Part 23

"Drop that," said Morty, "or by God! kinsman of mine though you be, I will drive a bullet through the brain of you. Enough of this, sir," he said, turning to Goring. "Time passes, and this scene must end. I would have arranged it otherwise, but you yourself know that by this way alone I could have brought you to the meeting. Take the pistols, I say, or by the bones of my ancestors that lie buried under Dunboy Castle yonder, I will call in my men from outside, and they shall strip you bare, and score such marks on you as the quartermaster leaves on the slaves that you hire to fight your battles. Prince Charles will laugh when I tell him in Paris how I served one at least of the hounds that chased him at Culloden."

The forge in which this scene was going on was perfectly familiar to Goring, for he had himself designed it and built it. There was the ordinary broad open front to the road, constructed of timber, which was completely shut. The rest of the building was of stone, and in the wall at the back there was a small door leading into a field, and thence into the country. Could this door be opened, there was a chance, though but a faint one, of escape. A bar lay across, but of no great thickness. The staple into which it ran was slight. A vigorous blow might shatter both.

Sylvester caught the direction of Goring's eye, caught its meaning, and threw himself in the way. The colonel snatched a heavy hammer which stood against the wall. With the suddenness of an electric flash he struck Sylvester on the shoulder, broke his collar-bone, and hurled him back senseless, doubled over the anvil. A second stroke, catching the bar in the middle, shattered it in two, and the door hung upon the latch. Morty and Connell, neither of whom had intended foul play, hesitated, and in another moment Goring would have been free and away. Connell, recovering himself, sprang forward and closed with him. The colonel, who had been the most accomplished wrestler of his regiment, whirled him round, flung him with a heavy fall on the floor, and had his hand on the latch when, half stunned as he was, Connell recovered his feet, drew a skene, and rushed at Colonel Goring again. So sudden it all was, so swift the struggle, and so dim the light, that from the other end it was hard to see what was happening. Wrenching the skene out of Connell's hands, and with the hot spirit of battle in him, Colonel Goring was on the point of driving it into his assailant's side.

"Shoot, Morty! shoot, or I am a dead man!" Connell cried.

Morty, startled and uncertain what to do, had mechanically snatched up a pistol when Sylvester was struck down. He raised his hand at Connell's cry. It shook from excitement, and locked together as the two figures were, he was as likely to hit friend as foe. Again Connell called, and Morty fired and missed; and the mark of the bullet is still shown in the wall of the smithy as a sacred reminiscence of a fight for Irish liberty. The second shot went true to its mark. Connell had been beaten down, though unwounded, and Goring's tall form stood out above him in clear view. This time Morty's hand did not fail him. A shiver passed through Goring's limbs. His arms dropped. He staggered back against the door, and the door yielded, and he fell upon the ground outside. But it was not to rise and fly. The ball had struck him clean above the ear, and buried itself in the brain. He was dead.

SCIENTIFIC METHOD APPLIED TO HISTORY

From 'Short Studies on Great Subjects'

Historical facts can only be verified by the skeptical and the inquiring, and skepticism and inquiry nip like a black frost the eager credulity in which legendary biographies took their rise. You can watch such stories as they grew in the congenial soil of belief. The great saints of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, who converted Europe to Christianity, were as modest and unpretending as true, genuine men always are. They claimed no miraculous powers for themselves. Miracles might have been worked in the days of their fathers. They for their own parts relied on nothing but the natural powers of persuasion and example. Their companions, who knew them personally in life, were only a little more extravagant. Miracles and portents vary in an inverse ratio with the distance of time. St. Patrick is absolutely silent about his own conjuring performances. He told his followers, perhaps, that he had been moved by his good angel to devote himself to the conversion of Ireland. The angel of metaphor becomes in the next generation an actual seraph. On a rock in the county of Down there is, or was, a singular mark, representing rudely the outline of a foot. From that rock, where the young Patrick was feeding his master's sheep, a writer of the sixth century tells us that the angel Victor sprang back to heaven after delivering his message, and left behind him the imprinted witness of his august visit. Another hundred years pass, and legends from Hegesippus are imported into the life of the Irish apostle. St. Patrick and the Druid enchanter contend before King Leogaire on Tara Hill, as Simon Magus and St. Peter contended before the Emperor Nero. Again a century, and we are in a world of wonders where every human lineament is lost. St. Patrick, when a boy of twelve, lights a fire with icicles; when he comes to Ireland he floats thither upon an altar-stone which Pope Celestine had blessed for him. He conjures a Welsh marauder into a wolf, makes a goat cry out in the stomach of a thief who had stolen him, and restores dead men to life, not once or twice but twenty times. The wonders with which the atmosphere is charged gravitate towards the largest concrete figure which is moving in the middle of them, till at last, as Gibbon says, the sixty-six lives of St. Patrick which were extant in the twelfth century must have contained at least as many thousand lies. And yet of conscious lying there was very little; perhaps nothing at all. The biographers wrote in good faith and were industrious collectors of material, only their notions of probability were radically different from ours. The more marvelous a story, the less credit we give to it; warned by experience of carelessness, credulity, and fraud, we disbelieve everything for which we cannot find contemporary evidence, and from the value of that evidence we subtract whatever may be due to prevalent opinion or superstition. To the mediaeval writer, the more stupendous the miracle the more likely it was to be true; he believed everything which he could not prove to be false, and proof was not external testimony, but inherent fitness.

