CHAPTER XX.
MOLLY AND THE WHITE HORSE.
Meantime lord Herbert came and went. There was fighting here andfighting there, castles taken, defended, re-taken, here a little successand there a worse loss, now on this side and now on that; but still, tosay the best, the king's affairs made little progress; and for MarySomerset, her body and soul made progress in opposite directions.
There was a strange pleasant mixture of sweet fretfulness and trustingappeal in her. Children suffer less because they feel that all is rightwhen father or mother is with them; grown people from whom this faithhas vanished ere it has led them to its original fact, may well bemiserable in their sicknesses.
She lay moaning one night in her crib, when suddenly she opened her eyesand saw her mother's hand pressed to her forehead. She was imitative,like most children, and had some very old-fashioned ways of speech.
'Have you got a headache, madam?' she asked.
'Yes, my Molly,' answered her mother.
'Then you will go to mother Mary. She will take you on her knee, madam.Mothers is for headaches. Oh me! my headache, madam!'
The poor mother turned away. It was more than she could bear alone.Dorothy entered the room, and she rose and left it, that she might go tomother Mary as the child had said.
Dorothy's cares were divided between the duties of naiad and nursemaid,for the child clung to her as to no one else except her mother. Thething that pleased her best was to see the two whale-like spouts risesuddenly from the nostrils of the great white horse, curve away fromeach other aloft in the air, and fall back into the basin on each sideof him. 'See horse spout,' she would say moanfully; and that instant, ifDorothy was not present, a messenger would be despatched to her. On abright day this would happen repeatedly. For the sake of renewing herdelight, the instant she turned from it, satisfied for the moment, thefountain ceased to play, and the horse remained spoutless, awaiting therevival of the darling's desire; for she was not content to see himspouting: she must see him spout. Then again she would be carried forthto the verge of the marble basin, and gazing up at the rearing animalwould say, in a tone daintily wavering betwixt entreaty and command,'Spout, horse, spout,' and Dorothy, looking down from the far-off summitof the tower, and distinguishing by the attitude of the child the momentwhen she uttered her desire, would instantly, with one turn of her hand,send the captive water shooting down its dark channel to reascend insunny freedom.
If little Mary Somerset was counted a strange child, the wisdom withwhich she was wise is no more unnatural because few possess it, than thedeath of such is premature because they are yet children. They are smallfruits whose ripening has outstripped their growth. Of such there aresome who, by the hot-house assiduities of their friends, heating themwith sulphurous stoves, and watering them with subacid solutions, ripeninto insufferable prigs. For them and for their families it is well thatDeath the gardener should speedily remove them into the open air. Butthere are others who, ripening from natural, that is divine causes andinfluences, are the daintiest little men and women, gentle in the utmostpeevishness of their lassitude, generous to share the gifts they mostprize, and divinely childlike in their repentances. Their falling fromthe stalk is but the passing from the arms of their mothers into thoseof--God knows whom--which is more than enough.
The chief part of little Molly's religious lessons, I do not meantraining, consisted in a prayer or two in rhyme, and a few verses of thekind then in use among catholics. Here is a prayer which her nursetaught her, as old, I take it, as Chaucer's time at least:--
Hail be thou, Mary, that high sittest in throne! I beseech thee, sweet lady, grant me my boon-- Jesus to love and dread, and my life to amend soon, And bring me to that bliss that never shall be done.
And here are some verses quite as old, which her mother taught her. Igive them believing that in understanding and coming nearer to ourfathers and mothers who are dead, we understand and come nearer to ourbrothers and sisters who are alive. I change nothing but the spelling,and a few of the forms of the words.
Jesu, Lord, that madest me, And with thy blessed blood hast bought, Forgive that I have grieved thee With word, with will, and eke with thought.
Jesu, for thy wounds' smart, On feet and on thine hands two, Make me meek and low of heart, And thee to love as I should do.
Jesu, grant me mine asking, Perfect patience in my disease, And never may I do that thing That should thee in any wise displease.
Jesu, most comfort for to see Of thy saints every one, Comfort them that careful be, And help them that be woe-begone.
Jesu, keep them that be good, And amend them that have grieved thee, And send them fruits of early food, As each man needeth in his degree.
Jesu, that art, without lies, Almighty God in trinity, Cease these wars, and send us peace With lasting love and charity.
Jesu, that art the ghostly stone Of all holy church in middle-earth, Bring thy folds and flocks in one, And rule them rightly with one herd.
Jesu, for thy blissful blood, Bring, if thou wilt, those souls to bliss From whom I have had any good, And spare that they have done amiss.
This old-fashioned hymn lady Margaret had learned from her grandmother,who was an Englishwoman of the pale. She also had learned it from hergrandmother.
One day, by some accident, Dorothy had not reached her post of naiadbefore Molly arrived in presence of her idol, the white horse, her usualapplication to which was thence for the moment in vain. Having waitedabout three seconds in perfect patience, she turned her head slowlyround, and gazed in her nurse's countenance with large questioning eyes,but said nothing. Then she turned again to the horse. Presently a smilebroke over her face, and she cried in the tone of one who had made agreat discovery,
'Horse has ears of stone: he cannot hear, Molly.'
Instantly thereupon she turned her face up to the sky, and said,
'Dear holy Mary, tell horse to spout.'
That moment up into the sun shot the two jets. Molly clapped her littlehands with delight and cried,
'Thanks, dear holy Mary! I knowed thou would do it for Molly. Thanks,madam!'
The nurse told the story to her mistress, and she to Dorothy. It setboth of them feeling, and Dorothy thinking besides.
'It cannot be,' she thought, 'but that a child's prayer will reach itsgoal, even should she turn her face to the west or the north instead ofup to the heavens! A prayer somewhat differs from a bolt or a bullet.'
'How you protestants CAN live without a woman to pray to!' said ladyMargaret.
'Her son Jesus never refused to hear a woman, and I see not wherefore Ishould go to his mother, madam,' said Dorothy, bravely.
'Thou and I will not quarrel, Dorothy,' returned lady Margaret sweetly;'for sure am I that would please neither the one nor the other of them.'
Dorothy kissed her hand, and the subject dropped.
After that, Molly never asked the horse to spout, or if she happened todo so, would correct herself instantly, and turn her request to themother Mary. Nor did the horse ever fail to spout, notwithstanding anevil thought which arose in the protestant part of Dorothy's mind--thetemptation, namely, to try the effect upon Molly of a second failure.All the rest of her being on the instant turned so violently protestantagainst the suggestion, that no parley with it was possible, and theconscience of her intellect cowered before the conscience of her heart.
It was from this fancy of the child's for the spouting of the horse thatit came to be known in the castle that mistress Dorothy was ruler ofRaglan waters. In lord Herbert's absence not a person in the place butshe and Caspar understood their management, and except lady Margaret,the marquis, and lord Charles, no one besides even knew of the existenceof such a contrivance as the water-shoot or artificial cataract.
Every night Dorothy and Caspar together set the springs of it, and everymorning Caspar de
tached the lever connecting the stone with thedrawbridge.