St. George and St. Michael

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER IX.

  LOVE AND WAR.

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

  Immediately after their early breakfast the next morning, he led his sonto a chamber in the roof, of the very existence of which he had beenignorant, and there discovered to him good store of such armour of bothkinds as was then in use, which for some years past he had been quietlycollecting 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 theantagonism of opposed claims. Probably also it was in view of this time,seen from afar in silent approach, that, from the very moment when hetook his education into his own hands, he had paid thorough attention toRichard's bodily as well as mental accomplishment, encouraging him inall manly sports, such as wrestling, boxing, and riding to hounds, withthe more martial training of sword-exercises, with and without thetarget, and shooting with the carbine and the new-fashioned flint-lockpistols.

  The rest of the morning Richard spent in choosing a headpiece, and mailplates for breast, back, neck, shoulders, arms, and thighs. The nextthing was to set the village tailor at work upon a coat of that thickstrong leather, dressed soft and pliant, which they called buff, to wearunder his armour. After that came the proper equipment of Lady, and thatof the twenty men whom his father expected to provide from amongst hisown tenants, and for whom he had already a full provision of clothingand armour; they had to be determined on, conferred with, and fitted,one by one, so as to avoid drawing attention to the proceeding. Henceboth Mr. Heywood and Richard had enough to do, and the more thatFaithful Stopchase, on whom was their chief dependence, had not yetrecovered sufficiently from the effects of his fall to be equal to thesame exertion as formerly--of which he was the more impatient that hefirmly believed he had been a special object of Satanic assault, becauseof the present value of his counsels, and the coming weight of his deedson the side of the well-affected. Thus occupied, the weeks passed intomonths.

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

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

  There was no anger, only a cold sadness in her tone and manner, whileher bearing was stately as towards one with whom she had never hadintimacy. Even her sadness seemed to Richard to have respect to thehopeless condition of her mother's health, and not at all to the changedrelation 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 goodconscience. 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 thanyours 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?' sheasked.

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

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

  'No,' replied Richard, recovering himself. 'I trust it is not such aserious matter as you say; but any how it was not conscience butjealousy 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 amtruly 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!' sheadded, with a deep sigh.

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

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

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

  'Richard Heywood, God is my witness it is no choice of mine. I have nochoice: what else is there to think? I know well enough what you andyour father are about. But there is nothing save my own conscience andmy mother's love I would not part with to be able to believe youhonourably right in your own eyes--not in mine--God forbid! That cannever 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, ashe took it in his.

  He spoke with a voice that seemed to him far away and not his own. Untilnow he had never realized the idea of a final separation between him andDorothy; and even now, he could hardly believe she was in earnest, butfelt, rather, like a child whose nurse threatens to forsake him on thedark road, and who begins to weep only from the pitiful imagination ofthe thing, and not any actual fear of her carrying the threat intoexecution. The idea of retaining her love by ceasing to act on hisconvictions--the very possibility of it--had never crossed the horizonof 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, andso loyal had he himself been to truth all his days, that to act upon herconvictions instead of his own would have been to widen a gulf at leastmeasurable, 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 vaguefear that she would not come again grew to a plain conviction, andforcibly repressing the misery that rose in bodily presence from hisheart to his throat, he left the house, hurried down the pleached alleyto the old sun-dial, threw himself on the grass under the yews, and weptand 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 redmire to and from their pasture; the skies grew pale above, and the earthgrew bare beneath; the winds grew sharp and seemed unfriendly; thebrooks ran foaming to the rivers, and the rivers ran roaring to theocean. Then the earth dried a little, and the frost came, and swelledand hardened it; the snow fell and lay, vanished and came again. Buteven out of the depth of winter, quivered airs and hints of spring,until at last the mighty weakling was born. And all this time rumourbeat the alarum of war, and men were growing harder and more determinedon both sides--some from self-opinion, some from party spirit, some fromprejudice, antipathy, animosity, some from sense of duty, mingled moreand less with the alloys of impulse and advantage. But he who was mostearnest on the one side was least aware that he who was most earnest onthe other was honest as himself. To confess uprightness in one of theopposite party, seemed to most men to involve treachery to their own; orif they were driven to the confession, it was too often followed with anattempt at discrediting the noblest of human qualities.

  The hearts of the two young people fared very much as the earth underthe altered skies of winter, and behaved much as the divided nation. Asense of w
rong endured kept both from feeling at first the full sorrowof their separation; and by the time that the tide of memory had flowedback and covered the rock of offence, they had got a little used to thedulness of a day from which its brightest hour had been blotted. Dorothylearned 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 asad ghost in a dream. To Richard, on the other hand, she looked a lovelybut scarce worshipful celestial, with merely might enough to hold hisheart, swelling with a sense of wrong, in her hand, and squeeze it veryhard. His consolation was that he suffered for the truth's sake, for todecline action upon such insight as he had had, was a thing asimpossible as to alter the relations between the parts of a sphere.Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens ofthe church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about the paledyard of obedience, picking up the barley of righteousness; Richardlonged for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her sons together--to awar whose battles should never cease until men were free to worship Godafter the light he had lighted within them, and the dragon of priestlyauthority should breathe out his last fiery breath, no more to drive thefeebler 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 alovely spiritual repose had long since descended. Her anxieties wereonly 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 ofhis church everything to aid and nothing to retard his spiritualdevelopment, had no conception of the nature of the puritanicalopposition to its government and rites. Through neither could Dorothycome to any true idea of the questions which agitated the politics ofboth church and state. To her, the king was a kind of demigod, and everypriest a fountain of truth. Her religion was the sedate and dutifulacceptance of obedient innocence, a thing of small account indeed whereit is rooted only in sentiment and customary preference, but ofinestimable value in such cases as hers, where action followed uponacceptance.