So much for the second period of what is called human history. In the first or mythological there is no historical groundwork at all. In the next or heroic we have accounts of real persons, but handed down to us by writers to whom the past was a world of marvels, whose delight was to dwell upon the mighty works which had been done in the old times, whose object was to elevate into superhuman proportions the figures of the illustrious men who had distinguished themselves as apostles or warriors. They thus appear to us like their portraits in stained-glass windows, represented rather in a transcendental condition of beatitude than in the modest and checkered colors of real life. We see them not as they were, but as they appeared to an adoring imagination, and in a costume of which we can only affirm with certainty that it was never worn by any child of Adam on this plain, prosaic earth. For facts as facts there is as yet no appreciation; they are shifted to and fro, dropped out of sight, or magnified, or transferred from owner to owner,--manipulated to suit or decorate a preconceived and brilliant idea. We are still in the domain of poetry, where the canons of the art require fidelity to general principles, and allow free play to fancy in details. The Virgins of Raphael are no less beautiful as paintings, no less masterpieces of workmanship, though in no single feature either of face or form or costume they resemble the historical mother of Christ, or even resemble one another.

At the next stage we pass with the chroniclers into history proper. The chronicler is not a poet like his predecessor. He does not shape out consistent pictures with a beginning, a middle, and an end. He is a narrator of events, and he connects them together on a chronological string. He professes to be relating facts. He is not idealizing, he is not singing the praises of the heroes of the sword or the crosier; he means to be true in the literal and commonplace sense of that ambiguous word. And yet in his earlier phases, take him in what part of the world we please,--take him in ancient Egypt or Assyria, in Greece or in Rome, or in modern Europe,--he is but a step in advance of his predecessor. He is excellent company. He never moralizes, never bores you with philosophy of history or political economy. He never speculates about causes. But on the other hand, he is uncritical. He takes unsuspectingly the materials which he finds ready to his hand,--the national ballads, the romances, and the biographies. He transfers to his pages whatever catches his fancy. The more picturesque an anecdote, the more unhesitatingly he writes it down, though in the same proportion it is the less likely to be authentic. Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf; Curtius jumping into the gulf; our English Alfred spoiling the cakes; or Bruce watching the leap of the spider,--stories of this kind he relates with the same simplicity with which he records the birth in his own day, in some outlandish village, of a child with two heads, or the appearance of the sea-serpent or the flying dragon. Thus the chronicle, however charming, is often nothing but poetry taken literally and translated into prose. It grows, however, and improves insensibly with the growth of the nation. Like the drama, it develops from poor beginnings into the loftiest art, and becomes at last perhaps the very best kind of historical writing which has yet been produced. Herodotus and Livy, Froissart and Hall and Holinshed, are as great in their own departments as Sophocles or Terence or Shakespeare. We are not yet entirely clear of portents and prodigies. Superstition clings to us as our shadow, and is to be found in the wisest as well as the weakest. The Romans, the most practical people that ever lived,--a people so pre-eminently effective that they have printed their character indelibly into the constitution of Europe,--these Romans, at the very time they were making themselves the world's masters, allowed themselves to be influenced in the most important affairs of State by a want of appetite in the sacred chickens, or the color of the entrails of a calf. Take him at his best, man is a great fool. It is likely enough that we ourselves habitually say and practice things which a thousand years hence will seem not a jot less absurd. Cato tells us that the Roman augurs could not look one another in the face without laughing; and I have heard that bishops in some parts of the world betray sometimes analogous misgivings.

