St. George and St. Michael

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER X.

  DOROTHY'S REFUGE.

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

  'Dorothy,' she whispered, 'I wish much to see good Mr. Herbert. Pritheesend for him. I know it is an evil time for him to travel, being an oldman and feeble, but he will do his endeavour to come to me, I know, ifbut for my husband's sake, whom he loved like a brother. I cannot die inpeace without first taking counsel with him how best to provide for thesafety 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 foryourself, madam,' said Dorothy. 'You know master Herbert says the one isas 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 andlooks, definite enough, and more eloquent than words, she committedDorothy to his protection, and died.

  Dorothy behaved with much calmness. She would not, in her mother'sabsence, act so as would have grieved her presence. Little passedbetween her and Mr. Herbert until the funeral was over. Then they talkedof the future. Her guardian wished much to leave everything in charge ofthe old bailiff, and take her with him to Llangattock; but he hesitateda little because of the bad state of the roads in winter, much becauseof their danger in the troubled condition of affairs, and most of allbecause of the uncertain, indeed perilous position of the Episcopalianclergy, 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 waspretty certain, that matters must grow far worse before they could evenbegin to mend.

  But they had more time for deliberation given them than they wouldwillingly have taken. Mr. Herbert had caught cold while reading thefuneral service, and was compelled to delay his return. The cold settledinto a sort of low fever, and for many weeks he lay helpless. Duringthis time the sudden affair at Brentford took place, after which theking, 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 anydistrict, sought to ruin all of the opposite faction. Robbery andplunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies or theroute of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere marauders, takingup the cry of the faction that happened in any neighbourhood to have theascendancy, plundered houses, robbed travellers, and were guilty of allsorts of violence. Hence it had become as perilous to stay at home in anunfortified house as to travel; and many were the terrors which duringthe winter tried the courage of the girl, and checked the recovery ofthe old man. At length one morning, after a midnight alarm, Mr. Herbertthus addressed Dorothy, as she waited upon him with his breakfast:

  'It fears me much, my dear Dorothy, that the time will be long ere anybut fortified places will be safe abodes. It is a question in my mindwhether it would not be better to seek refuge for you--. But stay; letme suggest my proposal, rather than startle you with it in sudden formcomplete. 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 relationshipis. And assuredly, sir, you mean not to propose that I should seeksafety from bodily peril with a household which is, to say the least, sounfriendly to the doctrines you and my blessed mother have always taughtme! You cannot, or indeed, must you not have forgotten that they arepapists?'

  Dorothy had been educated in such a fear of the catholics, and such aprofound disapproval of those of their doctrines rejected by thereformers of the church of England, as was only surpassed in intensityby her absolute abhorrence of the assumptions and negations of thepuritans. These indeed roused in her a certain sense of disgust whichshe had never felt in respect of what were considered by her teachersthe most erroneous doctrines of the catholics. But Mr. Herbert, althoughhis prejudices were nearly as strong, and his opinions, if not moreindigenous at least far better acclimatised than hers, had yet reapedthis advantage of a longer life, that he was better able to atone hisdislike of certain opinions with personal regard for those who heldthem, and therefore did not, like Dorothy, recoil from the idea ofobligation to one of a different creed--provided always that creed wascatholicism and not puritanism. For to the church of England, thecatholics, in the presence of her more rampant foes, appeared harmlessenough now.

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

  But there was another fact, in the absence of which he would have hadfar more hesitation in seeking for his ewe-lamb the protection of sheep,the guardians of whose spiritual fold had but too often proved wolves insheep-dogs' clothing: within the last few days the news had reached himthat an old friend named Bayly, a true man, a priest of the Englishchurch and a doctor of divinity, had taken up his abode in Raglan castleas 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 theprotestants within its walls. However that might be, there was a trueshepherd to whose care to entrust his lamb; and it was mainly on thestrength of this consideration that he had concluded to make hisproposal to Dorothy--namely, that she should seek shelter within thewalls of Raglan castle until the storm should be so far over-blown, asto admit either of her going to Llangattock or returning to her ownhome. He now discussed the matter with her in full, and, notwithstandingher very natural repugnance to the scheme, such was Dorothy's confidencein her friend that she was easily persuaded of its wisdom. What the moreinclined her to yield was, that Mr. Heywood had written her a letter,hardly the less unwelcome for the kindness of its tone, in which heoffered her the shelter and hospitality of Redware 'until better days.'

