CHAPTER I.

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks

and the Distributed Proofreading Team

ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL

BY GEORGE MACDONALD

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON

1876

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

CHAPTER I. DOROTHY AND RICHARD.

CHAPTER II. RICHARD AND HIS FATHER.

CHAPTER III. THE WITCH.

CHAPTER IV. A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.

CHAPTER V. ANIMADVERSIONS.

CHAPTER VI. PREPARATIONS.

CHAPTER VII. REFLECTIONS.

CHAPTER VIII. AN ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER IX. LOVE AND WAR.

CHAPTER X. DOROTHY'S REFUGE.

CHAPTER XI. RAGLAN CASTLE.

CHAPTER XII. THE TWO MARQUISES.

CHAPTER XIII. THE MAGICIAN'S VAULT.

CHAPTER XIV. SEVERAL PEOPLE.

CHAPTER XV. HUSBAND AND WIFE.

CHAPTER XVI. DOROTHY'S INITIATION.

ST. GEORGE AND ST. MICHAEL.

CHAPTER I.

DOROTHY AND RICHARD.

It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the

lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the

slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung

trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape

beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in

the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers

bordering the little lawn, or the honeysuckle covering the wide

porch, from which the slow rain dropped ceaselessly upon the

pebble-paving below, could not give--steepy slopes, hedge-divided

into small fields, some green and dotted with red cattle, others

crowded with shocks of bedraggled and drooping corn, which looked

suffering and patient.

The room to which the window having this prospect belonged was large

and low, with a dark floor of uncarpeted oak. It opened immediately

upon the porch, and although a good fire of logs blazed on the

hearth, was chilly to the sense of the old man, who, with his feet

on the skin of a fallow-deer, sat gazing sadly into the flames,

which shone rosy through the thin hands spread out before them. At

the opposite corner of the great low-arched chimney sat a lady past

the prime of life, but still beautiful, though the beauty was all

but merged in the loveliness that rises from the heart to the face

of such as have taken the greatest step in life--that is, as the

old proverb says, the step out of doors. She was plainly yet rather

richly dressed, in garments of an old-fashioned and well-preserved

look. Her hair was cut short above her forehead, and frizzed out in

bunches of little curls on each side. On her head was a covering of

dark stuff, like a nun's veil, which fell behind and on her

shoulders. Close round her neck was a string of amber beads, that

gave a soft harmonious light to her complexion. Her dark eyes looked

as if they found repose there, so quietly did they rest on the face

of the old man, who was plainly a clergyman. It was a small, pale,

thin, delicately and symmetrically formed face, yet not the less a

strong one, with endurance on the somewhat sad brow, and force in

the closed lips, while a good conscience looked clear out of the

grey eyes.

They had been talking about the fast-gathering tide of opinion

which, driven on by the wind of words, had already begun to beat so

furiously against the moles and ramparts of Church and kingdom. The

execution of lord Strafford was news that had not yet begun to 'hiss

the speaker.'

'It is indeed an evil time,' said the old man. 'The world has seldom

seen its like.'

'But tell me, master Herbert,' said the lady, 'why comes it in this

our day? For our sins or for the sins of our fathers?'

'Be it far from me to presume to set forth the ways of Providence!'

returned her guest. 'I meddle not, like some that should be wiser,

with the calling of the prophet. It is enough for me to know that

ever and again the pride of man will gather to "a mighty and a

fearful head," and, like a swollen mill-pond overfed of rains, burst

the banks that confine it, whether they be the laws of the land or

the ordinances of the church, usurping on the fruitful meadows, the

hope of life for man and beast. Alas!' he went on, with a new

suggestion from the image he had been using, 'if the beginning of

strife be as the letting out of water, what shall be the end of that

strife whose beginning is the letting out of blood?'

'Think you then, good sir, that thus it has always been? that such

times of fierce ungodly tempest must ever follow upon seasons of

peace and comfort?--even as your cousin of holy memory, in his

verses concerning the church militant, writes:

"Thus also sin and darkness follow still The church and sun, with

all their power and skill."'

