Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 360
“It is not for me,” Mr. Sorrell said, “to dispute what is said by one so learned in the law of the Church, but I think, just because your Holiness is so learned, it should be a comparatively easy affair. For permit me to observe that it is more easy to dissolve a marriage that has already taken place, than it is to break the validity of a precontract of marriage. In short, if the Lady Dionissia should be now only precontracted to marry, instead of actually married to the Knight of Egerton of Tamworth, it would be much more difficult.”
The Dean gazed pleasantly at Mr. Sorrell.
“I perceive,” he said, “that you have not come here without being prompted by the Lady Dionissia as to what it is that you should say.”
“It is not my habit,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “to go to market without learning all that I can about the merchandise that I desire to buy, or how the sale should be conducted.”
“That, too, is very prudent,” the Dean said. He remained silent, and appeared to be pondering deeply for some little time, and then he brought out the words:
“You are aware of all that you desire to commit yourself to? There is, for instance, the Lady Blanche.”
“Why,” Mr. Sorrell answered, “it is true that there is the Lady Blanche. But she is a very unaccountable lady; it is so difficult to foresee what she will do that it is almost a waste of thought to attempt to prophesy. For that we must wait and see. But I hasten to assure your Holiness that my relations with the Lady Blanche have been of the most respectable kind. It is true that I have promised to enter into a commercial alliance with her — and I wish I had not — but nothing more than a few kisses have passed between us.”
“I am glad to hear that,” the Dean said; “but that is very unlike the Lady Blanche. What do you imagine that she is aiming at?”
“I have it from the Lady Amoureuse,” Mr. Sorrell said, “that the Lady Blanche considers my attachment to her cousin’s wife as a mere passing whim. She says that it is only a temporary clouding of my intellect. Her contempt for the Lady Dionissia is so extreme, that she imagines that very soon I shall tire of that lady, and in the meantime she is very busily engaged in teaching the page Jehan what sort of a thing is love. In short, she refuses to believe that my attachment to the Lady Dionissia is a matter of any moment at all.”
“That,” the Dean said, “is so exactly like the overwhelming pride of the Lady Blanche, that I daresay you are in the right of it.”
He reflected again for a moment, and then he said: “Besides that, there is the lady’s husband. How will you meet him?”
“If you will contrive it that the marriage, which is no marriage, shall be dissolved before his return, I trust,” Mr. Sorrell said, “that I may never meet him. But if this cannot be done, we trust that the surrendering to him of the Lady Dionissia’s dowry may content him; or, if this will not content him, there will be nothing for it but for me to meet him as one man meets the other. But I should think that the surrender of the dowry should be sufficient to content him, for, since he has never seen the Lady Dionissia, he cannot be suspected of any violent attachment to her. And if he enjoys the possession of the dowry, and is in a position to marry another lady with another dowry, surely he should be very well contented.”
The Dean asked then:
“And if you marry the Lady Dionissia, how will you support her? In what castle will you live, and how will you feed the necessary retainers?”
Again Mr. Sorrell passed his hand down his face.
“A little time ago,” he said, “that would have seemed the most easy question in the world to answer. And, indeed, it should seem so still. You would say that it should be the easiest thing in the world for me — for a modern man with all my knowledge — to occupy very soon a commanding position in these barbarous, ignorant, and superstitious times. I confess that I see more difficulties than I expected. But my time and thoughts have been so taken up by other things that I have hardly given the subject any real attention. When I come to do so I have no doubt that it will be easy enough.”
“I understand almost none of the words you have uttered,” the Dean said. And, indeed, Mr. Sorrell, finding English-French at all times a little confusing, had dropped into the language which had been most familiar to him in the Paris of his day.
