Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (413 page)

“Did you not observe that Griselda had a new green dress?” she said. “It trailed behind her for a bow’s length. This is the newest fashion of Paris. Even the Queen has not such a dress. Give me one like it, and I shall know that you are a mighty lord.”

The Young Knight groaned deeply.

“Get the sempstresses here and the clothiers tonight,” he said.

Gertrude looked him in the eyes.

“And it shall be of grass-green velvet? And upon the sleeves shall be points of gold? And the train shall drag out behind me a bow length and a half? And it shall be so heavy with stuff that I can scarce walk? And I may have a folded hennin so broad that I cannot come in at the door?”

He said, “Yes! Yes!”

Then she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him on the lips with all the ardour of her young body.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I.

MR. SORRELL was riding into the narrow streets of Salisbury. The houses appeared to him to be indescribably squalid, the roads to be indescribably filthy. Before him ran a great rabble crying out and casting up dirty caps, and behind him was the Lady Dionissia. She was upon her white horse, in her green dress, and she had with her four of her Welsh men-at-arms. They had round caps of steel, jerkins of russet leather, and short spears whose heads divided into hooks with which they could pull horsemen from their saddles. In all this tumult Mr. Sorrell could hardly keep his head, for though he had been in Wiltshire nearly two months, this was the first time that he had entered this city.

The houses were all very low; they were all built of mud, and they were all raggedly thatched, house-leeks growing from many roofs, and on others great tufts of flags. The houses were set down at all angles to the road. Sometimes it was very narrow, so that they could hardly pass with all their rabble, and the geese fled shrieking at their approach. Sometimes it was so broad that, as if it had been a village green, the great pigs would continue to wallow undisturbed in the pools of mud.

But it was the noise of the crowding alone that troubled Mr. Sorrell. Her Welsh men-at-arms could beat old women out of the road of the Lady Dionissia’s horse, giving great, brutal blows with their spear-staves upon heads, faces, and breasts, and it in no way aroused feelings of indignation in Mr. Sorrell. He had become so much a native of the place and time that nothing any longer much astonished or disturbed him. Besides, he was so immensely engrossed in his own thoughts that he observed no more than as if he had been hurrying through the streets of an Oriental bazaar upon some important mission.

He observed only noise, dirt, nauseous smells, and great crowds of importunate and ugly people. They were nearly all in ragged clothes of a grey homespun. Some had capes, some hoods with long tails like funnels; most of the men had leather belts; most of the women went bare-legged, and were very dirty; most of the children were naked, or nearly naked, and nearly all of them had wolfish eyes, and were crooked, distorted, or bore upon their faces pockmarks of a hideous kind. To Mr. Sorrell they appeared to be all very disagreeable and negligible animals — grey, colourless, hungry, and clamorous. From time to time they would pass a friar in his long brown robe. With brawny bare legs, girdle of white rope, and shaven crown, he would stand and gaze nonchalantly at the passing crowd, crossing himself suddenly when he perceived the sacred relic of St. Joseph that Mr. Sorrell wore now round his neck.

And as they came more towards the centre of the town, having wound through innumerable alleys and lanes, the shadow of the immense cathedral began to fall upon them. Here there were one or two houses of stone, and below such as were still of mud there were huge cellars, with great steps going down to them, so that you could perceive bales of cloth set out to attract customers, men weaving at looms, or great joints of meat hanging upon hooks. Over these cellars there were suspended signs — gilded suns, boys painted green and brown, swans all white or unicorns all white, but with collars and horns gilded. From these cellars there would emerge stout men in green jerkins or red surcoats furred with white lambswool. Upon their heads they wore head-dresses of four or five yards of cloth, folded together and falling down over their ears upon the one side. Their thumbs they would stick into their belts of leather, and from the cellar steps behind them, upon a level with their calves, would appear the broad white hoods and the wondering eyes of their wives.

