R. I. P.
As the sad, shining company of the marquis went from the gates, running
at full speed to overtake the rear ere it should have passed through,
came Caspar, and mounting a horse led for him, rode near Dorothy.
As they left the brick gate, a horseman joined the procession from
outside. Pale and worn, with bent head and sad face, sir Rowland
Scudamore fell into the ranks amongst his friends of the garrison, and
with them rode in silence.
Many a look did Dorothy cast around her as she rode, but only once, on
the crest of a grassy hill that rose abrupt from the highway a few miles
from Raglan, did she catch sight of Richard mounted on Lady. All her
life after, as often as trouble came, that figure rose against the sky
of her inner world, and was to her a type of the sleepless watch of the
universe.
Soon, from flank and rear, in this direction and that, each to some
haven or home, servants and soldiers began to drop away. Before they
reached the forest of Dean, the cortege had greatly dwindled, for many
belonged to villages, small towns, and farms on the way, and their
orders had been to go home and wait better times. When he reached
London, except the chief officers of his household, one of his own
pages, and some of his daughters' gentlewomen and menials, the marquis
had few attendants left beyond Caspar and Shafto.
It was a long and weary journey for him, occupying a whole week. One
evening he was so tired and unwell that they were forced to put up with
what quarters they could find in a very poor little town. Early in the
morning, however, they were up and away. When they had gone some ten
miles--lord Charles was riding beside the coach and chatting with his
sisters--a remark was made not complimentary to their accommodation of
the previous night.
'True,' said lord Charles; 'it was a very scurvy inn, but we must not
forget that the reckoning was cheap.'
While he spoke, one of the household had approached the marquis, who sat
on the other side of the carriage, and said something in a low voice.
'Say'st thou so!' returned his lordship. '--Hear'st thou, my lord
Charles? Thou talkest of a cheap reckoning! I never paid so dear for a
lodging in my life. Here is master Wharton hath just told me that they
have left a thousand pound under a bench in the chamber we broke our
fast in. Truly they are overpaid for what we had!'
'We have sent back after it, my lord,' said Mr. Wharton.
'You will never see the money again,' said lord Charles.
'Oh, peace!' said the marquis. 'If they will not be known of the money,
you shall see it in a brave inn in a short time.'
Nothing more was said on the matter, and the marquis seemed to have
forgotten it. Late at night, at their next halting-place, the messenger
rejoined them, having met a drawer, mounted on a sorry horse, riding
after them with the bag, but little prospect of overtaking them before
they reached London.
'I thought our hostess seemed an honest woman!' said lady Anne.
'It is a poor town, indeed, lord Charles, but you see it is an honest
one nevertheless!' said Dr. Bayly.
'It may be the town never saw so much money before,' said the marquis,
'and knew not what to make of it.'
'Your lordship is severe,' said the doctor.
'Only with my tongue, good doctor, only with my tongue,' said the
marquis, laughing.
When they reached London, lord Worcester found himself, to his surprise,
in custody of the Black Rod, who, as now for some three years Worcester
House in the Strand had been used for a state-paper office, conducted
him to a house in Covent Garden, where he lodged him in tolerable
comfort and mild imprisonment. Parliament was still jealous of Glamorgan
and his Irish doings--as indeed well they might be.
But his confinement was by no means so great a trial to him as his
indignant friends supposed; for, long willing to depart, he had at
length grown a little tired of life, feeling more and more the
oppression of growing years, of gout varied with asthma, and, worst of
all to the once active man, of his still increasing corpulence, which
last indeed, by his own confession, he found it hard to endure with
patience. The journey had been too much for him, and he began to lead
the life of an invalid.
There being no sufficient accommodation in the house for his family,
they were forced to content themselves with lodging as near him as they
could, and in these circumstances Dorothy, notwithstanding lady
Glamorgan's entreaties, would have returned home. But the marquis was
very unwilling she should leave him, and for his sake she concluded to
remain.
'I am not long for this world, Dorothy,' he said. 'Stay with me and see
the last of the old man. The wind of death has got inside my tent, and
will soon blow it out of sight.'
Lady Glamorgan's intention from the first had been to go to Ireland to
her husband as soon as she could get leave. This however she did not
obtain until the first of October--five weeks after her arrival in
London. She would gladly have carried Dorothy with her, but she would
not leave the marquis, who was now failing visibly. As her ladyship's
pass included thirty of her servants, Dorothy felt at ease about her
personal comforts, and her husband would soon supply all else.