'Truly it seems so. But I thank God the days of my pilgrimage are

nearly numbered. To judge by the tokens the wise man gives us, the

mourners are already going about my streets. The almond-tree

flourisheth at least.'

He smiled as he spoke, laying his hand on his grey head.

'But think of those whom we must leave behind us, master Herbert.

How will it fare with them?' said the lady in troubled tone, and

glancing in the direction of the window.

In the window sat a girl, gazing from it with the look of a child

who had uttered all her incantations, and could imagine no abatement

in the steady rain-pour.

'We shall leave behind us strong hearts and sound heads too,' said

Mr. Herbert. 'And I bethink me there will be none stronger or

sounder than those of your young cousins, my late pupils, of whom I

hear brave things from Oxford, and in whose affection my spirit

constantly rejoices.'

'You will be glad to hear such good news of your relatives,

Dorothy,' said the lady, addressing her daughter.

Even as she said the words, the setting sun broke through the mass

of grey cloud, and poured over the earth a level flood of radiance,

in which the red wheat glowed, and the drops that hung on every ear

flashed like diamonds. The girl's hair caught it as she turned her

face to answer her mother, and an aureole of brown-tinted gold

gleamed for a moment about her head.

'I am glad that you are pleased, madam, but you know I have never

seen them--or heard of them, except from master Herbert, who has,

indeed, often spoke rare things of them.'

'Mistress Dorothy will still know the reason why,' said the

clergyman, smiling, and the two resumed their conversation. But the

girl rose, and, turning again to the window, stood for a moment rapt

in the transfiguration passing upon the world. The vault of grey was

utterly shattered, but, gathering glory from ruin, was hurrying in

rosy masses away from under the loftier vault of blue. The ordered

shocks upon twenty fields sent their long purple shadows across the

flush; and the evening wind, like the sighing that follows departed

tears, was shaking the jewels from their feathery tops. The

sunflowers and hollyhocks no longer cowered under the tyranny of the

rain, but bowed beneath the weight of the gems that adorned them. A

flame burned as upon an altar on the top of every tree, and the very

pools that lay on the distant road had their message of light to

give to the hopeless earth. As she gazed, another hue than that of

the sunset, yet rosy too, gradually flushed the face of the maiden.

She turned suddenly from the window, and left the room, shaking a

shower of diamonds from the honeysuckle as she passed out through

the porch upon the gravel walk.

Possibly her elders found her departure a relief, for although they

took no notice of it, their talk became more confidential, and was

soon mingled with many names both of rank and note, with a

familiarity which to a stranger might have seemed out of keeping

with the humbler character of their surroundings.

But when Dorothy Vaughan had passed a corner of the house to another

garden more ancient in aspect, and in some things quaint even to

grotesqueness, she was in front of a portion of the house which

indicated a far statelier past--closed and done with, like the rooms

within those shuttered windows. The inhabited wing she had left

looked like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land; nor did

this appearance greatly belie the present position of the family.

For generations it had been slowly descending in the scale of

worldly account, and the small portion of the house occupied by the

widow and daughter of sir Ringwood Vaughan was larger than their

means could match with correspondent outlay. Such, however, was the

character of lady Vaughan, that, although she mingled little with

the great families in the neighbourhood, she was so much respected,

that she would have been a welcome visitor to most of them.

The reverend Mr. Matthew Herbert was a clergyman from the Welsh

border, a man of some note and influence, who had been the personal

friend both of his late relative George Herbert and of the famous

Dr. Donne. Strongly attached to the English church, and recoiling

with disgust from the practices of the puritans--as much, perhaps,

from refinement of taste as abhorrence of schism--he had never yet

fallen into such a passion for episcopacy as to feel any cordiality

towards the schemes of the archbishop. To those who knew him his

silence concerning it was a louder protest against the policy of

Laud than the fiercest denunciations of the puritans. Once only had

he been heard to utter himself unguardedly in respect of the

primate, and that was amongst friends, and after the second glass

permitted of his cousin George. 'Tut! laud me no Laud,' he said. 'A

skipping bishop is worse than a skipping king.' Once also he had

been overheard murmuring to himself by way of consolement, 'Bishops

pass; the church remains.' He had been a great friend of the late

sir Ringwood; and although the distance from his parish was too

great to be travelled often, he seldom let a year go by without

paying a visit to his friend's widow and daughter.

