A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago by Yonge (best short novels of all time txt) 📖

But Martha shook her hand and laughed, turning to leave the room, so that he was fain to give her his arm and escort her back to her guardian.

Then ensued a scream.  “Where’s he going?  Mr. Archfield, don’t leave me.”

“He is only taking Mistress Browning back to her guardian,” said Anne.

“Eh? oh, how can he?  A hideous fright!” she cried.

To say the truth, she was rather pleased to have had such a dreadful adventure, and to have made such a commotion, though she protested that she must go home directly, and could never bear the sight of those dreadful monsters again, or she should die on the spot.

“But,” said she, when the coach was at the door, and Anne had restored her dress to its dainty gaiety, “I must thank Master Peregrine for taking off that horrible jackanapes.”

“Small thanks to him,” said Charles crossly.  “I wager it was all his doing out of mere spite.”

“He is too good a beau ever to spite me,” said Mrs. Alice, her head a little on one side.

“Then to show off what he could do with the beast—Satan’s imp, like himself.”

“No, no, Mr. Archfield,” pleaded Anne, “that was impossible; I saw him myself.  He was with that sailor-looking man measuring the height of the secretary bird.”

“I believe you are always looking after him,” grumbled Charles.  “I can’t guess what all the women see in him to be always gazing after him.”

“Because he is so charmingly ugly,” laughed the young wife, tripping out in utter forgetfulness that she was to die if she went near the beasts again.  She met Peregrine half way across the yard with outstretched hands, exclaiming—

“O Mr. Oakshott! it was so good in you to take away that nasty beast.”

“I am glad, madam, to have been of use,” said Peregrine, bowing and smiling, a smile that might explain something of his fascination.  “The poor brute was only drawn, as all of our kind are.  He wanted to see so sweet a lady nearer.  He is quite harmless.  Will you stroke him?  See, there he sits, gazing after you.  Will you give him a cake and make friends?”

“No, no, madam, it cannot be; it is too much,” grumbled Charles; and though Alice had backed at first, perhaps for the pleasure of teasing him, or for that of being the centre of observation, actually, with all manner of pretty airs and graces, she let herself be led forward, lay a timid hand on the monkey’s head, and put a cake in its black fingers, while all the time Peregrine held it fast and talked Dutch to it; and Charles Archfield hardly contained his rage, though Anne endeavoured to argue the impossibility of Peregrine’s having incited the attack; and Sedley blustered that they ought to interfere and make the fellow know the reason why.  However, Charles had sense enough to know that though he might exhale his vexation in grumbling, he had no valid cause for quarrelling with young Oakshott, so he contented himself with black looks and grudging thanks, as he was obliged to let Peregrine hand his wife into her carriage amid her nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

They would have taken Dr. Woodford and his niece home in the coach, but Anne had an errand in the town, and preferred to return by boat.  She wanted some oranges and Turkey figs to allay her mother’s constant thirst, and Peregrine begged permission to accompany them, saying that he knew where to find the best and cheapest.  Accordingly he took them to a tiny cellar, in an alley by the boat camber, where the Portugal oranges certainly looked riper and were cheaper than any that Anne had found before; but there seemed to be an odd sort of understanding between Peregrine and the withered old weather-beaten sailor who sold them, such as rather puzzled the Doctor.

“I hope these are not contraband,” he said to Peregrine, when the oranges had been packed in the basket of the servant who followed them.

Peregrine shrugged his shoulders.

“Living is hard, sir.  Ask no questions.”

The Doctor looked tempted to turn back with the fruit, but such doubts were viewed as ultra scruples, and would hardly have been entertained even by a magistrate such as Sir Philip Archfield.

It was not a time for questions, and Peregrine remained with them till they embarked at the point, asking to be commended to Mrs. Woodford, and hoping soon to come and see both her and poor Hans, he left them.

“Hear me, ye venerable core,
  As counsel for poor mortals,
That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door
  For glaikit Folly’s portals;
I for their thoughtless, careless sakes
  Would here propose defences,
Their doucie tricks, their black mistakes,
  Their failings and mischances.”

BURNS.

For seven years Anne Woodford had kept Lucy Archfield’s birthday with her, and there was no refusing now, though there was more and more unwillingness to leave Mrs. Woodford, whose declining state became so increasingly apparent that even the loving daughter could no longer be blind to it.

The coach was sent over to fetch Mistress Anne to Fareham, and the invalid was left, comfortably installed in her easy-chair by the parlour fire, with a little table by her side, holding a hand-bell, a divided orange, a glass of toast and water, and the Bible and Prayer-book, wherein lay her chief studies, together with a little needlework, which still amused her feeble hands.  The Doctor, divided between his parish, his study, and his garden, had promised to look in from time to time.

Presently, however, the door was gently tapped, and on her call “Come in,” Hans, all one grin, admitted Peregrine Oakshott, bowing low in his foreign, courteous manner, and entreating her to excuse his intrusion, “For truly, madam, in your goodness is my only hope.”

Then he knelt on one knee and kissed the hand she held out to him, while desiring him to speak freely to her.

