St. George and St. Michael (Volume 1) online

lay, vanished and came again. But even out of
the depth of winter, quivered airs and hints of
spring, until at last the mighty weakling was
born. And all this time rumour beat the alarum
of war, and men were growing harder and more
determined on both sides — some from self-
opinion, some from party spirit, some from
prejudice, antipathy, animosity, some from sense
of duty, mingled more and less with the alloys
of impulse and advantage. But he who was
most earnest on the one side was least aware
that he who was most earnest on the other was
honest as himself. To confess uprightness in
one of the opposite party, seemed to most men
to involve treachery to their own ; or if they
were driven to the confession, it was too often
followed with an attempt at discrediting the
noblest of human qualities.

The hearts of the two young people fared



Love and War, 133

very much as the earth under the altered skies
of winter, and behaved much as the divided
nation. A sense of wrong endured kept both
from feehng at first the full sorrow of their
separation ; and by the time that the tide of
memory had flowed back and covered the rock
of offence, they had got a little used to the dul-
ness of a day from which its brightest hour had
been blotted. Dorothy learned 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 a sad ghost
in a dream. To Richard, on the other hand,
she looked a lovely but scarce worshipful
celestial, with merely might enough to hold
his heart, swelling with a sense of wrong, in
her hand, and squeeze it very hard. His con-
solation was that he suffered for the truth's
sake, for to decline action upon such insight
as he had had, was a thing as impossible as
to alter the relations between the parts of a
sphere. Dorothy longed for peace, and the
return of the wandering chickens of the church
to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her
about the paled yard of obedience, picking up
the barley of righteousness ; Richard longed



134 ^^- George and St. Michael.

for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her
sons together — to a war whose battles should
never cease until men were free to worship
God after the light he had lighted within
them, and the dragon of priestly authority
should breathe out his last fiery breath, no
more to drive the feebler 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 a lovely spiritual repose had long since
descended. Her anxieties were only 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 of his church
everything to aid and nothing to retard his
spiritual development, had no conception of
the nature of the puritanical opposition to its
government and rites. Through neither could
Dorothy come to any true idea of the questions
which agitated the politics of both church and
state. To her, the king was a kind of demigod,
and every priest a fountain of truth. Her
religion was the sedate and dutiful acceptance
of obedient innocence, a thing of small account



Love and War. 135

indeed where it is rooted only in sentiment and
customary preference, but of inestimable value
in such cases as hers, where action followed
upon acceptance.

Richard, again, was under the quickening
masterdom of a well-stored, active mind, a
strong will, a judgment that sought to keep its
balance even, and whose descended scale never
rebounded, a conscience which, through all the
mists of human judgment, eyed ever the blotted
glimmer of some light beyond ; and all these ele-
ments of power were gathered in his own father,
in whom the customary sternness of the puritan
parent had at length blossomed in confidence,
a phase of love which, to such a mind as
Richard's, was even more enchanting than
tenderness. To be trusted by such a father,
to feel his mind and soul present with him,
acknowledging him a fit associate in great
hopes and noble aims, was surely and ought to
be, whatever the sentimentalist may say, some
comfort for any sorrow a youth is capable of,
such being in general only too lightly remedi-
able. I wonder if any mere youth ever suffered,
from a disappointment in love, half the sense of
cureless pain which, with one protracted pang.



136 SL Geoi'ge a7id St. Michael.

gnaws at the heart of the avaricious old man
who has dropt a sovereign into his draw-well.

But the relation of Dorothy and Richard,
although ordinary in outward appearance, was
of no common kind ; and while these two thus
fell apart from each other in their outer life,
each judging the other insensible to the call of
highest rectitude, neither of them knew how
much his or her heart was confident of the
other's integrity. In respect of them, the
lovely simile, in Ckristabel, of the parted cliffs,
may be carried a little farther, for, under the
dreary sea flowing between them, the rock was
one still. Such a faith may sometimes, per-
haps often does, lie in the heart like a seed
buried beyond the reach of the sun, thoroughly
alive though giving no sign : to grow too soon
might be to die. Things had indeed gone
farther with Dorothy and Richard, but the
lobes of their loves had never been fairly ex-
posed to the sun and wind ere the swollen clods
of winter again covered them.

