CHAPTER LVIII.
LOVE AND NO LEASING.
Their eyes met in the flashes of a double sunrise. Their hands met, butthe hand of each grasped the heart of the other. Two honester purersouls never looked out of their windows with meeting gaze. Had therebeen no bodies to divide them, they would have mingled in a rapture offaith and high content.
The desolation was gone; the desert bloomed and blossomed as the rose.To Dorothy it was for a moment as if Raglan were rebuilt; the ruin andthe winter had vanished before the creative, therefore prophetic, throbof the heart of love; then her eyes fell, not defeated by those of theyouth, for Dorothy's faith gave her a boldness that was lovely evenagainst the foil of maidenly reserve, but beaten down by conscience: thewords of the marquis shot like an arrow into her memory: 'Love outlivesall but leasing,' and her eyes fell before Richard's.
But Richard imagined that something in his look had displeased her, andwas ashamed, for he had ever been, and ever would be, sensitive as achild to rebuke. Even when it was mistaken or unjust he would alwaysfind within him some ground whereon it MIGHT have alighted.
'Forgive me, Dorothy,' he said, supposing she had found his lookpresumptuous.
'Nay, Richard,' returned Dorothy, with her eyes fast on the ground,whence it seemed rosy mists came rising through her, 'I know no causewherefore thou shouldst ask me to forgive thee, but I do know, althoughthou knowest not, good cause wherefore I should ask thee to forgive me.Richard, I will tell thee the truth, and thou wilt tell me again how Imight have shunned doing amiss, and how far my lie was an evil thing.'
'Lie, Dorothy! Thou hast never lied!'
'Hear me, Richard, first, and then judge. Thou rememberest I did tellthee that night as we talked in the field, that I had about me nomissives: the word was true, but its purport was false. When I saidthat, thou didst hold in thy hand my comb, wherein were concealedcertain papers in cipher.'
'Oh thou cunning one!' cried Richard, half reproachfully, halfhumorously, but the amusement overtopped the seriousness.
'My heart did reproach me; but Richard, what WAS I to do?'
'Wherefore did thy heart reproach thee, Dorothy?'
'That I told a falsehood--that I told THEE a falsehood, Richard.'
'Then had it been Upstill, thou wouldst not have minded?'
'Upstill! I would never have told Upstill a falsehood. I would havebeaten him first.'
'Then thou didst think it better to tell a falsehood to me than toUpstill?'
'I would rather sin against thee, an' it were a sin, Richard. Were itwrong to think I would rather be in thy hands, sin or none, or sin andall, than in those of a mean-spirited knave whom I despised? Besides Imight one day, somehow or other, make it up to thee--but I could not tohim. But was it sin, Richard?--tell me that. I have thought and thoughtover the matter until my mind is maze. Thou seest it was my lordmarquis's business, not mine, and thou hadst no right in the matter.'
'Prithee, Dorothy, ask not me to judge.'
'Art thou then so angry with me that thou will not help me to judgemyself aright?'
'Not so, Dorothy, but there is one command in the New Testament for thewhich I am often more thankful than for any other.'
'What is that, Richard.'
'JUDGE NOT. Prythee, between whom lieth the quarrel, Dorothy? Bethinkthee.'
'Between thee and me, Richard.'
'No, verily, Dorothy. I accuse thee not.'
Dorothy was silent for a moment, thinking.
'I see, Richard,' she said. 'It lieth between me and my own conscience.'
'Then who am I, Dorothy, that I should dare step betwixt thee and thyconscience? God forbid. That were a presumption deserving indeed thepains of hell.'
'But if my conscience and I seek a daysman betwixt us?'
'Mortal man can never be that daysman, Dorothy. Nay, an' thou need anumpire, thou must seek to him who brought thee and thy consciencetogether and told thee to agree. Let God, over all and in all, tell theewhether or no thou wert wrong. For me, I dare not. Believe me, Dorothy,it is sheer presumption for one man to intermeddle with the things thatbelong to the spirit of another man.'
'But these are only the things of a woman,' said Dorothy, in purechildish humility born of love.
'Sure, Dorothy, thou wouldst not jest in such sober matters.'
'God forbid, Richard! I but spoke that which was in me. I see now it wasfoolishness.'