The ladies Elizabeth and Mary were in the same house with their father;
lady Anne and lord Charles were in the house of a relative at no great
distance, and visited him every day. Sir Toby Mathews also, and Dr.
Bayly, had found shelter in the neighbourhood, so that his lordship
never lacked company. But he was going to have other company soon.
Gently he sank towards the grave, and as he sank his soul seemed to
retire farther within, vanishing on the way to the deeper life. They
thought he lost interest in life: it was but that the brightness drew
him from the glimmer. Every now and then, however, he would come forth
from his inner chamber, and standing in his open door look out upon his
friends, and tell them what he had seen.
The winter drew on. But first November came, with its 'saint Martin's
summer, halcyon days' and the old man revived a little. He stood one
morning and looked from his window on the garden behind the house, all
glittering with molten hoar-frost. A few leaves, golden with death, hung
here and there on a naked bough. A kind of sigh was in the air. The very
light had in it as much of resignation as hope. He had forgotten that
Dorothy was in the room.
There was Celtic blood in the marquis, and at times his thoughts took
shapes that hardly belonged to the Teuton.
'Cometh my youth hither again?' he murmured. 'As a stranger he cometh
whom yet I know so well! Or is it but the face of my old age lighted
with a parting smile? Either way, change cometh, and change will be
good. Domine, in manus tuas.'
He turned and saw Dorothy.
'Child!' he exclaimed, 'good sooth, I had forgotten thee. Yet I spake no
treason. Dorothy, I hold not with them who say that from dust we came
and to dust we return. Neither my blessed countess, whom thou knewest
not, nor my darling Molly, whom thou knewest so well, were born of the
dust. From some better where they came--for, say, can dust beget love?
Whither they have gone I follow, in the hope that their prayers have
smoothed for me the way. Lord, lay not my sins to my charge. Mary,
mother, hear my wife who prayeth for me. Hear my little Molly: she was
ever dainty and good.'
Again he had forgotten Dorothy, and was with his dead.
But St. Martin's summer is only the lightening of the year that comes
before its death; and November, although it brought not then such evil
fogs as it now afflicts London withal, yet brought with it November
weather--one of God's hounds, with which he hunts us out of the hollows
of our own moods, and teaches us to sit on the arch of the cellar. But
though the marquis fought hard and kept it out of his mind, it got into
his troubled body. The gout left his feet; he coughed distressingly,
breathed with difficulty, and at length betook himself to bed.
For some time his interest in politics, save in so much as affected the
king's person, had been gradually ceasing.
'I trust I have done my part,' he said once to the two clergymen, as
they sat by his bedside. 'Yet I know not. I fear me I clove too fast to
my money. Yet would I have parted with all, even to my shirt, to make my
lord the king a good catholic. But it may be, sir Toby, we make more of
such matters down here than they do in the high countries; and in that
case, good doctor, ye are to blame who broke away from your mother, even
were she not perfect.'
He crossed himself and murmured a prayer, in fear lest he had been
guilty of laxity of judgment. But neither clergyman said a word.
'But tell me, gentlemen, ye who understand sacred things,' he resumed,
'can a man be far out of the way so long as, with full heart and no
withholding, he saith, Fiat voluntas tua--and that after no private
interpretation, but Sicut in caelo?'
'That, my lord, I also strive to say with all my heart,' said Dr. Bayly.
'Mayhap, doctor,' returned the marquis, 'when thou art as old as I, and
hast learned to see how good it is, how all-good, thou wilt be able to
say it without any striving. There was a time in my life when I too had
to strive, for the thought that he was a hard master would come, and
come again. But now that I have learned a little more of what he meaneth
with me, what he would have of me and do for me, how he would make me
pure of sin, clean from the very bottom of my heart to the crest of my
soul, from spur to plume a stainless knight, verily I am no more content
to SUBMIT to his will: I cry in the night time, "Thy will be done: Lord,
let it be done, I entreat thee;" and in the daytime I cry, "Thy kingdom
come: Lord, let it come, I pray thee."'