Once, in the cold noon of a lovely day of
frost, when the lightest step crackled with the
breaking of multitudinous crystals, when the
trees were fringed with furry white, and the



Love and Wa7\ 137

old spider - webs glimmered like fillgrane of
fairy silver, they met on a lonely country-road.
The sun shone red through depths of half-
frozen vapour, and tinged the whiteness of
death with a faint warmth of feeling and hope.
Along the rough lane Richard walked reading
what looked like a letter, but was a copy his
father had procured of a poem still only In
manuscript — the Lycidas of Milton. In the
glow to which the alternating hot and cold
winds of enthusiasm and bereavement had
fanned the fiery particle within him, Richard
was not only able to understand and enjoy the
thought of which the poem was built, but was
borne aloft on its sad yet hopeful melodies
as upon wings of an upsoaring seraph. The
flow of his feeling suddenly broken by an al-
most fierce desire to share with Dorothy the
tenderness of the magic music of the stately
monody, and then, ere the answering waves
of her emotion had subsided, to whisper to
her that the marvellous spell came from the
heart of the same wonderful man from whose
brain had issued, like Pallas from Jove's, —
what ? — Animadversions upon the Remonstrants
Defence against SmectynDius, the pamphlet



138 S/. George and St, Michael,

which had so roused all the abhorrence her
nature was capable of— he lifted his head and
saw her but a few paces from him. Dorothy
caught a glimpse of a countenance radiant
with feeling, and eyes flashing through a
watery film of delight ; her own eyes fell ;
she said, ' Good morning, Richard ! ' and passed
him without deflecting an Inch. The bird of
song folded Its wings and called In its shining ;
the sun lost half his red beams ; the sprinkled
seed pearls vanished, and ashes covered the
earth ; he folded the paper, laid It in the breast
of his doublet, and walked home through the
glittering meadows with a fresh hurt in his heart.
Dorothy's time and thoughts were all but
occupied with the nursing of her mother, who,
contrary to the expectation of her friends, out-
lived the 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, they were not many.
We must not therefore imagine, however, that
the two ladles were ill supplied with spiritual
pabulum. There are few houses of the present
day in which, though there be ten times as



Love and War. 139

many books, there Is so much strong food ; if
there was any lack, it was rather of diluents.
Amongst those she read were Queen Elizabeth's
Homilies, Hooker's Politie, Donne's Sermons,
and George Herbert's Temple, to the dying
lady only less dear than her New Testament.

But even with this last, it was only through
sympathy with her mother that Dorothy could
come into any contact. The gems of the mind,
which alone could catch and reflect such light,
lay as yet under the soil, and much ploughing
and breaking of the clods was needful ere they
could come largely to the surface. But happily
for Dorothy, there were amongst the books a
few of those precious little quartos of Shakspere,
the first three books of the Faei'ie Qiieerte, and
the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, then much
read, if we may judge from the fact that, although
it was not published till after the death of Sid-
ney, the eighth edition of it 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, on which she
would yet, in spite of the occasional jar and
shudder of respondent nerves, now and then
play at a sitting all the little music she had



1 40 5/. Geo7'ge and St. Michael.

learned, and with whose help she had sometimes
even tried to find 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 dog to play with and
teach, a few sad thoughts and memories to dis-
cipline, a call now and then from a neighbour,
or a longer visit from some old friend of her
mother's to receive, and the few cottagers on all
that was left of the estate of Wyfern to care for ;
so that her time was tolerably filled up, and' she
felt little need of anything more to occupy at
least her hours and days.

