

He spoke in a gentle, even rapid voice, a little hesitating now and
then, more, through the greater part of this long utterance, as if he
were thinking to himself than addressing another. Neither his tone nor
manner were those of an underling, but Dorothy's startled nerves had
communicated their tremor to her modesty, and with a gentle 'No, sir, I
thank you; I must be gone,' she hurried away.

Daring now a little more for fear of worse, the first door she tried
proved that of her own room, and it was with a considerable sense of
relief, as well as with weariness and tremor, that she nestled herself
into the high window-seat, and looked out into the quadrangle. The
shadow of the citadel had gone to pay its afternoon visit to the other
court, and that of the gateway was thrown upon the chapel, partly
shrouding the white horse, whose watery music was now silent, but
allowing one red ray, which entered by the iron grating above the solid
gates, to fall on his head, and warm its cold whiteness with a tinge of
delicate pink. The court was more still and silent than in the morning;
only now and then would a figure pass from one door to another, along
the side of the buildings, or by one of the tiled paths dividing the
turf. A large peacock was slowly crossing the shadowed grass with a
stately strut and rhythmic thrust of his green neck. The moment he came
out into the sunlight, he spread his wheeled fan aloft, and slowly
pirouetting, if the word can be allowed where two legs are needful, in
the very acme of vanity, turned on all sides the quivering splendour of
its hundred eyes, where blue and green burst in the ecstasy of their
union into a vapour of gold, that the circle of the universe might see.
And truly the bird's vanity had not misled his judgment: it was a sight
to make the hearts of the angels throb out a dainty phrase or two more
in the song of their thanksgiving. Some pigeons, white, and blue-grey,
with a lovely mingling and interplay of metallic lustres on their
feathery throats, but with none of that almost grotesque obtrusion of
over-driven individuality of kind, in which the graciousness of common
beauty is now sacrificed to the whim of the fashion the vulgar fancier
initiates, picked up the crumbs under the windows of lady Margaret's
nursery, or flew hither and thither among the roofs with wapping and
whiffling wing.

But still from the next court came many and various mingling noises. The
sounds of drill had long ceased, but those of clanking hammers were
heard the more clearly, now one, now two, now several together. The
smaller, clearer one was that of the armourer, the others those of the
great smithy, where the horse-shoes were made, the horses shod, the
smaller pieces of ordnance repaired, locks and chains mended, bolts
forged, and, in brief, every piece of metal about the castle, from the
cook's skillet to the winches and chains of the drawbridges, set right,
renewed, or replaced. The forges were far from where she sat, outside
the farthest of the two courts, across which, and the great hall
dividing them, the clink, clink, the clank, and the ringing clang,
softened by distance and interposition, came musical to her ear. The
armourer's hammer was the keener, the quicker, the less intermittent,
and yet had the most variations of time and note, as he shifted the
piece on his anvil, or changed breastplate for gorget, or greave for
pauldron--or it might be sword for pike-head or halbert. Mingled with it
came now and then the creak and squeak of the wooden wheel at the
draw-well near the hall-door in the farther court, and the muffled
splash of the bucket as it struck the water deep in the shaft. She even
thought she could hear the drops dripping back from it as it slowly
ascended, but that was fancy. Everywhere arose the auricular vapour, as
it were, of action, undefined and indefinable, the hum of the human
hive, compounded of all confluent noises--the chatter of the servants'
hall and the nursery, the stamping of horses, the ringing of harness,
the ripping of the chains of kenneled dogs, the hollow stamping of heavy
boots, the lowing of cattle, with sounds besides so strange to the ears
of Dorothy that they set her puzzling in vain to account for them; not
to mention the chaff of the guard-rooms by the gates, and the scolding
and clatter of the kitchen. This last, indeed, was audible only when the
doors were open, for the walls of the kitchen, whether it was that the
builders of it counted cookery second only to life, or that this had
been judged, from the nature of the ground outside, the corner of all
the enclosure most likely to be attacked, were far thicker than those of
any of the other towers, with the one exception of the keep itself.

