THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.
Dorothy went straight to lady Margaret's parlour, and made her humble
apology for the trouble and alarm her dog had occasioned. Lady Margaret
assured her that the children were nothing the worse, not having been
even much terrified, for the dog had not gone a hair's-breadth beyond
rough play. Poor bunny was the only one concerned who had not yet
recovered his equanimity. He did not seem positively hurt, she said, but
as he would not eat the lovely clover under his nose where he lay in
Molly's crib, it was clear that the circulation of his animal spirits
had been too rudely checked. Thereupon Dorothy begged to be taken to the
nursery, for, being familiar with all sorts of tame animals, she knew
rabbits well. As she stood with the little creature in her arms, gently
stroking its soft whiteness, the children gathered round her, and she
bent herself to initiate a friendship with them, while doing her best to
comfort and restore their favourite. Success in the latter object she
found the readiest way to the former. Under the sweet galvanism of her
stroking hand the rabbit was presently so much better that when she
offered him a blade of the neglected clover, the equilateral triangle of
his queer mouth was immediately set in motion, the trefoil vanished, and
when he was once more placed in the crib he went on with his meal as if
nothing had happened. The children were in ecstasies, and cousin Dorothy
was from that moment popular and on the way to be something better.
When supper time came, lady Margaret took her again to the dining-room,
where there was much laughter over the story of the two marquises, lord
Worcester driving the joke in twenty different directions, but so kindly
that Dorothy, instead of being disconcerted or even discomposed thereby,
found herself emboldened to take a share in the merriment. When the
company rose, lady Margaret once more led her to her own room, where,
working at her embroidery frame, she chatted with her pleasantly for
some time. Dorothy would have been glad if she had set her work also,
for she could ill brook doing nothing. Notwithstanding her quietness of
demeanour, amounting at times to an appearance of immobility, her nature
was really an active one, and it was hard for her to sit with her hands
in her lap. Lady Margaret at length perceived her discomfort.
'I fear, my child, I am wearying you,' she said.
'It is only that I want something to do, madam,' said Dorothy.
'I have nothing at hand for you to-night,' returned lady Margaret.
'Suppose we go and find my lord;--I mean my own lord Herbert. I have not
seen him since we broke fast together, and you have not seen him at all.
I am afraid he must think of leaving home again soon, he seems so
anxious to get something or other finished.'
As she spoke, she pushed aside her frame, and telling Dorothy to go and
fetch herself a cloak, went into the next room, whence she presently
returned, wrapped in a hooded mantle. As soon as Dorothy came, she led
her along the corridor to a small lobby whence a stair descended to the
court, issuing close by the gate.
'I shall never learn my way about,' said Dorothy. 'If it were only the
staircases, they are more than my memory will hold.'
Lady Margaret gave a merry little laugh.
'Harry set himself to count them the other day,' she said. 'I do not
remember how many he made out altogether, but I know he said there were
at least thirty stone ones.'
Dorothy's answer was an exclamation.
But she was not in the mood to dwell upon the mere arithmetic of
vastness. Invaded by the vision of the mighty structure, its aspect
rendered yet more imposing by the time which now suited with it, she
forgot lady Margaret's presence, and stood still to gaze.
The twilight had deepened half-way into night. There was no moon, and in
the dusk the huge masses of building rose full of mystery and awe. Above
the rest, the great towers on all sides seemed by indwelling might to
soar into the regions of air. The pile stood there, the epitome of the
story of an ancient race, the precipitate from its vanished life--a hard
core that had gathered in the vaporous mass of history--the all of solid
that remained to witness of the past.
She came again to herself with a start. Lady Margaret had stood quietly
waiting for her mood to change. Dorothy apologised, but her mistress
only smiled and said,
'I am in no haste, child. I like to see another impressed as I was when
first I stood just where you stand now. Come, then, I will show you
something different.'
She led the way along the southern side of the court until they came to
the end of the chapel, opposite which an archway pierced the line of
building, and revealed the mighty bulk of the citadel, the only portion
of the castle, except the kitchen-tower, continuing impregnable to
enlarged means of assault: gunpowder itself, as yet far from perfect in
composition and make, and conditioned by clumsy, uncertain, and
ill-adjustable artillery, was nearly powerless against walls more than
ten feet in thickness.