Meanwhile, through all nature's changes,
through calm and tempest, rain and snow,
through dull refusing winter, and the first
passing visits of open-handed spring, the hearts
of men were awaiting the outburst of the thun-
der, the blue peaks of whose cloud-built cells
had long been visible on the horizon. of the
future. Every now and then they would start
and listen, and ask each other was it the first
growl of the storm, or but the rumbling of the
wheels of the government. To the dwellers in
Raglan Castle it seemed at least a stormy sign
— of which the news reached them in the dull



Love and War. 141

November weather — that the parliament had
set a guard upon Worcester House in the
Strand, and searched it for persons suspected
of high treason — ^lord Herbert, doubtless, first
of all, the direction and strength of whose poli-
tical drift, suspicious from the first because of
his religious persuasion, could hardly be any
longer doubtful to the most liberal of its
members.

The news of the terrible insurrection of the
catholics in Ireland followed.

Richard kept his armour bright, his mare in
good fettle, himself and his men in thorough
exercise, read and talked with his father, and
waited, sometimes with patience, sometimes
without.

At length, in the early spring, the king with-
drew to York, and a body-guard of the gentle-
men 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, proclaimed the governor a traitor.
The parliament declared the proclamation a
breach of its privileges. Richard got new
girths.



142 SL George and St. Michael,

The summer passed in various disputes.
Towards its close the governor of Portsmouth
dechned to act upon a commission to organize
the new levies of the parliament, and adminis-
tered instead thereof an oath of allegiance to
the garrison and inhabitants. Thereupon the
place was besieged by Essex ; the king pro-
claimed him a traitor, and the parliament re-
torted by declaring the royal proclamation a
libel. Richard had his mare new-shod.

On a certain day in August, the royal stan-
dard, with the motto, ' Give to Caesar his due,'
was set up at Nottingham. Richard mounted
his mare, and taking leave of his father, led
Stopchase and nineteen men more, all fairly
mounted, to offer his services to the parliament,
as represented by the earl of Essex.




CHAPTER X.



DOROTHY S REFUGE.




ITH the decay of summer, lady
Vaughan began again to sink, and
became at length so weak that
Dorothy rarely left her room. The
departure of Richard Hey wood to join the
rebels affected her deeply. The report of the
utter rout of the parliamentary forces at Edge-
hill, lighted up her face for the last time with
a glimmer of earthly gladness, which the very
different news that followed speedily ex-
tinguished ; and after that she declined more
rapidly. Mrs. Rees told Dorothy that she
would yield to the first frost. But she lingered
many weeks. One morning she signed to
her daughter to come nearer that she might
speak to her.



T 44 SL George and St, Michael.

* Dorothy,' she whispered, ' I wish much to
see good Mr. Herbert. Prithee send for him.
I know it is an evil time for him to travel,
being an old man and feeble, but he will do
his endeavour to come to me, I know, if but
for my husband's sake, whom he loved like a
brother. I cannot die in peace without first
taking counsel with him how best to provide
for the safety of my little ewe-lamb until these
storms are overblown. Alas ! alas ! I did look
to Richard Hey wood '

She could say no more.

' Do not take thought about the morrow
for me any more than you would for yourself,
madam,' said Dorothy. ' You know master
Herbert says the one is as 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 and looks,
definite enough, and more eloquent than words,
she committed Dorothy to his protection, and
died.

Dorothy behaved with much calmness. She
would not, in her mother's absence, act so as



Dorothys Refuge. 145

would have grieved her presence. Little
passed between her and Mr. Herbert until
the funeral was over. Then they talked of the
future. Her guardian wished much to leave
everything in charge of the old bailiff, and take
her with him to Llangattock ; but he hesitated
a little because of the bad state of the roads
in winter, much because of their danger in the
troubled condition of affairs, and most of all
because of the uncertain, indeed perilous posi-
tion of the Episcopalian clergy, 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 was pretty certain, that matters must
grow far worse before they could even begin
to mend.