'All a man can do in this matter of judgment,' said Richard, 'is to leadhis fellow man, if so be he can, up to the judgment of God. He mustnever dare judge him for himself. An' thou cannot tell whether thou didwell or ill in what thou didst, thou shouldst not vex thy soul. God isthy refuge--even from the wrongs of thine own judgment. Pray to him tolet thee know the truth, that if needful thou mayst repent. Be patientand not sorrowful until he show thee. Nor fear that he will judge theeharshly because he must judge thee truly. That were to wrong God. Trustin him even when thou fearest wrong in thyself, for he will deliver theetherefrom.'
'Ah! how good and kind art thou, Richard.'
'How should I be other to thee, beloved Dorothy?'
'Thou art not then angry with me that I did deceive thee?'
'If thou didst right, wherefore should I be angry? If thou didst wrong,I am well content to know that thou wilt be sorry therefor as soon asthou seest it, and before that thou canst not, thou must not, be sorry.I am sure that what thou knowest to be right that thou will do, and itseemeth as if God himself were content with that for the time. What thevery right thing is, concerning which we may now differ, we must come tosee together one day--the same, and not another, to both, and this doingof what we see, is to each of us the path thither. Let God judge us,Dorothy, for his judgment is light in the inward parts, showing thetruth and enabling us to judge ourselves. For me to judge thee and theeme, Dorothy, would with it bear no light. Why, Dorothy, knowest thounot--yet how shouldst thou know? that this is the very matter for thewhich we, my father and his party, contend--that each man, namely, inmatters of conscience, shall be left to his God, and remain unjudged ofhis brother? And if I fight for this on mine own part, unto whom shouldI accord it if not to thee, Dorothy, who art the highest in soul andpurest in mind and bravest in heart of all women I have known? ThereforeI love thee with all the power of a heart that loves that which is truebefore that which is beautiful, and that which is honest before thatwhich is of good report.'
What followed I leave to the imagination of such of my readers as arecapable of understanding that the truer the nature the deeper must bethe passion, and of hoping that the human soul will yet burst intogrander blossoms of love than ever poet has dreamed, not to say sung. Ileave it also to the hearts of those who understand that love is greaterthan knowledge. For those who have neither heart nor imagination--onlybrains--to them I presume to leave nothing, knowing what self-satisfyingresources they possess of their own.
The pair wandered all over the ruins together, and Dorothy had a hundredplaces to take Richard to, and tell him what they had been and how theyhad looked in their wholeness and use--amongst the rest her own chamber,whither Marquis had brought her the letter which mistress Upstill hadfound so badly concealed.
Then Richard's turn came, and he gave Dorothy a sadly vivid account ofwhat he had seen of the destruction of the place; how, as if with wholerepublics of ants, it had swarmed all over with men paid to destroy it;how in every direction the walls were falling at once; how they dug anddrained at fish-ponds and moat in the wild hope of finding hiddentreasure, and had found in the former nothing but mud and a bunch ofhuge old keys, the last of some lost story of ancient days,--and in thelatter nothing but a pair of silver-gilt spurs, which he had himselfbought of the fellow who found them. He told her what a terrible shellthe Tower of towers had been to break--how after throwing itsbattlemented crown into the moat, they had in vain attacked the walls,might almost as well have sought with pickaxes and crowbars to tearasunder the living rock, and at last--but this was hearsay, he had notseen
it--had undermined the wall, propped it up with timber, set thetimber on fire, and so succeeded in bringing down a portion of the hard,tough massy defence.
'What became of the wild beasts in the base of the kitchen-tower, dostknow, Richard?'
'I saw their cages,' answered Richard, 'but they were empty. I askedwhat they were, and what had become of the animals, of which all thecountry had heard, but no one could tell me. I asked them questionsuntil they began to puzzle themselves to answer them, and now I believeall Gwent is divided between two opinions as to their fate--one, thatthey are roaming the country, the other that lord Herbert, as they stillcall him, has by his magic conveyed them away to Ireland to assist himin a general massacre of the Protestants.'
Mighty in mutual faith, neither politics, nor morals, nor even theologywas any more able to part those whose plain truth had begotten absoluteconfidence. Strive they might, sin they could not, against each other.They talked, wandering about, a long time, forgetting, I am sorry tosay, even their poor shivering horses, which, after trying to consolethemselves with the renewal of a friendship which a broad white lineacross Lady's face had for a moment, on Dick's part, somewhat impeded,had become very restless. At length an expostulatory whinny from Ladycalled Richard to his duty, and with compunctions of heart the pairhurried to mount. They rode home together in a bliss that would havebeen too deep almost for conscious delight but that their animals wereeager after motion, and as now the surface of the fields had grown soft,they turned into them, and a tremendous gallop soon brought theirgladness to the surface in great fountain throbs of joy.
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