Turning her back on the cenotaph of their former greatness, Dorothy

dived into a long pleached alley, careless of the drip from

overhead, and hurrying through it came to a circular patch of thin

grass, rounded by a lofty hedge of yew-trees, in the midst of which

stood what had once been a sun-dial. It mattered little, however,

that only the stump of a gnomon was left, seeing the hedge around it

had grown to such a height in relation to the diameter of the

circle, that it was only for a very brief hour or so in the middle

of a summer's day, when, of all periods, the passage of Time seems

least to concern humanity, that it could have served to measure his

march. The spot had, indeed, a time-forsaken look, as if it lay

buried in the bosom of the past, and the present had forgotten it.

Before emerging from the alley, she slackened her pace,

half-stopped, and, stooping a little in her tucked-up skirt, threw a

bird-like glance around the opener space; then stepping into it, she

looked up to the little disc of sky, across which the clouds, their

roses already withered, sailed dim and grey once more, while behind

them the stars were beginning to recall their half-forgotten message

from regions unknown to men. A moment, and she went up to the dial,

stood there for another moment, and was on the point of turning to

leave the spot, when, as if with one great bound, a youth stood

between her and the entrance of the alley.

'Ah ha, mistress Dorothy, you do not escape me so!' he cried,

spreading out his arms as if to turn back some runaway creature.

But mistress Dorothy was startled, and mistress Dorothy did not

choose to be startled, and therefore mistress Dorothy was dignified,

if not angry.

'I do not like such behaviour, Richard,' she said. 'It ill suits

with the time. Why did you hide behind the hedge, and then leap

forth so rudely?'

'I thought you saw me,' answered the youth. 'Pardon my heedlessness,

Dorothy. I hope I have not startled you too much.'

As he spoke he stooped over the hand he had caught, and would have

carried it to his lips, but the girl, half-pettishly, snatched it

away, and, with a strange mixture of dignity, sadness, and annoyance

in her tone, said--

'There has been something too much of this, Richard, and I begin to

be ashamed of it.'

'Ashamed!' echoed the youth. 'Of what? There is nothing but me to be

ashamed of, and what can I have done since yesterday?'

'No, Richard; I am not ashamed of you, but I am ashamed of--of--this

way of meeting--and--and----'

'Surely that is strange, when we can no more remember the day in

which we have not met than that in which we met first! No, dear

Dorothy----'

'It is not our meeting, Richard; and if you would but think as

honestly as you speak, you would not require to lay upon me the

burden of explanation. It is this foolish way we have got into of

late--kissing hands--and--and--always meeting by the old sun-dial,

or in some other over-quiet spot. Why do you not come to the house?

My mother would give you the same welcome as any time these

last--how many years, Richard?'

'Are you quite sure of that, Dorothy?'

'Well--I did fancy she spoke with something more of ceremony the

last time you met. But, consider, she has seen so much less of you

of late. Yet I am sure she has all but a mother's love in her heart

towards you. For your mother was dear to her as her own soul.'

'I would it were so, Dorothy! For then, perhaps, your mother would

not shrink from being my mother too. When we are married, Dorothy--'

'Married!' exclaimed the girl. 'What of marrying, indeed!' And she

turned sideways from him with an indignant motion. 'Richard,' she

went on, after a marked and yet but momentary pause, for the youth

had not had time to say a word, 'it has been very wrong in me to

meet you after this fashion. I know it now, for see what such things

lead to! If you knew it, you have done me wrong.'

