St. George and St. Michael

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  AN EVIL TIME.

  And now was an evil time for Dorothy. She retired to her chamber morethan disheartened by lord Worcester's behaviour to her, vexed withherself for doing what she would have been more vexed with herself forhaving left undone, feeling wronged, lonely, and disgraced, conscious ofhonesty, yet ashamed to show herself--and all for the sake of apresumptuous boy, whose opinions were a disgust to her and his actions ahorror! Yet not only did she not repent of what she had done, but, factas strange as natural, began, with mingled pleasure and annoyance, tofeel her heart drawn towards the fanatic as the only one left her in theworld capable of doing her justice, that was, of understanding her. Shethus unknowingly made a step towards the discovery that it is infinitelybetter to think wrong and to act right upon that wrong thinking, than itis to think right and not to do as that thinking requires of us. In theformer case the man's house, if not built upon the rock, at least hasthe rock beneath it; in the latter, it is founded on nothing but sand.The former man may be a Saul of Tarsus, the latter a Judas Iscariot. Hewho acts right will soon think right; he who acts wrong will soon thinkwrong. Any two persons acting faithfully upon opposite convictions, aredivided but by a bowing wall; any two, in belief most harmonious, who donot act upon it, are divided by infinite gulfs of the blackness ofdarkness, across which neither ever beholds the real self of the other.

  Dorothy ought to have gone at once to lady Margaret and told her all;but she naturally and rightly shrank from what might seem an appeal tothe daughter against the judgment of her father; neither could she darehope that, if she did, her judgment would not be against her also. Herfeelings were now in danger of being turned back upon herself, andgrowing bitter; for a lasting sense of injury is, of the human moods,one of the least favourable to sweetness and growth. There was no one towhom she could turn. Had good Dr. Bayly been at home--but he was away onsome important mission from his lordship to the king: and indeed shecould scarcely have looked for refuge from such misery as hers in thejudgment of the rather priggish old-bachelor ecclesiastic. Gladly wouldshe have forsaken the castle, and returned to all the dangers and fearsof her lonely home; but that would be to yield to a lie, to flee fromthe devil instead of facing him, and with her own hand to fix theimputed smirch upon her forehead, exposing herself besides to thesuspicion of having fled to join her lover, and cast in her lot with hisamongst the traitors. Besides, she had been left by lord Herbert incharge of his fire-engine and the water of the castle, which trust shecould not abandon. Whatever might be yet to come of it, she must stayand encounter it, and would in the meantime set herself to discover, ifshe might, the secret pathway by which dog and man came and went attheir pleasure. This she owed her friends, even at the risk, in case ofsuccess, of confirming the marquis's worst suspicions.

  She was not altogether wrong in her unconscious judgment of ladyMargaret. Her nature was such as, its nobility tinctured with romance,rendered her perfectly capable of understanding either of the two halvesof Dorothy's behaviour, but was not sufficient to the reception andunderstanding of the two parts together. That is, she could haveunderstood the heroic capture of her former lover, or she could haveunderstood her going to visit him in his trouble, and even, what Dorothywas incapable of, his release; but she was not yet equal tounderstanding how she should set herself so against a man, even to hiswounding and capture, whom she loved so much as, immediately thereupon,to dare the loss of her good name by going to his chamber, so placingherself in the power of a man she had injured, as well as running agreat risk of discovery on the part of her friends. Hence she was quiteprepared to accept the solution of her strange conduct, which by and by,it was hard to say how, came to be offered and received all over thecastle--that Dorothy first admitted, then captured, and finally releasedthe handsome young roundhead.

  Her first impressions of the affair, lady Margaret received from lordCharles, who was certainly prejudiced against Dorothy, and no doubtjealous of the relation of the fine young rebel to a loyal maiden ofRaglan; while the suspicion, almost belief, that she knew and would notreveal the flaw in his castle, the idea of which had begun to haunt himlike some spot in his own body of which pain made him unnaturallyconscious, annoyed him more and more. To do him justice, I must not omitto mention that he never made a communication on the matter to any buthis sister-in-law, who would however have certainly had a more kindly aswell as exculpatory feeling towards Dorothy, had she first heard thetruth from her own lips.

  For some little time, not perceiving the difficulties in her way, andperhaps from unlikeness not understanding the disinclination of such agirl to self-defence, lady Margaret continued to expect a visit fromher, with excuse at least, if not confession and apology upon her lips,and was hurt by her silence as much as offended by her behaviour. Shewas yet more annoyed, when they first met, that, notwithstanding herevident suffering, she wore such an air of reticence, and thence sheboth regarded and addressed her coldly; so that Dorothy was confirmed inher disinclination to confide in her. Besides, as she said to herself,she had nothing to tell but what she had already told; everythingdepended on the interpretation accorded to the facts, and the rightinterpretation was just the one thing she had found herself unable toconvey. If her friends did not, she could not justify herself.

  She tried hard to behave as she ought, for, conscious how muchappearances were against her, she felt it would be unjust to allow heraffection towards her mistress to be in the least shaken by hertreatment of her, and was if possible more submissive and eager in herservice than before. But in this she was every now and then rudelychecked by the fear that lady Margaret would take it as the endeavour ofguilt to win favour; and, do what she would, instead of getting closerto her, she felt every time they met, that the hedge of separation whichhad sprung up between them had in the interval grown thicker. By degreesthe mistress had assumed towards the poor girl that impervious manner ofself-contained dignity, which, according to her who wears it, is thecarriage either of a wing-bound angel, the gait of a stork, or thehobble of a crab.