“I understand almost none of the words you have uttered,” the Dean repeated, “but I think I understand your sense. Or if I do not understand your sense, you must be more mad than any man I have yet met. I think it is very plain that you mean that you are a great magician, and that, by means of your magic powers, you intend to acquire vast sovereignty either in this or in some other land. Against that I have nothing to say. I should not dare to arrogate to myself the title of a practitioner in the black arts, for whenever I have attempted myself to put them into practice I have been uniformly unsuccessful. I have never succeeded in raising the smallest of fiends, imps, devils, succubi, or so much as the spirit of a fair and kind lady. Nevertheless, I have somewhat studied these matters, and this much I know — that powers are of two kinds, black and white. If white, they are of heaven, and the wonders that they perform are called miracles. If black, they are of the fiend, and they are black magic. I have never had the impertinence to ask you of which sort are your powers. But I would like to point out to you that if they are of heaven, celibacy is an absolute necessity for their holy practitioner.”
“I don’t see what this has got to do with me,” Mr. Sorrell said.
“But you desire to marry the Lady Dionissia. Then if your gifts are from heaven, they will immediately lose all their potency.”
“I am going to marry Lady Dionissia,” Mr. Sorrell said grimly. “I am going to marry her in spite of all the devils in hell, or with their assistance.” He paused and added slowly: “And I am not going to lose any of my powers at all.”
The Dean uttered a prolonged “Oh!” for he took this utterance to be a declaration that Mr. Sorrell was indeed a very powerful magician. And immediately his admiration for Mr. Sorrell became enormous. The Dean had for long doubted in his mind whether this man, appearing, as he had done, so unaccountably in their midst, and performing as he had done such singular miracles — as to whether this man, who appeared one time a miracle of ignorance and another wise beyond mortal knowledge, were an emissary of heaven or, indeed, the most terrible of necromancers. Now he had it from his own lips that he was this last. And immediately the Dean’s respect became enormous.
For miracles performed by saints, relics, or by other holy agencies, he had a proper respect; but they were things with which he was familiar, so that such powers appeared to him comparatively pale and ineffective. Innumerable ones had been performed by innumerable saints. There was no doubt of that; but real black magic was altogether another matter — a thing to be craved beyond anything in the world. By its aid you might become Pope, lengthen your life out to immortality, transmute stones into gold, or revel for ever in unholy joys.
“It becomes, therefore, all the more mysterious to me,” he said, after he had thought for some time, “that you should desire to attain your ends by ways so circuitous. Why do you not, by means of your arts, slay her husband, and, at a distance, take possession of his castle, his lands, and his wife, and terrify his retainers and the surrounding countryside into submission?”
Mr. Sorrell could only utter, “Ah, my dear sir!” with so much horror that the Dean shrugged his shoulders coldly, and said:
“This seems to me to afford you horror; nevertheless, I cannot see that you desire to do anything else in the long run than to possess yourself of the gentle knight’s wife, and, if not of his lands, castles, and retainers, at least of those of someone else now possessing them.”
“But can your Holiness not perceive the difference?” Mr. Sorrell asked. “I will admit that, supposing myself to be successful in my schemes, something very like what you propose will have taken place. I shall secure control over a vast amount of territory — but it will be by legal and proper commercial methods. I certainly should not think of soiling my hands with the blood of any lady’s husband.”
Again the Dean slowly shrugged his shoulders.
“Once more,” he said, “I can only say that I do not understand you. The ends you propose to yourself appear exactly to coincide with those that I have supposed you to have. Whether you kill the lady’s husband, or whether by magic you strike him with a palsy or otherwise render him impotent, seems all one to me. You will have his wife, his gear, and his lands.”
Mr. Sorrell vented a heavy sigh of puzzled exasperation. He realised that it would be impossible for him to make this singular clergyman understand the difference between their respective views. Nevertheless, he felt a strong desire to vindicate his ideas of what was sound commercial morality as he understood it. He managed to get out:
“Can your Holiness not see that it is the means and not the ends that have to be justified?”
