For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

No less mazy and shapeless, no less gilded and gloomy, were my wandering thoughts. My man-born sense of stern duty cried to me that the carnal conversation of Harry and his wife was sin to be shunned, a temptation of the devil to drag me from the godly work on which I was set. But then, again, my God-born sense of beauty both in body and soul said, 'Go to them, and there your hunger shall be filled.'

The labyrinth in the marshes had faded to a faint starlit glimmer here and there ere I had resolved my doubts. The whole host of heaven glittered down upon the sleeping world, and amidst them from either hand the Lactea Via seemed to show a fair path brightened with the light of God to the highest regions of His kingdom.

I knelt upon the deep window-seat and thanked God that He had given me a lantern for my path, and prayed for strength not to swerve from the way He had shown. For I had resolved to face the danger at Ashtead, that I might save the two souls I loved so well from the certain perdition to which I saw them drifting.

Ah me! what cunning casuists are our desires! How subtly will the wantons weave a cloak of reasons round about their nakedness till we know them not, and follow whither they entice, taking them in their decent array for duty! So we march on after them to death and sin, with proudly lifted heads, as who should say, 'See a man who forsakes all to follow Christ.'

It was not difficult with such a guide to find occasions for going to Ashtead. As the days of their married life wore on, and Harry tired of love-making, my visits grew frequent. He every day came to love his estate more and more, and was ever riding up and down it, with Sergeant Culverin at his heels, planning and altering and improving, just like his father. Nor could he do without a share in the country life around, and was always away whenever he could hear of a cock-fight or a bear-baiting within a reasonable distance.

'Come over and bear Nan company,' he would say at such times. 'Her bright wit misses the companionship of the Court, and will, I fear, grow dull and humorous unless you keep it clear. It is no little comfort to me that you can be by her with your learning. Her scholarship trod on the heels of mine when she was little more than a baby, and now it has slipped ahead where I can never catch it. So you must be a good brother, Jasper, and be to her what I cannot.'

So he would ride off, gallantly waving kisses to his pretty bride, and we were left alone to study cosmography together. She had begged me to teach it her, and so my great tomes got a second hallowing. I wondered daily more and more at her keen wit; her quickness at grasping what I had to tell was past all believing unless seen; yet would she never stay long at it, but would soon want waywardly to wander out into the garden and down amongst the woodlands to talk with me of whatever fancies had taken her playful thoughts.

It was a pretty sight then to see how everything loved her. The cows came trotting at her call, the colts in the meadows raced for her caress and jostled each other jealously, while her dogs squatted round with drooping ears, miserable that her favours were for others, but too mannerly to protest. Then all together would follow her along the fence to the end of the field, where, as she went from them, they would break into rough play, and disperse cheerily to their rhythmical cropping of the grass again, while the spaniels, more fortunate, leaped round her with mended spirits.

Each husbandman we came to would pause at his work and grin in silly happiness as she nodded him a merry 'god-den,' and the woodman's eyes almost brimmed with tears when she would not stop to hear the oft-told secrets of his art; and then when we came near the village the children started out of the brakes to peep at her, while the younger and braver ran crying after her with a present of gillifiowers or long purples, which their hot little hands had withered by long cuddling to a sickly faintness.

The strangest and most difficult conquest which she made was Alexander. I remember well the day I saw it first. I was riding, as I often did, to Ashtead by way of the park, when as I topped a knoll I saw her wandering across the close-cropped turf with the old soldier at her heels, and a motley following of colts and cows and one short-winded hog. Now and again her dainty figure bent down to pick a flower, and as she stopped the colts stopped, and the cows and the hog, and the Sergeant stooped for a handful of all the flowers in reach.