  Of a different kind was the change which now began to take place towardsher on the part of another member of the household.

  While she had been intent upon Richard as he stood before the marquis,not Amanda only but another as well had been intent upon her. Poorcreature as Scudamore yet was, he possessed, besides no small generosityof nature, a good deal of surface sympathy, and a ready interest in theshows of humanity. Hence as he stood regarding now the face of theprisoner and now that of Dorothy, whom he knew for old friends, he couldnot help noticing that every phase of the prisoner, so to speak, mightbe read on Dorothy. He was too shallow to attribute this to anythingmore than the interest she must feel in the results of the exploit shehad performed. The mere suggestion of what had afforded such wide groundfor speculation on the part of Amanda, was to Scudamore renderedimpossible by the meeting of two things--the fact that the only time hehad seen them together, Richard was very plainly out of favour, and nowthe all-important share Dorothy had had in his capture. But the longerhe looked, the more he found himself attracted by the rich changefulnessof expression on a countenance usually very still. He surmised little ofthe conflict of emotions that sent it to the surface, had to constructno theory to calm the restlessness of intellectual curiosity, discoveredno secret feeding of the flame from behind. Yet the flame itself drewhim as the candle draws the moth. Emotion in the face of a woman wasenough to attract Scudamore; the prettier the face, the stronger theattraction, but the source or character of the emotion mattered nothingto him: he asked no questions any more than the moth, but circled theflame. In a word, Dorothy had now all at once become to him interesting.

  As soon as she found a safe opportunity, Amanda told him of Dorothy'sbeing found in the turret chamber, a fact she pretended to have heard inconfidence from mistress Watson, concealing her own part in it. But asAmanda spoke, Dorothy became to Rowland twice as interesting as everAmanda had been. There was a real romance about the girl
, he thought.And then she LOOKED so quiet! He never thought of defending her orplaying the true part of a cousin. Amanda might think of her as shepleased: Rowland was content. Had he cared ever so much more for herjudgment than he did, it would have been all the same. How far Dorothyhad been right or wrong in visiting Heywood, he did not even conjecture,not to say consider. It was enough that she who had been to him like theblank in the centre of the African map, was now a region of marvels andpossibilities, vague but not the less interesting, or the less worthy ofbeholding the interest she had awaked. As to her loving the roundheadfellow, that would not stand long in the way.

  In this period then of gloom and wretchedness, Dorothy became aware of acertain increase of attention on the part of her cousin. This sheattributed to kindness generated of pity. But to accept it, and soconfess that she needed it, would have been to place herself too much ona level with one whom she did not respect, while at the same time itwould confirm him in whatever probably mistaken grounds he had foroffering it. She therefore met his advances kindly but coldly, atreatment under which his feelings towards her began to ripen intosomething a little deeper and more genuine.

  During the next ten days or so, Dorothy could not help feeling that shewas regarded by almost every one in the castle as in disgrace, and thatdeservedly. The most unpleasant proof she had of this was the behaviourof the female servants, some of them assuming airs of injured innocence,others of offensive familiarity in her presence, while only one, akitchen-maid she seldom saw, Tom Fool's bride in the marriage-jest,showed her the same respect as formerly. This girl came to her one nightin her room, and with tears in her eyes besought permission to carry hermeals thither, that she might be spared eating with the rude ladies, asin her indignation she called them. But Dorothy saw that to forsakemistress Watson's table would be to fly the field, and therefore,hateful as it was to meet the looks of those around it, she did so withunvailed lids and an enforced dignity which made itself felt. But theeffort was as exhausting as painful, and the reflex of shame, felt asshame in spite of innocence, was eating into her heart. In vain she saidto herself that she was guiltless; in vain she folded herself round inthe cloak of her former composure; the consciousness that, to say theleast of it, she was regarded as a young woman of questionablerefinement, weighed down her very eyelids as she crossed the court.

  But she was not left utterly forsaken; she had still one refuge--theworkshop, where Caspar Kaltoff wrought like an 'artificial god;' for theworthy German altered his manner to her not a whit, but continued tobehave with the mingled kindness of a father and devotion of a servant.His respect and trustful sympathy showed, without word said, that he, ifno other, believed nothing to her disadvantage, but was as much herhumble friend as ever; and to the hitherto self-reliant damsel, theblessedness of human sympathy, embodied in the looks and tones of thehard-handed mechanic, brought such healing and such schooling together,that for a long time she never said her prayers by her bedside withoutthanking God for Caspar Kaltoff.

  Ere long her worn look, thin cheek, and weary eye began to work on theheart of lady Margaret, and she relented in spirit towards the favouriteof her husband, whose anticipated disappointment in her had sharpenedthe arrows of her resentment. But to the watery dawn of favour whichfollowed, the poor girl could not throw wide her windows, knowing itarose from no change in lady Margaret's judgment concerning her: shecould not as a culprit accept what had been as a culprit withdrawn fromher. The conviction burned in her heart like cold fire, that, but forcompassion upon the desolate state of an orphan, she would have been atonce dismissed from the castle. Sometimes she ventured to think that iflord Herbert had been at home, all this would not have happened; but nowwhat could she expect other than that on his return he would regard herand treat her in the same way as his wife and father and brother?