But the same look of incredulous non-comprehension remained in the Dean’s eyes, and at last, in order to change the subject, Mr. Sorrell asked:
“You would very much aid me if you would tell me what, in your language, is ‘saltpetre.’”
“I have never heard the word,” the Dean said. “Is it a moral scruple?”
“No, it is a mineral,” Mr. Sorrell answered. “It should be sold by apothecaries, but I have no means of making myself understood. That is one of my chief difficulties — either these people do not understand me, or it is obvious that they do not possess the material that I require.”
“I will certainly assist you in any way I can,” the Dean said, and, his mind running upon magic, he added: “I could give you, for instance, the skulls of three murderers, of whom one killed his mother; or a vessel filled with the blood of a new-born child who was killed when the moon was at the full — at least, this was said to be what the phial contained. But since I used it in some attempts of my own, and those attempts in no way succeeded, I am under the impression that I must have been deceived by the person who procured it for me.”
“I am afraid that these things would be of little use to me,” Mr. Sorrell answered; “but my gratitude to you would be great if you could procure for me the substance I have mentioned.”
“I would certainly do all that I can,” the Dean said, “but I doubt whether our poor city of Salisbury will afford the substance that you desire. It must evidently be one of the constituents of a brew of great magic potency. So that I hardly think that you will find it in any of the inferior cities of this land, where magic is practised with but little success. In London, where the King so incomprehensibly places his Court — for why should he do it when the much larger, fairer, and more opulent city of Salisbury would afford him a far more comfortable retreat? — in London, I think, you will scarcely find it, though you might in Dover, or in Sandwich, which are fair cities to which come many tall ships.”
“But saltpetre,” Mr. Sorrell said, “isn’t anything rare, or any new discovery. I have an idea that they used to find it under dung-heaps; but, although I have had many dung-heaps turned over, I have been unable to discover any of this substance.”
“Without doubt,” the Dean said, “this substance will be to be found beneath the dung-heaps of Byzantium, or of the Eastern countries from which you come. For there are many strange beasts, and doubtless they are to be found in the stables and byres. But our poor common cows, oxen, bulls, and swine cannot produce this inestimable commodity.”
The Dean’s face, which had been by turns rendered keen in bargaining, ironical, apprehensive at the thought of his interlocutor’s possibly destructive powers of magic — for it had lately been in his head that Mr. Sorrell might have it in him to blast by fire and lightning not only the Dean himself, but the cathedral, the cathedral clergy, and all the city of Salisbury — his round face, which had hitherto expressed several passions, none of them very pleasant, became suddenly sunny and altogether benevolent. He had perceived in the doorway behind Mr. Sorrell the form of the Lady Dionissia, carrying a small leathern pouch that depended weightily from her right hand. She was dressed all in green, with white cords to her sleeves, and little tassels of gold on her silken gloves. Her head-dress of white linen was curiously folded, so that it stood up high over her head, and came down low beside her ears and over her white forehead. She was a little flushed with riding, and her very fair, large, and honest face expressed at once curiosity to know what had befallen between the two men, and a smiling belief in the benevolence of the Dean.
She came, with her long green sleeves trailing behind her, over to the Dean’s chair, and knelt down to kiss his hand.
Mr. Sorrell’s eyes followed her with such admiration, such devotion, and such longing, that the Dean felt himself slightly affronted. Jovial, comfortable, and easy, it was not possible for him to avoid these slight pangs of jealousy. And this jealousy had given a tinge of coldness to all his colloquy with Mr. Sorrell. He had been ready, as it were, to do anything he could to help the Lady Dionissia; but it was impossible for him not to feel piqued at the object upon whom she had elected to bestow her affections.