In able and candid minds, however, stuff of this kind is tolerably harmless, and was never more innocent than in the case of the first great historian of Greece. Herodotus was a man of vast natural powers. Inspired by a splendid subject, and born at the most favorable time, he grew to manhood surrounded by the heroes of Marathon and Salamis and Plataea. The wonders of Egypt and Assyria were for the first time thrown open to the inspection of strangers. The gloss of novelty was not yet worn off, and the impressions falling fresh on an eager, cultivated, but essentially simple and healthy mind, there were qualities and conditions combined which produced one of the most delightful books which was ever written. He was an intense patriot; and he was unvexed with theories, political or moral. His philosophy was like Shakespeare's,--a calm, intelligent insight into human things. He had no views of his own, which the fortunes of Greece or other countries were to be manipulated to illustrate. The world as he saw it was a well-made, altogether promising and interesting world; and his object was to relate what he had seen and what he had heard and learnt, faithfully and accurately. His temperament was rather believing than skeptical; but he was not idly credulous. He can be critical when occasion requires. He distinguishes always between what he had seen with his own eyes and what others told him. He uses his judgment freely, and sets his readers on their guard against uncertain evidence. And there is not a book existing which contains in the same space so much important truth,--truth which survives the sharpest test that modern discoveries can apply to it.

The same may be said in a slightly less degree of Livy and of the best of the late European chroniclers: you have the same freshness, the same vivid perception of external life, the same absence of what philosophers call subjectivity,--the projection into the narrative of the writer's own personality, his opinions, thoughts, and theories. Still, in all of them, however vivid, however vigorous the representation, there is a vein of fiction largely and perhaps consciously intermingled. In a modern work of history, when a statesman is introduced as making a speech, the writer at any rate supposes that such a speech was actually made. He has found an account of it somewhere either in detail or at least in outline or epitome. The boldest fabricator would not venture to introduce an entire and complete invention. This was not the case with the older authors. Thucydides tells us frankly that the speeches which he interweaves with his narrative were his own composition. They were intended as dramatic representations of the opinions of the factions and parties with which Greece was divided, and they were assigned to this person or to that, as he supposed them to be internally suitable. Herodotus had set Thucydides the example, and it was universally followed. No speech given by any old historian can be accepted as literally true unless there is a specific intimation to that effect. Deception was neither practiced nor pretended. It was a convenient method of exhibiting characters and situations, and it was therefore adopted without hesitation or reserve.

THE DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET

From 'Short Studies on Great Subjects'

The knights were introduced. They advanced. The archbishop neither spoke nor looked at them, but continued talking to a monk who was next him. He himself was sitting on a bed. The rest of the party present were on the floor. The knights seated themselves in the same manner, and for a few moments there was silence. Then Becket's black, restless eye glanced from one to the other. He slightly noticed Tracy; and Fitzurse said a few unrecorded sentences to him, which ended with "God help you!" To Becket's friends the words sounded like insolence. They may have meant no more than pity for the deliberate fool who was forcing destruction upon himself.

Becket's face flushed. Fitzurse went on, "We bring you the commands of the King beyond the sea; will you hear us in public or in private?" Becket said he cared not. "In private, then," said Fitzurse. The monks thought afterwards that Fitzurse had meant to kill the archbishop where he sat. If the knights had entered the palace, thronged as it was with men, with any such intention, they would scarcely have left their swords behind them. The room was cleared, and a short altercation followed, of which nothing is known save that it ended speedily in high words on both sides. Becket called in his clergy again, his lay servants being excluded, and bade Fitzurse go on. "Be it so," Sir Reginald said. "Listen, then, to what the King says. When the peace was made, he put aside all his complaints against you. He allowed you to return, as you desired, free to your see. You have now added contempt to your other offenses. You have broken the treaty. You have allowed your pride to tempt you to defy your lord and master to your own sorrow. You have censured the bishops by whose administration the Prince was crowned. You have pronounced an anathema against the King's ministers, by whose advice he is guided in the management of the empire. You have made it plain that if you could you would take the Prince's crown from him. Your plots and contrivances to attain your ends are notorious to all men. Say, then, will you attend us to the King's presence, and there answer for yourself? For this we are sent."

The archbishop declared that he had never wished any hurt to the Prince. The King had no occasion to be displeased if crowds came about him in the towns and cities, after having been so long deprived of his presence. If he had done any wrong he would make satisfaction, but he protested against being suspected of intentions which had never entered his mind.

Fitzurse did not enter into an altercation with him, but continued:--"The King commands further that you and your clerks repair without delay to the young King's presence, and swear allegiance, and promise to amend your faults."

The archbishop's temper was fast rising. "I will do whatever may be reasonable," he said, "but I tell you plainly, the King shall have no oaths from me, nor from any one of my clergy. There has been too much perjury already. I have absolved many, with God's help, who had perjured themselves. I will absolve the rest when he permits."

"I understand you to say that you will not obey," said Fitzurse, and went on in the same tone:--"The King commands you to absolve the bishops whom you have excommunicated without his permission" (_absque licentia sua_).