'Dearest Dorothy!' exclaimed the youth, taking her hand again, of

which this time she seemed hardly aware, 'did you not know from the

very vanished first that I loved you with all my heart, and that to

tell you so would have been to tell the sun that he shines warm at

noon in midsummer? And I did think you had a little--something for

me, Dorothy, your old playmate, that you did not give to every other

acquaintance. Think of the houses we have built and the caves we

have dug together--of our rabbits, and urchins, and pigeons, and

peacocks!'

'We are children no longer,' returned Dorothy. 'To behave as if we

were would be to keep our eyes shut after we are awake. I like you,

Richard, you know; but why this--where is the use of all this--new

sort of thing? Come up with me to the house, where master Herbert is

now talking to my mother in the large parlour. The good man will be

glad to see you.'

'I doubt it, Dorothy. He and my father, as I am given to understand,

think so differently in respect of affairs now pending betwixt the

parliament and the king, that--'

'It were more becoming, Richard, if the door of your lips opened to

the king first, and let the parliament follow.'

'Well said!' returned the youth with a smile. 'But let it be my

excuse that I speak as I am wont to hear.'

The girl's hand had lain quiet in that of the youth, but now it

started from it like a scared bird. She stepped two paces back, and

drew herself up.

'And you, Richard?' she said, interrogatively.

'What would you ask, Dorothy?' returned the youth, taking a step

nearer, to which she responded by another backward ere she replied.

'I would know whom you choose to serve--whether God or Satan;

whether you are of those who would set at nought the laws of the

land----'

'Insist on their fulfilment, they say, by king as well as people'

interrupted Richard.

'They would tear their mother in pieces----'

'Their mother!' repeated Richard, bewildered.

'Their mother, the church,' explained Dorothy.

'Oh!' said Richard. 'Nay, they would but cast out of her the wolves

in sheep's clothing that devour the lambs.'

The girl was silent. Anger glowed on her forehead and flashed from

her grey eyes. She stood one moment, then turned to leave him, but

half turned again to say scornfully--

'I must go at once to my mother! I knew not I had left her with such

a wolf as master Herbert is like to prove!'

'Master Herbert is no bishop, Dorothy!'

'The bishops, then, are the wolves, master Heywood?' said the girl,

with growing indignation.

'Dear Dorothy, I am but repeating what I hear. For my own part, I

know little of these matters. And what are they to us if we love one

another?'

'I tell you I am a child no longer,' flamed Dorothy.

'You were seventeen last St. George's Day, and I shall be nineteen

next St. Michael's.'

'St. George for merry England!' cried Dorothy.

'St. Michael for the Truth!' cried Richard.

'So be it. Good-bye, then,' said the girl, going.

'What DO you mean, Dorothy?' said Richard; and she stood to hear,

but with her back towards him, and, as it were, hovering midway in a

pace. 'Did not St. Michael also slay his dragon? Why should the

knights part company? Believe me, Dorothy, I care more for a smile

from you than for all the bishops in the church, or all the

presbyters out of it.'

'You take needless pains to prove yourself a foolish boy, Richard;

and if I go not to my mother at once, I fear I shall learn to

despise you--which I would not willingly.'

'Despise me! Do you take me for a coward then, Dorothy?'

'I say not that. I doubt not, for the matter of swords and pistols,

you are much like other male creatures; but I protest I could never

love a man who preferred my company to the service of his king.'

She glided into the alley and sped along its vaulted twilight, her

white dress gleaming and clouding by fits as she went.

The youth stood for a moment petrified, then started to overtake

her, but stood stock-still at the entrance of the alley, and

followed her only with his eyes as she went.

When Dorothy reached the house, she did not run up to her room that

she might weep unseen. She was still too much annoyed with Richard

to regret having taken such leave of him. She only swallowed down a

little balloonful of sobs, and went straight into the parlour, where

her mother and Mr. Herbert still sat, and resumed her seat in the

bay window. Her heightened colour, an occasional toss of her head

backwards, like that with which a horse seeks ease from the bearing-

rein, generally followed by a renewal of the attempt to swallow

something of upward tendency, were the only signs of her

discomposure, and none of them were observed by her mother or her

guest. Could she have known, however, what feelings had already

begun to rouse themselves in the mind of him whose boyishness was an

offence to her, she would have found it more difficult to keep such

composure.