At her coming, he became at once brilliant and jovial. Leaning back in his chair, he held his hand beneath the comfortable pouch of gold as if he expected her at once to permit him to relieve her of this burden. It gave him another pang of jealousy to think that her blue eyes beneath their dark brown brows were immediately bent upon Mr. Sorrell for guidance. But immediately afterwards he was consoled to feel upon his hand the full weight of the little bag which she had relinquished to him. He weighed it meditatively for a few moments, and then, with a smiling benignity, he assumed the expression of the distinguished Churchman that he was, and laying his hand gently upon her head-dress, he let his lips move for a moment whilst he conferred on her his blessing, and then he said aloud:
“All that you desire of me I will do — your paramour has driven a very hard bargain with me, but I will do it. And now, with no more words, I will call in Nicolas, my chaplain, that he may take down some of the prophecies of this gentle pilgrim, who is no more a pilgrim. For I think that there are few things more edifying for the soul, or more useful to one’s fortunes, than to listen to prophecies if they be not procured by unlawful means.”
The Lady Dionissia had risen from her knees, and standing between the two men, looked down upon the ground with her absent and deep gaze. One of her hands went up to her cheek, and her body all in green swaying a little to one side, she looked at last into Mr. Sorrell’s eyes.
“There will be very great joy,” she said in her deep and sonorous tones.
CHAPTER II.
THEY rode out by the green park-road beside the river of Wiley that runs from Warminster to Salisbury. They passed Bemerton with its tiny church, and Wilton embowered in tall trees. On their right hand the Plain stretched up the hills, but they kept to the valley. Along the stream here and there were clumps of high elm-trees, though many of these had been blown down in the great gale of six weeks before, and they lay across the water like bridges with earth and grass attached to their broad roots. Many moorhens, teal, grebe, and coot swam in the silver waters, and grey herons stood like sentinels or like philosophers who meditated, as they rode by. Once, a stag which had come down to drink at the water ran swiftly over the grass on the other side of the stream; a dappled brown, it lifted its slender legs very high and laid its crown of antlers low along its back. They passed now a shrine, now an image of the Virgin, and now a cross set up to commemorate the murder of some poor traveller by robbers. The merciless sun shone in a blue heaven, the valley was very broad and green, and beside them walked the Welsh mountaineers. With their spears resting upon their shoulders and their caps of steel, they stepped with long strides, and from time to time they sang the long and melancholy songs with which their Welsh mothers had lulled them to sleep. The Lady Dionissia was all in green, and the wind played in the folds of her linen head-dress. She controlled her white stallion by means of two silken threads, for she was training him to be very obedient. Nevertheless his reins, which were of the breadth of a man’s hand and of white leather sewn with gold, lay upon his neck ready for her to take hold of. For at times when he passed other horses he would be seized with fits of ungovernable fury.
Mr. Sorrell was dressed all in red, but he had a hood of black cloth. The long toes of his shoes went downwards far below his stirrups. And the horse he rode was dark brown with a back so broad that it resembled many cushions.
The evening sun was down behind the great mass of the castle of Stapleford before ever they were within sound of the cocks of Wishford town. Enormous, with its one square tower and its many turrets with the conical roofs, this castle seemed to fill up the whole valley, casting a large tract of land into shadow. It appeared all black, and from behind and above it the sun hurled immense shafts of light through the air. They had ridden silently, for the Lady Dionissia was filled with joy, and Mr. Sorrell had many things that filled his mind.
Presently they came to a little square field that was all green grass between black woods. Here, as was their custom, they descended from their horses. These the mountaineers led away beyond the corner of the thick woods that on three sides enclosed the little field. The two walked over the grass, for the field sloped upwards. It had in it several little mounds and hillocks. When they were nearly into the wood the Lady Dionissia sat down upon one of these little mounds. She drew her skirts about her feet, and the ragged brambles from the wood caught at them, whilst Mr. Sorrell walked up and down before her. His face was full of melancholy, and his shoulders bowed in dejection. From where they were the walls of the little town of Wishford were visible to them, and the grey bridge which spanned the stream. A wild cat called from the woods a shrill and tearing cry, and silently a huge white owl floated over their heads and skimmed low down over the mists that were beginning to rise from the grass.