But they had more time for deliberation
given them than they would willingly have
taken. Mr. Herbert had caught cold while
reading the funeral service, and was compelled
to delay his return. The cold settled into a
sort of low fever, and for many weeks he lay
helpless. During this time the sudden affair
at Brentford took place, after which the king,

VOL. I. K



146 SL George a7id St, Michael.

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 any dis-
trict, sought to ruin all of the opposite faction.
Robbery and plunder became common, and
that not only on the track of armies or the
route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands
of mere marauders, taking up the cry of the
faction that happened in any neighbourhood
to have the ascendancy, plundered houses,
robbed travellers, and were guilty of all sorts
of violence. Hence it had become as perilous
to stay at home in an unfortified house as to
travel ; and many were the terrors which dur-
ing the winter tried the courage of the girl,
and checked the recovery of the old man.
At length one morning, after a midnight alarm,
Mr. Herbert thus addressed Dorothy, as she
waited upon him with his breakfast :

* It fears me much, my dear Dorothy, that
the time will be long ere any but fortified places
will be safe abodes. It is a question in my
mind whether it would not be better to seek
refuge for you . But stay ; let me suggest



Do7^othys Refuge, 147

my proposal, rather than startle you with It In
sudden form complete. 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 relationship Is. And assuredly,
sir, you mean not to propose that I should seek
safety from bodily peril with a household which
Is, to say the least, so unfriendly to the doc-
trines you and my blessed mother have always
taught me ! You cannot, or Indeed, must you
not have forgotten that they are papists ?'

Dorothy had been educated in such a fear of
the catholics, and such a profound disapproval
of those of their doctrines rejected by the
reformers of the church of England, as was
only surpassed In Intensity by her absolute
abhorrence of the assumptions and negations of
the puritans. These indeed roused In her a
certain sense of disgust which she had never
felt in respect of what were considered by her
teachers the most erroneous doctrines of the
catholics. But Mr. Herbert, although his pre-
judices were nearly as strong, and his opinions,
If not more Indigenous at least far better accli-



148 SL George and St. Michael.

matlsed than hers, had yet reaped this advan-
tage of a longer Hfe, that he was better able to
atone his dislike of certain opinions with per-
sonal regard for those who held them, and
therefore did not, like Dorothy, recoil from the
idea of obligation to one of a different creed
— provided always that creed was Catholicism
and not puritanism. For to the church of
England, the catholics, in the presence of her
more rampant foes, appeared harmless enough
now.

He believed that the honourable feelings of
lord Worcester and his family would be hostile
to any attempt to proselytize his ward. But as
far as she was herself concerned, he trusted
more to the strength of her prejudices than the
rectitude of her convictions, honest as the girl
was, to prevent her from being over-influenced
by the change of spiritual atmosphere ; for in
proportion to the simplicity of her goodness
must be her capacity for recognizing the good-
ness of others, catholics or not, and for being
wrought upon by the virtue that went out from
them. His hope was, that England would
have again become the abode of peace, long ere
any risk to her spiritual well-being should have



Dorothy s Refuge, 149

been incurred by this mode of securing her
bodily safety and comfort.

But there was another fact, in the absence of
which he would have had far more hesitation
in seeking for his ewe-lamb the protection of
sheep, the guardians of whose spiritual fold had
but too often proved wolves in sheep-dogs'
clothing : within the last few days the news
had reached him that an old friend named
Bayly, a true man, a priest of the English
church and a doctor of divinity, had taken up
his abode in Raglan castle as one of the house-
hold — chaplain indeed, as report would have
it, though that was hard of belief, save indeed
it were for the sake of the protestants within
its walls. However that might be, there was
a true shepherd to whose care to entrust his
lamb ; and it was mainly on the strength of this
consideration that he had concluded to make
his proposal to Dorothy — namely, that she
should seek shelter within the walls of Raglan
castle until the storm should be so far over-
blown, as to admit either of her going to Llan-
gattock or returning to her own home. He
now discussed the matter with her in full, and,
notwithstanding her very natural repugnance to



150 SL Geoi'ge and St. Michael,

the scheme, such was Dorothy's confidence In
her friend that she was easily persuaded of its
wisdom. What the more inclined her to yield
was, that Mr. Hey wood had written her a
letter, hardly the less unwelcome for the
kindness of its tone, in which he offered her
the shelter and hospitality of Redware 'until
better days.'