Dorothy's was a face whose forms were already so decided that,

should no softening influences from the central regions gain the

ascendancy, beyond a doubt age must render it hard and unlovely. In

all the roundness and freshness of girlhood, it was handsome rather

than beautiful, beautiful rather than lovely. And yet it was

strongly attractive, for it bore clear indication of a nature to be

trusted. If her grey eyes were a little cold, they were honest eyes,

with a rare look of steadfastness; and if her lips were a little too

closely pressed, it was clearly from any cause rather than bad

temper. Neither head, hands, nor feet were small, but they were fine

in form and movement; and for the rest of her person, tall and

strong as Richard was, Dorothy looked further advanced in the

journey of life than he.

She needed hardly, however, have treated his indifference to the

politics of the time with so much severity, seeing her own

acquaintance with and interest in them dated from that same

afternoon, during which, from lack of other employment, and the

weariness of a long morning of slow, dismal rain, she had been

listening to Mr. Herbert as he dwelt feelingly on the arrogance of

puritan encroachment, and the grossness of presbyterian insolence

both to kingly prerogative and episcopal authority, and drew a

touching picture of the irritant thwartings and pitiful insults to

which the gentle monarch was exposed in his attempts to support the

dignity of his divine office, and to cast its protecting skirt over

the defenceless church; and if it was with less sympathy that he

spoke of the fears which haunted the captive metropolitan, Dorothy

at least could detect no hidden sarcasm in the tone in which he

expressed his hope that Laud's devotion to the beauty of holiness

might not result in the dignity of martyrdom, as might well be

feared by those who were assured that the whole guilt of Strafford

lay in his return to his duty, and his subsequent devotion to the

interests of his royal master: to all this the girl had listened,

and her still sufficiently uncertain knowledge of the affairs of the

nation had, ere the talk was over, blossomed in a vague sense of

partizanship. It was chiefly her desire after the communion of

sympathy with Richard that had led her into the mistake of such a

hasty disclosure of her new feelings.

But her following words had touched him--whether to fine issues or

not remained yet poised on the knife-edge of the balancing will. His

first emotion partook of anger. As soon as she was out of sight a

spell seemed broken, and words came.

'A boy, indeed, mistress Dorothy!' he said. 'If ever it come to what

certain persons prophesy, you may wish me in truth, and that for the

sake of your precious bishops, the boy you call me now. Yes, you are

right, mistress, though I would it had been another who told me so!

Boy indeed I am--or have been--without a thought in my head but of

her. The sound of my father's voice has been but as the wind of the

winnowing fan. In me it has found but chaff. If you will have me

take a side, though, you will find me so far worthy of you that I

shall take the side that seems to me the right one, were all the

fair Dorothies of the universe on the other. In very truth I should

be somewhat sorry to find the king and the bishops in the right,

lest my lady should flatter herself and despise me that I had chosen

after her showing, forsooth! This is master Herbert's doing, for

never before did I hear her speak after such fashion.'

While he thus spoke with himself, he stood, like the genius of the

spot, a still dusky figure on the edge of the night, into which his

dress of brown velvet, rich and sombre at once in the sunlight, all

but merged. Nearly for the first time in his life he was

experiencing the difficulty of making up his mind, not, however,

upon any of the important questions, his inattention to which had

exposed him to such sudden and unexpected severity, but merely as to

whether he should seek her again in the company of her mother and

Mr. Herbert, or return home. The result of his deliberation,

springing partly, no doubt, from anger, but that of no very virulent

type, was, that he turned his back on the alley, passed through a

small opening in the yew hedge, crossed a neglected corner of

woodland, by ways better known to him than to any one else, and came

out upon the main road leading to the gates of his father's park.