I have already mentioned that one peculiarity of Raglan was a distinct
moat surrounding its keep. Immediately from the outer end of the
archway, a Gothic bridge of stone led across this thirty-foot moat to a
narrow walk which encompassed the tower. The walk was itself encompassed
and divided from the moat by a wall with six turrets at equal distances,
surmounted by battlements. At one time the sole entrance to the tower
had been by a drawbridge dropping across the walk to the end of the
stone bridge, from an arched door in the wall, whose threshold was some
ten or twelve feet from the ground; but another entrance had since been
made on the level of the walk, and by it the two ladies now entered.
Passing the foot of a great stone staircase, they came to the door of
what had, before the opening of the lower entrance, been a vaulted
cellar, probably at one time a dungeon, at a later period a place of
storage, but now put to a very different use, and wearing a stranger
aspect than it could ever have borne at any past period of its story--a
look indeed of mystery inexplicable.
When Dorothy entered she found herself in a large place, the form of
which she could ill distinguish in the dull light proceeding from the
chinks about the closed doors of a huge furnace. The air was filled with
gurglings and strange low groanings, as of some creature in dire pain.
Dorothy had as good nerves as ever woman, yet she could not help some
fright as she stood alone by the door and stared into the gloomy
twilight into which her companion had advanced. As her eyes became used
to the ruddy dusk, she could see better, but everywhere they lighted on
shapes inexplicable, whose forms to the first questioning thought
suggested instruments of torture; but cruel as some of them looked, they
were almost too strange, contorted, fantastical for such. Still, the
wood-cuts in a certain book she had been familiar with in childhood,
commonly called Fox's Book of Martyrs, kept haunting her mind's eye--and
were they not Papists into whose hands she had fallen? she said to
herself, amused at the vagaries of her own involuntary suggestions.
Among the rest, one thing specially caught her attention, both from its
size and its complicated strangeness. It was a huge wheel standing near
the wall, supported between two strong uprights--some twelve or fifteen
feet in diameter, with about fifty spokes, from every one of which hung
a large weight. Its grotesque and threatful character was greatly
increased by the mingling of its one substance with its many shadows on
the wall behind it. So intent was she upon it that she started when lady
Margaret spoke.
'Why, mistress Dorothy!' she said, 'you look as if you had wandered into
St. Anthony's cave! Here is my lord Herbert to welcome his cousin.'
Beside her stood a man rather under the middle stature, but as his back
was to the furnace this was about all Dorothy could discover of his
appearance, save that he was in the garb of a workman, with bare head
and arms, and held in his hand a long iron rod ending in a hook.
'Welcome, indeed, cousin Vaughan!' he said heartily, but without
offering his hand, which in truth, although an honest, skilful, and
well-fashioned hand, was at the present moment far from fit for a lady's
touch.
There was something in his voice not altogether strange to Dorothy, but
she could not tell of whom or what it reminded her.
'Are you come to take another lesson on the cross-bow?' he asked with a
smile.
Then she knew he was the same she had met in the looped chamber beside
the arblast. An occasional slight halt, not impediment, in his speech,
was what had remained on her memory. Did he always dwell only in the
dusky borders of the light?
Dorothy uttered a little 'Oh!' of surprise, but immediately recovering
herself, said,
'I am sorry I did not know it was you, my lord. I might by this time
have been capable of discharging bolt or arrow with good aim in defence
of the castle.'
'It is not yet too late, I hope,' returned the workman-lord. 'I confess
I was disappointed to find your curiosity went no further. I hoped I had
at last found a lady capable of some interest in pursuits like mine. For
my lady Margaret here, she cares not a straw for anything I do, and
would rather have me keep my hands clean than discover the mechanism of
the primum mobile!
'Yes, in truth, Ned,' said his wife, 'I would rather have thee with fair
hands in my sweet parlour, than toiling and moiling in this dirty
dungeon, with no companion but that horrible fire-engine of thine,
grunting and roaring all night long.'
'Why, what do you make of Caspar Kaltoff, my lady?'
'I make not much of him.'
'You misjudge his goodfellowship then.'
'Truly, I think not well of him: he always hath secrets with thee, and I
like it not.'
'That they are secrets is thine own fault, Peggy. How can I teach thee
my secrets if thou wilt not open thine ears to hear them?'
'I would your lordship would teach me!' said Dorothy. 'I might not be an
apt pupil, but I should be both an eager and a humble one.'