As she sat listening to these multitudinous exhalations of life around
her, yet with a feeling of loneliness and a dim sense of captivity, from
the consciousness that huge surrounding walls rose between her and the
green fields, of which, from earliest memory, she had been as free as
the birds and beetles, a white rabbit, escaped from the arms of its
owner, little Mary Somerset, lady Margaret's only child, a merry but
delicate girl not yet three years old, suddenly darted like a flash of
snow across the shadowy green, followed in hot haste a moment after by a
fine-looking boy of thirteen and two younger girls, after whom toddled
tiny Mary. Dorothy sat watching the pursuit, accompanied with sweet
outcry and frolic laughter, when in a moment the sounds of their
merriment changed to shrieks of terror, and she saw a huge mastiff come
bounding she knew not whence, and rush straight at the rabbit, fierce
and fast. When the little creature saw him, struck with terror it
stopped dead, cowered on the sward, and was stock still. But Henry
Somerset, who was but a few paces from it, reached it before the dog,
and caught it up in his arms. The rush of the dog threw him down, and
they rolled over and over, Henry holding fast the poor rabbit.

By this time Dorothy was half-way down the stair: the moment she caught
sight of the dog she had flown to the rescue. When she issued from the
porch at the foot of the grand staircase, Henry was up again, and
running for the house with the rabbit yet safe in his arms, pursued by
the mastiff. Evidently the dog had not harmed him--but he might get
angry. The next moment she saw, to her joy and dismay both at once, that
it was her own dog.

'Marquis! Marquis!' she cried, calling him by his name.

He abandoned the pursuit at once, and went bounding to her. She took him
by the back of the neck, and the displeasure manifest upon the
countenance of his mistress made him cower at her feet, and wince from
the open hand that threatened him. The same instant a lattice window
over the gateway was flung open, and a voice said--

'Here I am. Who called me?'

Dorothy looked up. The children had vanished with their rescued darling.
There was not a creature in the court but herself, and there was the
marquis, leaning half out of the window, and looking about.

'Who called me?' he repeated--angrily, Dorothy thought.

All at once the meaning of it flashed upon her, and she was
confounded--ready to sink with annoyance. But she was not one to
hesitate when a thing HAD to be done. Keeping her hold of the dog's
neck, for his collar was gone, she dragged him half-way towards the
gate, then turning up to the marquis a face like a peony, replied--

'I am the culprit, my lord.'

'By St. George! you are a brave damsel, and there is no culpa that I
know of, except on the part of that intruding cur.'

'And the cur's mistress, my lord. But, indeed, he is no cur, but a true
mastiff.'

'What! is the animal thy property, fair cousin? He is more than I
bargained for.'

'He is mine, my lord, but I left him chained when I set out from Wyfern
this morning. That he got loose I confess I am not astonished, neither
that he tracked me hither, for he has the eyes of a gaze-hound, and the
nose of a bloodhound; but it amazes me to find him in the castle.'

'That must be inquired into,' said the marquis.

'I am very sorry he has carried himself so ill, my lord. He has put me
to great shame. But he hath more in him than mere brute, and understands
when I beg you to pardon him. He misbehaved himself on purpose to be
taken to me, for at home no one ever dares punish him but myself.'

The marquis laughed.

'If you are so completely his mistress then, why did you call on me for
help?'

'Pardon me, my lord; I did not so.'

'Why, I heard thee call me two or three times!'

'Alas, my lord! I called him Marquis when he was a pup. Everybody about
Redware knows Marquis.'

The animal cocked his ears and started each time his name was uttered,
and yet seemed to understand well enough that ALL the talk was about him
and his misdeeds.

'Ah! ha!' said his lordship, with a twinkle in his eye, 'that begets
complications. Two marquises in Raglan? Two kings in England! The thing
cannot be. What is to be done?'

'I must take him back, my lord! I cannot send him, for he would not go.
I dread they will not be able to hold him chained; in which evil case I
fear me I shall have to go, my lord, and take the perils of the time as
they come.'

'Not of necessity so, cousin, while you can choose between us;--although
I freely grant that a marquis with four legs is to be preferred before a
marquis with only two.--But what if you changed his name?'

'I fear it could not be done, my lord. He has been Marquis all his
life.'

'And I have been marquis only six months! Clearly he hath the better
right--. But there would be constant mistakes between us, for I cannot
bring myself to lay aside the honour his majesty hath conferred upon me,
"which would be worn now in its newest gloss, not cast aside so soon,"
as master Shakspere says. Besides, it would be a slight to his majesty,
and that must not be thought of--not for all the dogs in parliament 

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