They passed under a narrow gateway, and came into an open space with small houses, mostly of stone, and some of two storeys, dotted under the protection of the enormous cathedral, like little vessels in the convoy of a great galleon here and there in the shadow. The spire towered up into the serene blue of the sky; round the top, like an untidy cluster of mistletoe, there was a scaffolding, with upon it the tiny figures of men at work. And around and below the spire the great white nave of the cathedral rose up clear-chiselled, and decorated with the figures of saints as if it had been an immense jewel casket.

At the door of the cathedral the Lady Dionissia abandoned Mr. Sorrell, leaving him in charge of an old man in a black, furred garment, who was going to lead him to the place where the Dean was. She herself was going back into the town to purchase a preparation of the juice of fir trees which was said to be sovereign for hardening and strengthening the hands of warriors, and she went away between the little houses, her men-at-arms around her, one of them leading Mr. Sorrell’s horse.

Mr. Sorrell followed his guide into a bright, gaudy place that was the interior of the cathedral. The immense pillars were painted a strong blue, and the little pillars running up them were bright scarlet; the high windows through which the sun fell were all in violent, crude and sparkling colours, and these colours, thrown down, seemed to splash a prismatic spray all over the floor, which was of bright yellow tiles.

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed:

“My God!”

For although his head was full of his mission to the Dean, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, nevertheless he had so confidently conceived of a cathedral as all grey, solemn, and ancient, that he could not but be overcome. Here was such newness — here was such a brilliant profusion of colours, that even the vastness of the building seemed to be lost. Far up in the choir was a great glare of gold utensils, and there many candles burnt, flickering and twinkling in the draughts from unfinished windows, and it was only when he noticed how small the men around him seemed that he understood how great was the building, whose roof, so far above his head, was all of grass-green, picked out with the bright golden images of angels, of serene queens, and of grinning fiends. The men all around him were talking at the tops of their voices, so as to be heard the one above the other. An old peasant in a black hood was screaming into the ear of a townsman in a green cape, that if he sold corn for less than a penny a quarter, ruin would fall upon his roof; the townsman shouted back that his neighbour Jenkyn had bought corn for three-farthings from Will of the Dyke. A man with roses in his hair, his hood thrown back, and a musical instrument of yellow wood with a black neck slung at his left side, was telling the news from Devizes and the west to a dozen men and women of the better sort. A horse-merchant, with a great whip, was extolling the merits of his mare called Joan. This animal had carried three fat persons from Swindon to Salisbury in an afternoon. Her price could not be less than twenty-two shillings. Two journeymen butchers, seated on the ground with their backs against a pillar and their long flesh-knives falling from their belts, were drinking from a black leathern flagon turn by turn, and talking at the tops of their voices about the bad women of Fallow. And with the constant coming and going of the people, and the clapping of the great doors, all this place was like a sea of sounds that echoed, eddied, and trembled beneath the coloured distances of the lofty roof.

Pushing his way through the crowd in the aisle, where it was mostly small hucksters who had brought little baskets and frails of cherries or of eggs to sell, the old guide held Mr. Sorrell by the stuff of his sleeve and pulled him along.

In the wall of a lofty side-chapel, that was painted all blue with gilt stars, the old man opened a little door, and they came out into the sudden peace of cloisters. Here walls were frescoed in gold and red, with scenes from the life of Our Lady. Before each of the pillars of the long corridors there stood a monk or a chaplain reading in a book. Sometimes there were two, holding their heads together and whispering. One monk was painting the music in a psaltery. The sunlight poured down to the bright grass of the one side; the great tower of the cathedral went away up into space. A peacock with its bright hues paced slowly over the grass, its tail spreading far behind and its crowned head erect. Upon a long bench in the farther wall there sat many of the chapter clergy. They leant their heads together and whispered and laughed, for that day was blood-letting day, and they were permitted to take their ease. One of them was feeding a number of pigeons with peas that he dropped one by one to the ground, laughing with pleasure to see how the pretty blue creatures crowded one upon the other, and telling his neighbour that this should be a lesson to them against the sin of gluttony.