* Better days ! ' exclaimed Dorothy with con-
tempt. * If such days as he would count better
should ever arrive, his house is the last place
where I would have them find me ! '

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

Meanwhile Mr. Herbert had opened com-
munication with Dr. Bayly, had satisfied
himself that he was still a true son of the
church, and had solicited his friendly media-
tion towards the receiving of mistress Dorothy
Vaughan Into the family of the marquis of
Worcester, to the dignity of which title the
earl had now been raised — the parliament, to
be sure, declining to acknowledge the patent
conferred by his majesty, but that was of no



Dorothy s Refuge. 1 5 1

consequence in the estimation of those chiefly
concerned.

On a certain spring morning, then, the snow
still lying in the hollows of the hills, Thomas
Bayly came to Wyfern to see his old friend
Matthew Herbert. He was a courteous little
man, with a courtesy librating on a knife-edge
of deflection towards obsequiousness on the one
hand and condescension on the other, for neither
of which, however, was his friend Herbert an
object. His eye was keen, and his forehead
good, but his carriage inclined to the pompous,
and his speech to the formal, ornate, and prolix.
The shape of his mouth was honest, but the
closure of the lips indicated self-importance.
The greeting between them was simple and
genuine, and ere they parted, Bayly had pro-
mised to do his best 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 the
doctor's special friend.

It would have been greatly unlike the mar-
quis or any of his family to refuse such a prayer.
Had not their house been for centuries the



152 SL Geoi'ge and St, Michael,

abode of hospitality, the embodiment of shelter ?
On the mere representation of Dr. Bayly, and
the fact of the relationship, which, although dis-
tant, was well enough known, within two days
mistress Dorothy Vaughan received an invita-
tion to enter the family of the marquis, as one of
the gentlewomen of lady Margaret's suite. It
was of course gratefully accepted, and as soon
as Mr. Herbert thought himself sufficiently
recovered to encounter the fatigues of travel-
ling, he urged on the somewhat laggard pre-
parations of Dorothy, that he might himself see
her safely housed on his way to Llangattock,
whi-ther he was most anxious to return.

It was a lovely spring morning when they set
out together on horseback for Raglan. The
sun looked down like a young father upon his
earth-mothered children, peeping out of their
beds to greet him after the long winter night.
The rooks were too busy to caw, dibbling deep
in the soft red earth with their great beaks.
The red cattle, flaked with white, spotted the
clear fresh green of the meadows. The bare
trees had a kind of glory about them, like old
men waiting for their youth, which might come
suddenly. A few slow clouds were drifting



Dorothys Refuge. 153

across the pale sky. A gentle wind was blow-
ing over the wet fields, but when a cloud swept
before the sun, it blew cold. The roads were
bad, but their horses were used to such, and
picked their way with the easy carefulness of
experience. The winter might yet return
for a season, but this day was of the spring and
its promises. Earth and air, field and sky were
full of peace. But the heart of England was
troubled — troubled with passions both good and
evil — with righteous indignation and unholy
scorn, with the love of liberty and the joy of
license, with ambition and aspiration.

No honest heart could yield long to the com-
forting of the fair world, knowing that some of
her fairest fields would soon be crimsoned afresh
with the blood of her children. But Dorothy's
sadness was not all for her country in general.
Had she put the question honestly to her heart,
she must have confessed that even the loss of