St. George and St. Michael

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER LVI.

  RICHARD AND CASPAR.

  I have now to recount a small adventure, to which it would scarcely beworth while to afford a place, were it not for the important fact thatit opened to Richard a great window not only in Dorothy's history whileshe lived at the castle, but, which was of far more importance, into thecharacter moulding that history--for character has far more to do withdetermining history than history has to do with determining character.Without the interview whose circumstances I am about to narrate, Richardcould not so soon at least have done justice to a character which hadbeen, if not keeping parallel pace with his own, yet advancing rapidlyin the same direction.

  The decree of the parliament had gone forth that Raglan should bedestroyed. The same hour in which the sad news reached Caspar, he setout to secure, if possible, the treasures he had concealed. He hadlittle fear of their being discovered, but great fear of their beingrendered inaccessible from the workshop.

  Having reached the neighbourhood, he hired a horse and cart from a smallfarmer whom he knew, and, taking the precaution to put on the dress of acountryman, got on it and drove to the castle. The huge oaken leaves ofthe brick gate, bound and riveted with iron, lay torn from their hinges,and he entered unquestioned. But instead of the solitude of desertion,for which he had hoped, he found the whole place swarming with countrypeople, men and women, most of them with baskets and sacks, while thespace between the outer defences and the moat of the castle itself wasfilled with country vehicles of every description, from a wheelbarrow toa great waggon.

  When the most valuable of the effects found in the place had beencarried to London, a sale for the large remainder had been held on thespot, at which not a few of the neighbouring families had beenpurchasers. After all, however, a great many things were left unhid for,which were not, from a money point of view--the sole one taken--worthremoving; and now the peasantry were, like jackals, admitted to pick thebones of the huge carcase, ere the skeleton itself should be tornasunder. Nor could the invading populace have been disappointed of theirexpectations: they found numberless things of immense value in theireyes, and great use in their meagre economy. For years, I might saycenturies after, pieces of furniture and panels of carved oak, bits oftapestry, antique sconces and candlesticks of brass, ancienthorse-furniture, and a thousand things besides of endless interest, wereto be found scattered in farm-houses and cottages all over Monmouth andneighbouring shires. I should not wonder if, even now in the thirdcentury, and after the rage for the collection of such things has solong prevailed, there were some of them still to be discovered in placeswhere no one has thought of looking.

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

  These men, happening to meet, as I say, in the midst of the surroundingtumult, had fallen into a conversation chiefly occupied withreminiscences of that awful experience, whose terrors now looked like anevil dream, and, in a place thus crowded with men and women, buzzingwith voices, and resounding with feet, as little likely to return as avanished thundercloud. In the course of their conversation, therefore,they grew valiant; grew conscious next of a high calling, and resolvedtherewith to take to themselves the honour of giving the first sweep ofthe besom of destruction to Raglan Castle. Satisfying themselves firsttherefore that their wives were doing their duty for theirhousehold,--mistress Upstill was as good as two men at least atappropriation,--they set out, Cast-down taking the lead, masterSycamore, John Croning, and the rest following, armed with crowbars, forthe top of the great tower, ambitious to commence the overthrow byattacking the very summit, the high places of wickedness, the crown ofpride; and after some devious wandering, at length found the way to thestair.

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

  He had not to wait long. The shrieks of the yokels as they ran, andtheir looks of horror when they appeared, quickly gathered around them agaping crowd to hear their tale, the more foolhardy in which, partlydoubting their word, for the fountains no longer played, and partlyambitious of showing their superior courage, rushed to the Gothicbridge. Down came the drawbridge with a clang, and with it in sheerdescent a torrent of water fit to sweep a regiment away, which shotalong the stone bridge and dashed them from it bruised and bleeding, andhalf drowned with the water which in their terror and surprise foundeasy way into their bodies. Caspar withdrew satisfied, for he now feltsure of all the time he required to get some other things he had thoughtof saving down into the shaft with the cabinet and chest.

  Having effected this, and with much labour and difficulty, aided byrollers, got all into the quarry and then into the cart, he did notresist the temptation to go again amongst the crowd, and enjoy listeningto the various remarks and conjectures and terrors to which doubtlesshis trick had given rise. He therefore got a great armful of trampledcorn from the field above, and laid it before his patient horse, th
enran round and re-entered the castle by the main gate.

  He had not been in the crowd many minutes, however, when he sawindications of suspicion ripening to conviction. What had given groundfor it he could not tell, but at some point he must have been seen onthe other side of the tower-moat. All this time Upstill and his partyhad been recounting with various embellishment their adventures bothformer and latter, and when Kaltoff was recognised, or at leastsuspected in the crowd, the rumour presently arose and spread that hewas either the devil himself, or an accredited agent of that potentate.

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

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

  Richard turned upon them with indignation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  And Richard was well rewarded for the kindness he had shown, for erethey said good bye, the German, whose heart was full of Dorothy, andunderstood, as indeed every one in the castle did, something of herrelation to Richard, had told him all he knew about her life in thecastle, and how she had been both before and during the siege a guardianangel, as the marquis himself had said, to Raglan. Nor was the story ofher attempted visit to her old playfellow in the turret chamber, or thesufferings she had to endure in consequence, forgotten; and when Casparand he parted, Richard rode home with fresh strength and light and lovein his heart, and Lady shared in them all somehow, for she constantlyreflected, or imaged rather, the moods of her master. As much as ever hebelieved Dorothy mistaken, and yet could have kneeled in reverencebefore her. He had himself tried to do the truth, and no one but he whotries to do the truth can perceive the grandeur of another who does thesame. Alive to his own shortcomings, such a one the better understandsthe success of his brother or sister: there the truth takes to himshape, and he worships at her shrine. He saw more clearly than beforewhat he had been learning ever since she had renounced him, that it isnot correctness of opinion--could he be SURE that his own opinions werecorrect?--that constitutes rightness, but that condition of soul which,as a matter of course, causes it to move along the lines of truth andduty--the LIFE going forth in motion according to the law of light: thisalone places a nature in harmony with the central Truth. It was in thedoing of the will of his Father that Jesus was the son of God--yea theeternal son of the eternal Father.

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

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

  In forms natural to the age and his individual thought, if notaltogether in such as I have here put down, Richard thus fashioned hisinsights as he sauntered home upon Lady, his head above the clouds, andhis heart higher than his head--as it ought to be once or twice a day atleast. Poor indeed is any worldly success compared to a moment'sbreathing in divine air, above the region where the miserable wordSUCCESS yet carries a meaning.