Beyond another little door Mr. Sorrell and his guide came into a sunlit garden. Here there were paved walks of stone, plots of grass, and little low fences of trelliswork along which there grew a great profusion of red and white striped roses. A white deer that had about its neck a collar of gold came trotting towards them, and it was followed by a brown monkey that sprang on to the gown of Mr. Sorrell’s guide and felt in his pockets for food. In the middle of this garden there stood a fair house all of squared stones. It was of three storeys, and had five high gables. In the large stone hall of the ground floor five boys were playing ball. These were the Dean’s pages, and upstairs in a little room sat the Dean, to whom his lean chaplain was reading a book of the travels of Dares and Dictys.

“Ha!” the Dean exclaimed, and pleasure showed itself upon his face, “you are come to tell me more prophecies! I had rather hear you than many books.” For this Dean was a man with an insatiable taste for hearing tales, and, above all, prophecies. Mr. Sorrell reflected for a moment.

“Holy man of God,” he said — for he had already so far learnt his manners—”I am come to buy very valuable advice. I will have your advice first, and then I will pay for it by telling you what I know.” The Dean looked serious for a moment, then he smiled all over his broad and comfortable face, and sent away the chaplain and the old man who had brought Mr. Sorrell there. Mr. Sorrell sat down on a wooden chest, and looked round the room whilst he collected his words, for he wished to be very precise. The room contained several chests with great locks of iron, some shelves upon which were a few books bound in vellum, a great reading pulpit, the chair with the back to it upon which the Dean sat, and a little three-legged stool which had lately served the chaplain.

The windows were square and of transparent talc, for the Dean was a very wealthy man and could afford himself such luxuries. These windows let through a soft and golden light in the summer, and in the winter they served marvellously to keep out the draughts. So it was said of a pleasant and kind woman in that country, that she was as warm as the Dean of Salisbury’s bower.

For the first time since he had been in those parts, Mr. Sorrell felt that he was about to conduct a sane and ordinary business interview. The Dean smiled upon him indulgently, his hands folded upon his comfortable stomach, and, making no more words about it, he said:

“I desire to marry the Lady Dionissia.”

The Dean surveyed him for a moment or two of silence.

“I do not understand why you should desire to marry her. Besides, she is married already.”

“But you understand,” Mr. Sorrell said, “that I desire to do things respectably.”

The Dean looked at him rather blankly.

“I do not understand that word,” he said. “I have never heard it.”

“Why, it means,” Mr. Sorrell answered — and he racked his brain for a French word with which to make his meaning clear—”it means decently, in order...” The Dean threw his head back and laughed.

“That you can hardly do, for it is neither decent nor in order to desire to marry a lady who is already married.”

“I desire to do it,” Mr. Sorrell said, “with the sanction of the Church.”

“That, of course,” the Dean said seriously, “is another matter.”

He was silent for some moments, and then he said:

“Can you not be persuaded to abandon this endeavour? For I am sure you may enjoy, if you have not enjoyed already, all the little delights of love.”

Mr. Sorrell attempted an “Oh!” of scandalised protest, but the Dean waved it aside with one fat hand.

“For consider,” he said, “what troubles this shall bring upon the head of you and of this gentle lady. What outcries will there not be; what journeyings backwards and forwards to Rome; what rages of fathers and husbands and cousins! I am sure the Lady Dionissia is not of one mind with you.”

“The Lady Dionissia thinks as I desire her to think,” Mr. Sorrell said. “Hitherto she has not given much thought to such things; but she listens to my desires, and I desire that this should be arranged decently and in order.”

The Dean looked at him with an air of pleasant mystification.

“This is a very strange matter,” he said, “but I cannot find that it is discreditable in you to desire to have the blessing of the Church upon your union. Nevertheless, it is strange and unnatural.”