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

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

  Meanwhile Mr. Herbert had opened communication with Dr. Bayly, hadsatisfied himself that he was still a true son of the church, and hadsolicited his friendly mediation towards the receiving of mistressDorothy Vaughan into the family of the marquis of Worcester, to thedignity of which title the earl had now been raised--the parliament, tobe sure, declining to acknowledge the patent conferred by his majesty,but that was of no consequence in the estimation of those chieflyconcerned.

  On a certain spring morning, then, the snow still lying in the hollowsof the hills, Thomas Bayly came to Wyfern to see his old friend MatthewHerbert. He was a cour
teous little man, with a courtesy librating on aknife-edge of deflection towards obsequiousness on the one hand andcondescension on the other, for neither of which, however, was hisfriend Herbert an object. His eye was keen, and his forehead good, buthis carriage inclined to the pompous, and his speech to the formal,ornate, and prolix. The shape of his mouth was honest, but the closureof the lips indicated self-importance. The greeting between them wassimple and genuine, and ere they parted, Bayly had promised to do hisbest 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 thedoctor's special friend.

  It would have been greatly unlike the marquis or any of his family torefuse such a prayer. Had not their house been for centuries the abodeof hospitality, the embodiment of shelter? On the mere representation ofDr. Bayly, and the fact of the relationship, which, although distant,was well enough known, within two days mistress Dorothy Vaughan receivedan invitation to enter the family of the marquis, as one of thegentlewomen of lady Margaret's suite. It was of course gratefullyaccepted, and as soon as Mr. Herbert thought himself sufficientlyrecovered to encounter the fatigues of travelling, he urged on thesomewhat laggard preparations of Dorothy, that he might himself see hersafely housed on his way to Llangattock, whither he was most anxious toreturn.

  It was a lovely spring morning when they set out together on horsebackfor Raglan. The sun looked down like a young father upon hisearth-mothered children, peeping out of their beds to greet him afterthe long winter night. The rooks were too busy to caw, dibbling deep inthe soft red earth with their great beaks. The red cattle, flaked withwhite, spotted the clear fresh green of the meadows. The bare trees hada kind of glory about them, like old men waiting for their youth, whichmight come suddenly. A few slow clouds were drifting across the palesky. A gentle wind was blowing over the wet fields, but when a cloudswept before the sun, it blew cold. The roads were bad, but their horseswere used to such, and picked their way with the easy carefulness ofexperience. The winter might yet return for a season, but this day wasof the spring and its promises. Earth and air, field and sky were fullof peace. But the heart of England was troubled--troubled with passionsboth good and evil--with righteous indignation and unholy scorn, withthe love of liberty and the joy of license, with ambition andaspiration.

  No honest heart could yield long to the comforting of the fair world,knowing that some of her fairest fields would soon be crimsoned afreshwith the blood of her children. But Dorothy's sadness was not all forher 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 dowith a certain weight upon it, which the loveliness of the spring dayseemed to render heavier, than the rarely absent feeling rather thanthought, that the playmate of her childhood, and the offered lover ofher youth, had thrown himself with all the energy of dawning manhoodinto the quarrel of the lawless and self-glorifying. Nor was shealtogether free from a sense of blame in the matter. Had she been lessimperative in her mood and bearing, more ready to give than to requiresympathy,--but ah! she could not change the past, and the present wascalling upon her.

  At length the towers of Raglan appeared, and a pang of apprehension shotthrough her bosom. She was approaching the unknown. Like one on theverge of a second-sight, her history seemed for a moment about to revealitself--where it lay, like a bird in its egg, within those massivewalls, warded by those huge ascending towers. Brought up in a retirementthat some would have counted loneliness, and although used to all gentleand refined ways, yet familiar with homeliness and simplicity of modeand ministration, she could not help feeling awed at the prospect ofentering such a zone of rank and stateliness and observance as thehousehold 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 ofsome 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 whichshe had hitherto been a stranger. 'Ah!' she said to herself, 'if only mymother were with me!'

  At length they reached the brick gate, were admitted within the outerwall, and following the course taken by Scudamore and Heywood, skirtedthe moat which enringed the huge blind citadel or keep, and arrived atthe western gate. The portcullis rose to admit them, and they rode intothe echoes of the vaulted gateway. Turning to congratulate Dorothy ontheir 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 theold man.

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

  'Heed not the look of things,' interrupted her guardian. 'Believe in theWill 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 ofheaviness.'