He lay silent. The clergymen left the room, and lord Charles came in,
and sat down by his bedside. The marquis looked at him, and said kindly,
'Ah, son Charles! art thou there?'
'I came to tell you, my lord, the rumour goeth that the king hath
consented to establish the presbyterian heresy in the land,' said lord
Charles.
'Believe it not, my lord. A man ought not to believe ill of another so
long as there is space enough for a doubt to perch. Yet, alas! what
shall be hoped of him who will yield nothing to prayers, and everything
to compulsion? Had his majesty been a true prince, he had ere now set
his foot on the neck of his enemies, or else ascended to heaven a
blessed martyr. "Protestant," say'st thou? In good sooth, I force not.
What is he now but a football for the sectaries to kick to and fro! But
I shall pray for him whither I go, if indeed the prayers of such as I
may be heard in that country. God be with his majesty. I can do no more.
There are other realms than England, and I go to another king. Yet will
I pray for England, for she is dear to my heart. God grant the evil time
may pass, and Englishmen yet again grow humble and obedient!'
He closed his eyes, and his face grew so still that, notwithstanding the
labour of his breathing, he would have seemed asleep, but that his lips
moved a little now and then, giving a flutter of shape to the eternal
prayer within him.
Again he opened his eyes, and saw sir Toby, who had re-entered silent as
a ghost, and said, feebly holding out his hand, 'I am dying, sir Toby:
where will this swollen hulk of mine be hid?'
'That, my lord,' returned sir Toby, 'hath been already spoken of in
parliament, and it hath been wrung from them, heretics and fanatics as
they are, that your lordship's mortal remains shall lie in Windsor
castle, by the side of earl William, the first of the earls of
Worcester.'
'God bless us all!' cried the marquis, almost merrily, for he was
pleased, and with the pleasure the old humour came back for a moment:
'they will give me a better castle when I am dead than they took from me
when I was alive!'
'Yet is it a small matter to him who inherits such a house as awaiteth
my lord--domum non manufactam, in caelis aeternam,' said sir Toby.
'I thank thee, sir Toby, for recalling me. Truly for a moment I was
uplifted somewhat. That I should still play the fool, and the old fool,
in the very face of Death! But, thank God, at thy word the world hath
again dwindled, and my heavenly house drawn the nearer. Domine, nunc
dimittis. Let me, so soon as you judge fit, sir Toby, have the
consolations of the dying.'
When the last rites, wherein the church yields all hold save that of
prayer, had been administered, and his daughters with Dorothy and lord
Charles stood around his bed.
'Now have I taken my staff to be gone,' he said cheerfully, 'like a
peasant who hath visited his friends, and will now return, and they will
see him as far upon the road as they may. I tremble a little, but I
bethink me of him that made me and died for me, and now calleth me, and
my heart revives within me.'
Then he seemed to fall half asleep, and his soul went wandering in
dreams that were not all of sleep--just as it had been with little Molly
when her end drew near.
'How sweet is the grass for me to lie in, and for thee to eat! Eat, eat,
old Ploughman.'
It was a favourite horse of which he dreamed--one which in old days he
had named after Piers Ploughman, the Vision concerning whom,
notwithstanding its severity on catholic abuses, he had at one time read
much.
After a pause he went on--
'Alack, they have shot off his head! What shall I do without my
Ploughman--my body groweth so large and heavy!--Hark, I hear Molly!
"Spout, horse," she crieth. See, it is his life-blood he spouteth! O
Lord, what shall I do, for I am heavy, and my body keepeth down my soul.
Hark! Who calleth me? It is Molly! No, no! it is the Master. Lord, I
cannot rise and come to thee. Here have I lain for ages, and my spirit
groaneth. Reach forth thy hand, Lord, and raise me. Thanks, Lord,
thanks!'
And with the word he was neither old man nor marquis any more.
The parliament, with wondrous liberality, voted five hundred pounds for
his funeral, and Dr. Bayly tells us that he laid him in his grave with
his own hands. But let us trust rather that Anne and Molly received him
into their arms, and soon made him forget all about castles and chapels
and dukedoms and ungrateful princes, in the everlasting youth of the
heavenly kingdom, whose life is the presence of the Father, whose air to
breathe is love, and whose corn and wine are truth and graciousness.
There surely, and nowhere else as surely, can the prayer be for a man
fulfilled: Requiescat in Pace.