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

  But the relation of Dorothy and Richard, although ordinary in outwardappearance, was of no common kind; and while these two thus fell apartfrom each other in their outer life, each judging the other insensibleto the call of highest rectitude, neither of them knew how much his orher heart was confident of the other's integrity. In respect of them,the lovely simile, in Christabel, of the parted cliffs, may be carried alittle farther, for, under the dreary sea flowing between them, the rockwas one still. Such a faith may sometimes, perhaps often does, lie inthe heart like a seed buried beyond the reach of the sun, thoroughlyalive though giving no sign: to grow too soon might be to die. Thingshad indeed gone farther with Dorothy and Richard, but the lobes of theirloves had never been fairly exposed to the sun and wind ere the swollenclods of winter again covered them.

  Once, in the cold noon of a lovely day of frost, when the lightest stepcrackled with the breaking of multitudinous crystals, when the treeswere fringed with furry white, and the old spider-webs glimmered likefiligrane of fairy silver, they met on a lonely country-road. The sunshone red through depths of half-frozen vapour, and tinged the whitenessof death with a faint warmth of feeling and hope. Along the rough laneRichard walked reading what looked like a letter, but was a copy hisfather had procured of a poem still only in manuscript--the Lycidas ofMilton. In the glow to which the alternating hot and cold winds ofenthusiasm and bereavement had fanned the fiery particle within him,Richard was not only able to understand and enjoy the thought of whichthe poem was built, but was borne aloft on its sad yet hopeful melodiesas upon wings of an upsoaring seraph. The flow of his feeling suddenlybroken by an almost fierce desire to share with Dorothy the tendernessof the magic music of the stately monody, and then, ere the answeringwaves of her emotion had subsided, to whisper to her that the marvellousspell came from the heart of the same wonderful man from whose brain hadissued, like Pallas from Jove's,--what?--Animadversions upon theRemonstrants Defence against Smectymnus, the pamphlet which had soroused all the abhorrence her nature was capable of--he lifted his headand saw her but a few paces from him. Dorothy caught a glimpse of acountenance radiant with feeling, and eyes flashing through a wateryfilm of delight; her own eyes fell; she said, 'Good morning, Richard!'and passed him without deflecting an inch. The bird of song folded itswings and called in its shining; the sun lost half his red beams; thesprinkled seed pearls vanished, and ashes covered the earth; he foldedthe paper, laid it in the breast of his doublet, and walked home throughthe glittering meadows with a fresh hurt in his heart.

  Dorothy's time and thoughts were all but occupied with the nursing ofher mother, who, contrary to the expectation of her friends, outlivedthe 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, theywere not many. We must not therefore imagine, however, that the twoladies were ill supplied with spiritual pabulum. There are few houses ofthe present day in which, though there be ten times as many books, thereis so much strong food; if there was any lack, it was rather ofdiluents. Amongst those she read were Queen Elizabeth's Homilies,Hooker's Politie, Donne's Sermons, and George Herbert's Temple, to thedying lady only less dear than her New Testament.

  But even with this last, it was only through sympathy with her motherthat Dorothy could come into any contact. The gems of the mind, whichalone could catch and reflect such light, lay as yet under the soil, andmuch ploughing and breaking of the clods was needful ere they could comelargely to the surface. But happily for Dorothy, there were amongst thebooks a few of those precious little quartos of Shakspere, the firstthree books of the Faerie Queene, and the Countess of Pembroke'sArcadia, then much read, if we may judge from the fact that, although itwas not published till after the death of Sidney, the eighth edition ofit 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, onwhich she would yet, in spite of the occasional jar and shudder ofrespondent nerves, now and then play at a sitting all the little musicshe had learned, and with whose help she had sometimes even tried tofind 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 dogto play with and teach, a few sad thoughts and memories to discipline, acall now and then from a neighbour, or a longer visit from some oldfriend of her mother's to receive, and the few cottagers on all that wasleft of the estate of Wyfern to care for; so that her time was tolerablyfilled up, and she felt little need of anything more to occupy at leasther hours and days.

  Meanwhile, through all nature's changes, through calm and tempest, rainand snow, through dull refusing winter, and the first passing visits ofopen-handed spring, the hearts of men were awaiting the outburst of thethunder, the blue peaks of whose cloud-built cells had long been visibleon the horizon of the future. Every now and then they would
start andlisten, and ask each other was it the first growl of the storm, or butthe rumbling of the wheels of the government. To the dwellers in RaglanCastle it seemed at least a stormy sign--of which the news reached themin the dull November weather--that the parliament had set a guard uponWorcester House in the Strand, and searched it for persons suspected ofhigh treason--lord Herbert, doubtless, first of all, the direction andstrength of whose political drift, suspicious from the first because ofhis religious persuasion, could hardly be any longer doubtful to themost liberal of its members.

  The news of the terrible insurrection of the catholics in Irelandfollowed.

  Richard kept his armour bright, his mare in good fettle, himself and hismen 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 abody-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, proclaimedthe governor a traitor. The parliament declared the proclamation abreach of its privileges. Richard got new girths.

  The summer passed in various disputes. Towards its close the governor ofPortsmouth declined to act upon a commission to organize the new leviesof the parliament, and administered instead thereof an oath ofallegiance to the garrison and inhabitants. Thereupon the place wasbesieged by Essex; the king proclaimed him a traitor, and the parliamentretorted by declaring the royal proclamation a libel. Richard had hismare new-shod.

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