AMANDA--DOROTHY--LORD HERBERT.
So also did Amanda; but not the less did she cherish feelings of revenge
against her whom she more than suspected of having been the contriver of
her harmful discomfiture. She felt certain that Dorothy had laid the
snare into which they had fallen, with the hope if not the certainty of
catching just themselves two in it, and she read in her, therefore,
jealousy and cruelty as well as coldness and treachery. Rowland on the
other hand was inclined to attribute the mishap to the displeasure of
lord Herbert, whose supernatural acquirements, he thought, had enabled
him both to discover and punish their intrusion. Amanda, nevertheless,
kept her own opinion, and made herself henceforth all eyes and ears for
Dorothy, hoping ever to find a chance of retaliating, if not in kind yet
in plentiful measure of vengeance. Dorothy's odd ways, lawless
movements, and what the rest of the ladies counted her vulgar tastes,
had for some time been the subject of remark to the gossiping portion of
the castle community; and it seemed to Amanda that in watching and
discovering what she was about when she supposed herself safe from the
eyes of her equals and superiors, lay her best chance of finding a mode
of requital. Nor was she satisfied with observation, but kept her mind
busy on the trail, now of one, now of another vague-bodied revenge.
The charge of low tastes was founded upon the fact that there was not an
artisan about the castle, from Caspar downwards, whom Dorothy did not
know and address by his name; but her detractors, in drawing their
conclusions from it, never thought of finding any related significance
in another fact, namely, that there was not a single animal either, of
consequence enough to have a name, which did not know by it. There were
very few of the animals indeed which did not know her in return, if not
by her name, yet by her voice or her presence--some of them even by her
foot or her hand. She would wander about the farmyard and stables for an
hour at a time, visiting all that were there, and specially her little
horse, which she had long, oh, so long ago! named Dick, nor had taken
his name from him any more than from Marquis.
The charge of lawlessness in her movements was founded on another fact
as well, namely, that she was often seen in the court after dusk, and
that not merely in running across to the keep, as she would be doing at
all hours, but loitering about, in full view of the windows. It was not
denied that this took place only when the organ was playing--but then
who played the organ? Was not the poor afflicted boy, barring the blank
of his eyes, beautiful as an angel? And was not mistress Dorothy too
deep to be fathomed? And so the tattling streams flowed on, and the ears
of mistress Amanda willingly listened to their music, nor did she
disdain herself to contribute to the reservoir in which those of the
castle whose souls thirsted after the minutiae of live biography,
accumulated their stores of fact and fiction, conjecture and falsehood.
Lord Herbert came home to bury his little one, and all that was left
behind of her was borne to the church of St. Cadocus, the parish church
of Raglan, and there laid beside the marquis's father and mother. He
remained with them a fortnight, and his presence was much needed to
lighten the heavy gloom that had settled over both his wife and his
father.
As if it were not enough to bury the bodies of the departed, there are
many, and the marquis and his daughter-in-law were of the number, who in
a sense seek to bury their souls as well, making a graveyard of their
own spirits, and laying the stone of silence over the memory of the
dead. Such never speak of them but when compelled, and then almost as if
to utter their names were an act of impiety. Not In Memoriam but In
Oblivionem should be the inscription upon the tombs they raise. The
memory that forsakes the sunlight, like the fishes in the underground
river, loses its eyes; the cloud of its grief carries no rainbow; behind
the veil of its twin-future burns no lamp fringing its edges with the
light of hope. I can better, however, understand the hopelessness of the
hopeless than their calmness along with it. Surely they must be upheld
by the presence within them of that very immortality, against whose
aurora they shut to their doors, then mourn as if there were no such
thing.
Radiant as she was by nature, lady Margaret, when sorrow came, could do
little towards her own support. The marquis said to himself, 'I am
growing old, and cannot smile at grief so well as once on a day. Sorrow
is a hawk more fell than I had thought.' The name of little Molly was
never mentioned between them. But sudden floods of tears were the signs
of the mother's remembrance; and the outbreak of ambushed sighs, which
he would make haste to attribute to the gout, the signs of the
grandfather's.
Dorothy, too, belonged in tendency to the class of the unspeaking. Her
nature was not a bright one. Her spirit's day was evenly, softly lucent,
like one of those clouded calm grey mornings of summer, which seem more
likely to end in rain than sunshine.
Lord Herbert was of a very different temperament. He had hope enough in
his one single nature to serve the whole castle, if only it could have
been shared. The veil between him and the future glowed as if on fire
with mere radiance, and about to vanish in flame. It was not that he
more than one of the rest imagined he could see through it. For him it
was enough that beyond it lay the luminous. His eyes, to those that
looked on him, were lighted with its reflex.
Such as he, are, by those who love them not, misjudged as shallow. Depth
to some is indicated by gloom, and affection by a persistent
brooding--as if there were no homage to the past of love save sighs and
tears. When they meet a man whose eyes shine, whose step is light, on
whose lips hovers a smile, they shake their heads and say, 'There goes
one who has never loved, and who therefore knows not sorrow.' And the
man is one of those over whom death has no power; whom time nor space
can part from those he loves; who lives in the future more than in the
past! Has not his being ever been for the sake of that which was yet to
come? Is not his being now for the sake of that which it shall be? Has
he not infinitely more to do with the great future than the little past?
The Past has descended into hell, is even now ascending glorified, and
will, in returning cycle, ever and again greet our faith as the more and
yet more radiant Future.
But even lord Herbert had his moments of sad longing after his dainty
Molly. Such moments, however, came to him, not when he was at home with
his wife, but when he rode alone by his troops on a night march, or
when, upon the eve of an expected battle, he sought sleep that he might
fight the better on the morrow.