"The Pope sentenced the bishops," the archbishop said. "If you are not pleased, you must go to him. The affair is none of mine."

Fitzurse said it had been done at his instigation, which he did not deny; but he proceeded to reassert that the King had given his permission. He had complained at the time of the peace of the injury which he had suffered in the coronation, and the King had told him that he might obtain from the Pope any satisfaction for which he liked to ask.

If this was all the consent which the King had given, the pretense of his authority was inexcusable. Fitzurse could scarce hear the archbishop out with patience. "Ay, ay!" said he; "will you make the King out to be a traitor, then? The King gave you leave to excommunicate the bishops when they were acting by his own order! It is more than we can bear to listen to such monstrous accusations."

John of Salisbury tried to check the archbishop's imprudent tongue, and whispered to him to speak to the knights in private; but when the passion was on him, no mule was more ungovernable than Becket. Drawing to a conclusion, Fitzurse said to him:--"Since you refuse to do any one of those things which the King requires of you, his final commands are that you and your clergy shall forthwith depart out of this realm and out of his dominions, never more to return. You have broken the peace, and the King cannot trust you again."

Becket answered wildly that he would not go--never again would he leave England. Nothing but death should now part him from his church. Stung by the reproach of ill-faith, he poured out the catalogue of his own injuries. He had been promised restoration, and instead of restoration he had been robbed and insulted. Ranulf de Broc had laid an embargo on his wine. Robert de Broc had cut off his mule's tail; and now the knights had come to menace him.

De Morville said that if he had suffered any wrong he had only to appeal to the Council, and justice would be done.

Becket did not wish for the Council's justice. "I have complained enough," he said; "so many wrongs are daily heaped upon me that I could not find messengers to carry the tale of them. I am refused access to the court. Neither one king nor the other will do me right. I will endure it no more. I will use my own powers as archbishop, and no child of man shall prevent me."

"You will lay the realm under interdict, then, and excommunicate the whole of us?" said Fitzurse.

"So God help me," said one of the others, "he shall not do that. He has excommunicated over-many already. We have borne too long with him."

The knights sprang to their feet, twisting their gloves and swinging their arms. The archbishop rose. In the general noise words could no longer be accurately heard. At length the knights moved to leave the room, and addressing the archbishop's attendants, said, "In the King's name we command you to see that this man does not escape."

"Do you think I shall fly, then?" cried the archbishop. "Neither for the King nor for any living man will I fly. You cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die.... Here you will find me," he shouted, following them to the door as they went out, and calling after them. Some of his friends thought that he had asked De Morville to come back and speak quietly with him, but it was not so. He returned to his seat, still excited and complaining.

"My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, "it is strange that you will never be advised. What occasion was there for you to go after these men and exasperate them with your bitter speeches? You would have done better, surely, by being quiet and giving them a milder answer. They mean no good, and you only commit yourself."

The archbishop sighed, and said, "I have done with advice. I know what I have before me."

It was four o'clock when the knights entered. It was now nearly five; and unless there were lights the room must have been almost dark. Beyond the archbishop's chamber was an ante-room, beyond the ante-room the hall. The knights, passing through the hall into the quadrangle, and thence to the lodge, called their men to arms. The great gate was closed. A mounted guard was stationed outside, with orders to allow no one to go out or in. The knights threw off their cloaks and buckled on their swords. This was the work of a few minutes. From the cathedral tower the vesper bell was beginning to sound. The archbishop had seated himself to recover from the agitation of the preceding scene, when a breathless monk rushed in to say that the knights were arming. "Who cares? Let them arm," was all that the archbishop said. His clergy was less indifferent. If the archbishop was ready for death, they were not. The door from the hall into the court was closed and barred, and a short respite was thus secured. The intention of the knights, it may be presumed, was to seize the archbishop and carry him off to Saltwood or to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or perhaps to Normandy. Coming back to execute their purpose, they found themselves stopped by the hall door. To burst it open would require time; the ante-room between the hall and the archbishop's apartments opened by an oriel window and an outside stair into a garden. Robert de Broc, who knew the house well, led the way to it in the dark. The steps were broken, but a ladder was standing against the window, by which the knights mounted, and the crash of the falling casement told the fluttered group about the archbishop that their enemies were upon them. There was still a moment. The party who entered by the window, instead of turning into the archbishop's room, first went into the hall to open the door and admit their comrades. From the archbishop's room a second passage, little used, opened into the northwest corner of the cloister, and from the cloister there was a way into the north transept of the cathedral. The cry was "To the church! To the church!" There at least there would be immediate safety.