St. George and St. Michael

George MacDonald, Michael Phillips, Michael Phillips

• Publisher: RosettaBooks
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780795352720
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

A story of love and loyalty set against the backdrop of the English Civil War—the only historical novel from the renowned Scottish author. This unique novel in the MacDonald collection, his only true historical novel, is set during the mid-17th century English Civil War. MacDonald's use of the idiom and stylistic old-English of the post-Shakespearean era make this a slow read in the original. It is greatly enhanced in this new and updated edition by Michael Phillips. St. George and St. Michael is an enchanting love story that offers a unique and balanced perspective on a tumultuous and conflicting era in British history. As Phillips writes in the introduction, "MacDonald portrays a growing spirit of love on all sides. Perhaps this is the key to understanding MacDonald's perspective of the conflict. He refused to take a 'side' at all, focusing instead on the people not the politics."

— One —

Richard and Dorothy

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 with this outlook 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, it 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 cloth, 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 king’s acquiescence to Parliament’s condemnation of Lord Strafford, one of his own closest advisors and supporters, and Strafford’s subsequent execution, had shocked the nation. ^*

“It is indeed an evil time,” said the clergyman. “The world has seldom seen its like.”

“But tell me, Master Herbert,” said the lady, “why does it come in our day? For our sins or for the sins of our fathers?”

“Far be it from me to presume to set forth the ways of Providence!” returned her guest. “I meddle not with the calling of the prophet. It is enough for me to know that the pride of man will always gather 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. 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?”

“Do you think then that thus it has always been, that such times of ungodly tempest must always follow seasons of peace and comfort?”

“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 a troubled tone, glancing in the direction of the window.

In the window sat a girl, gazing from it with the look of a child who could imagine no abatement in the steady downpour.

“We shall leave behind us strong hearts and sound heads,” said Mr. Herbert. “And I think there will be none more so than those of your young cousins, my late pupils, of whom I hear brave things from Oxford.”

“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, mother, 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 turned again to the window. There she stood for a moment rapt in the transfiguration passing upon the world. The vault of grey was utterly shattered. Gathering glory from ruin, it was hurrying away in rosy masses from under the loftier vault of blue. The ordered shocks upon twenty fields sent their long purple shadows through the brightness, 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 now became more confidential. It 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 appearance, even quaint, she was in front of a portion of the house which indicated a far statelier past. The inhabited wing she had left looked like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land. 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 present means could reasonably support. 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, he had never fallen into such a passion for episcopacy as to support the schemes of Archbishop Laud. To those who knew him his silence 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 against the primate, and that was amongst friends, and after the second glass permitted by his cousin George. 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 house, Dorothy made her way into a long arbour, careless of the drip from overhead, hurried through it, and 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 sundial. It mattered little, however, that only the stump of a gnome 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 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 slowed her pace, half-stopped, and, stooping a little in her tucked-up skirt, threw a bird-like glance around the open 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. 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 with a great bound a youth stood between her and the entrance of the alley.

“Ah, Mistress Dorothy, you cannot escape me so easily!” 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. “Why did you hide behind the hedge, and then leap out so rudely?”

“I thought you saw me,” answered the youth. “Pardon my thoughtlessness, Dorothy. I hope I have not startled you too much.”

As he spoke he stooped over the hand he had caught. He would have raised it to his lips, but half-pettishly Dorothy snatched it away, then spoke with a strange mixture of dignity, sadness, and annoyance in her tone.

“There has been too much of this, Richard, and I begin to be ashamed of it.”

“Ashamed!” he echoed. “Of what? There is nothing but me to be ashamed of. What can I have done since yesterday?”

“I am not ashamed of you, Richard, but I am ashamed of—of—this way of meeting—and—and—”

“That seems strange when we can no more remember the day in which we have not met than that in which we met first!”

“It is not our meeting, Richard, and if you would but think as honestly as you speak, I would not need to explain. It is this foolish way of kissing hands and always meeting by the old sundial, or in some other secluded spot. Why do you not come to the house? My mother would give you the same welcome as always.”

“Are you quite sure of that, Dorothy?”

“Well—I did fancy she spoke a little stiffly the last time you met. But she has seen so much less of you of late. I am sure she has a mother’s love in her heart towards you. For your mother was dear to her as her own soul.”

“I wish it were so, Dorothy. For then, perhaps, your mother would not shrink from being my mother too. When we are married—”

“Married!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Married, indeed!”

She turned sideways from him with an indignant motion.

“Richard,” she went on, after a marked though brief pause, “it has been wrong of me to meet you in this way. I know it now, for see what such things lead to!”

“Dearest Dorothy!” exclaimed Richard, taking her hand again, “did you not know from the first that I loved you with all my heart? I did think you felt a little something for me, Dorothy, your old playmate, that you did not give to every other acquaintance. Think of the houses we built and the caves we dug together—of our rabbits, and urchins, and pigeons, and peacocks!”

“We are no longer children,” 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 what is the use of all this—new sort of thing? Come with me to the house, where Master Herbert is with my mother in the large parlour. The good man will be glad to see you.”

“I doubt it, Dorothy. He and my father think so differently about affairs between the Parliament and the king, that—”

“It would be more becoming, Richard, if the door of your lips opened to the king first, and let Parliament follow.”

“Well spoken!” returned Richard with a smile. “But let it be my excuse that I speak as I hear spoken.”

The girl’s hand had lain quiet in his. It now started from it like a scared bird. She stepped two paces back and drew herself up.

“And you, Richard?” she said in a tone of question.

“What are you asking, Dorothy?” he returned, taking a step nearer, to which she responded with another backward of her own before she replied.

“I would know whom you choose to serve, whether God or Satan—whether you are of those who would set aside 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,” said Dorothy.

“Oh!” said Richard. “Say rather that 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 a moment, turned to leave him, then half turned again and spoke scornfully.

“I must go at once to my mother! I did not know that I had left her with such a wolf as Master Herbert is likely to prove!”

“Master Herbert is no bishop, Dorothy!”

“The bishops, then, are the wolves, Master Heywood?” said Dorothy with still 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!” rejoined Richard.

“So be it. Good-bye, then,” said Dorothy, turning again to leave him.

“What do you mean, Dorothy?” s...