'By St. Patrick! mistress Dorothy, but you go straight to steal my
husband's heart from me. "Humble," forsooth! and "eager" too! Nay! nay!
If I have no part in his brain, I can the less yield his heart.'
'What would be gladly learned would be gladly taught, cousin,' said lord
Herbert.
'There! there!' exclaimed lady Margaret; 'I knew it would be so. You
discharge your poor dull apprentice the moment you find a clever one!'
'And why not? I never was able to teach thee anything.'
'Ah, Ned, there you are unkind indeed!' said lady Margaret, with
something in her voice that suggested the water-springs were swelling.
'My shamrock of four!' said her husband in the tenderest tone, 'I but
jested with thee. How shouldst thou be my pupil in anything I can teach?
I am yours in all that is noble and good. I did not mean to vex you,
sweet heart.'
''Tis gone again, Ned,' she answered, smiling. 'Give cousin Dorothy her
first lesson.'
'It shall be that, then, to which I sought in vain to make thee listen
this very morning--a certain great saying of my lord of Verulam,
mistress Dorothy. I had learnt it by heart that I might repeat it word
for word to my lady, but she would none of it.'
'May I not hear it, madam?' said Dorothy.
'We will both hear it, Herbert, if you will pardon your foolish wife and
admit her to grace.' And as she spoke she laid her hand on his sooty
arm.
He answered her only with a smile, but such a one as sufficed.
'Listen then, ladies both,' he said. 'My lord of Verulam, having quoted
the words of Solomon, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the
glory of the king is to find it out," adds thus, of his own thought
concerning them,--"as if," says my lord, "according to the innocent play
of children, the divine majesty took delight to hide his works, to the
end to have them found out, and as if kings could not obtain a greater
honour than to be God's playfellows in that game, considering the great
commandment of wits and means, whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from
them."'
'That was very well for my lord of--what did'st thou call him, Ned?'
'Francis Bacon, lord Verulam,' returned Herbert, with a queer smile.
'Very well for my lord of Veryflam!' resumed lady Margaret, with a mock,
yet bewitching affectation of innocence and ignorance; 'but tell me had
he?--nay, I am sure he had not a wild Irishwoman sitting breaking her
heart in her bower all day long for his company. He could never else
have had the heart to say it.--Mistress Dorothy,' she went on, 'take the
counsel of a forsaken wife, and lay it to thy heart: never marry a man
who loves lathes and pipes and wheels and water and fire, and I know not
what. But do come in ere bed-time, Herbert, and I will sing thee the
sweetest of English ditties, and make thee such a sack-posset as never
could be made out of old Ireland any more than the song.'
But her husband that moment sprang from her side, and shouting 'Caspar!
Caspar!' bounded to the furnace, reached up with his iron rod into the
darkness over his head, caught something with the hooked end of it, and
pulled hard. A man who from somewhere in the gloomy place had responded
like a greyhound to his master's call, did the like on the other side.
Instantly followed a fierce, protracted, sustained hiss, and in a moment
the place was filled with a white cloud, whence issued still the hideous
hiss, changing at length to a roar. Lady Margaret turned in terror, ran
out of the keep, and fled across the bridge and through the archway
before she slackened her pace. Dorothy followed, but more composedly,
led by duty, not driven by terror, and indeed reluctantly forsaking a
spot where was so much she did not understand.
They had fled from the infant roar of the 'first stock-father' of
steam-engines, whose cradle was that feudal keep, eight centuries old.
That night Dorothy lay down weary enough. It seemed a month since she
had been in her own bed at Wyfern, so many new and strange things had
crowded into her house, hitherto so still. Every now and then the
darkness heaved and rippled with some noise of the night. The stamping
of horses, and the ringing of their halter chains, seemed very near her.
She thought she heard the howl of Marquis from afar, and said to
herself, 'The poor fellow cannot sleep! I must get my lord to let me
have him in my chamber.' Then she listened a while to the sweet flow of
the water from the mouth of the white horse, which in general went on
all night long. Suddenly came an awful sound--like a howl also, but such
as never left the throat of dog. Again and again at intervals it came,
with others like it but not the same, torturing the dark with a dismal
fear. Dorothy had never heard the cry of a wild beast, but the
suggestion that these might be such cries, and the recollection that she
had heard such beasts were in Raglan Castle, came together to her mind.
She was so weary, however, that worse noises than these could hardly
have kept her awake; not even her weariness could prevent them from
following her into her dreams.