“Nay, madam, I fear I shall startle you, when I lay before you the only chance that can aid me to overcome the demon that is in me.”

“My poor—”

“Call me your boy, as when I was here seven years ago.  Let me sit at your feet as then and listen to me.”

“Indeed I will, my dear boy,” and she laid her hand on his dark head.  “Tell me all that is in your heart.”

“Ah, dear lady, that is not soon done!  You and Mistress Anne, as you well know, first awoke me from my firm belief that I was none other than an elf, and yet there have since been times when I have doubted whether it were not indeed the truth.”

“Nay, Peregrine, at years of discretion you should have outgrown old wives’ tales.”

“Better be an elf at once—a soulless creature of the elements—than the sport of an evil spirit doomed to perdition,” he bitterly exclaimed.

“Hush, hush!  You know not what you are saying!”

“I know it too well, madam!  There are times when I long and wish after goodness—nay, when Heaven seems open to me—and I resolve and strive after a perfect life; but again comes the wild, passionate dragging, as it were, into all that at other moments I most loathe and abhor, and I become no more my own master.  Ah!”

There was misery in his voice, and he clutched the long hair on each side of his face with his hands.

“St. Paul felt the same,” said Mrs. Woodford gently.

“‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’  Ay, ay! how many times have I not groaned that forth!  And so, if that Father at Turin were right, I am but as Paul was when he was Saul.  Madam, is it not possible that I was never truly baptized?” he cried eagerly.

“Impossible, Peregrine.  Was not Mr. Horncastle chaplain when you were born?  Yes; and I have heard my brother say that both he and your father held the same views as the Church upon baptism.”

“So I thought; but Father Geronimo says that at the best it was but heretical baptism, and belike hastily and ineffectually performed.”

“Put that aside, Peregrine.  It is only a temptation and allurement.”

“It is an allurement you know not how strong,” said the poor youth.  “Could I only bring myself to believe all that Father Geronimo does, and fall down before his Madonnas and saints, then could I hope for a new nature, and scourge away the old”—he set his teeth as he spoke—“till naught remains of the elf or demon, be it what it will.”

“Ah, Peregrine, scourging will not do it, but grace will, and that grace is indeed yours, as is proved by these higher aspirations.”

“I tell you, madam, that if I live on as I am doing now, grace will be utterly stifled, if it ever abode in me at all.  Every hour that I live, pent in by intolerable forms and immeasurable dulness, the maddening temper gains on me!  Nay, I have had to rush out at night and swear a dozen round oaths before I could compose myself to sit down to the endless supper.  Ah, I shock you, madam! but that’s not the worst I am driven to do.”

“Nor the way to bring the better spirit, my poor youth.  Oh, that you would pray instead of swearing!”

“I cannot pray at Oakwood.  My father and Mr. Horncastle drive away all the prayers that ever were in me, and I mean nothing, even though I keep my word to you.”

“I am glad you do that.  While I know you are doing so, I shall still believe the better angel will triumph.”

“How can aught triumph but hatred and disgust where I am pinned down?  Listen, madam, and hear if good spirits have any chance.  We break our fast, ere the sun is up, on chunks of yesterday’s half-dressed beef and mutton.  If I am seen seeking for a morsel not half raw, I am rated for dainty French tastes; and the same with the sour smallest of beer.  I know now what always made me ill-tempered as a child, and I avoid it, but at the expense of sneers on my French breeding, even though my drink be fair water; for wine, look you, is a sinful expense, save for after dinner, and frothed chocolate for a man is an invention of Satan.  The meal is sauced either with blame of me, messages from the farm-folk, or Bob’s exploits in the chase.  Then my father goes his rounds on the farm, and would fain have me with him to stand knee-deep in mire watching the plough, or feeling each greasy and odorous old sheep in turn to see if it be ready for the knife, or gloating over the bullocks or swine, or exchanging auguries with Thomas Vokes on this or that crop.  Faugh!  And I am told I shall never be good for a country gentleman if I contemn such matters!  I say I have no mind to be a country gentleman, whereby I am told of Esau till I am sick of his very name.”

“But surely you have not always to follow on this round?”

“Oh no!  I may go out birding with Bob, who is about as lively as an old jackass, or meet the country boobies for a hunt, and be pointed at as the Frenchman, and left to ride alone; or there’s mine own chamber, when the maids do not see fit to turn me out with their pails and besoms, as they do at least twice a week—I sit there in my cloak and furs (by the way, I am chidden for an effeminate fop if ever I am seen in them).  I would give myself to books, as my uncle counselled, but what think you?  By ill hap Bob, coming in to ask some question, found me studying the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, and hit upon one of the engravings representing the torments of purgatory.  What must he do but report it, and immediately a hue and cry arises that I am being corrupted with Popish books.  In vain do I tell them that their admirable John Milton, the only poet save Sternhold and Hopkins that my father deems not absolute pagan, knew, loved, and borrowed from Dante.  All my books are turned over as ruthlessly as ever Don Quixote’s by the curate and the barber, and whatever Mr. Horncastle’s erudition cannot vouch for is summarily handed over to the kitchen wench to light the fires.  The best of it is that they have left me my classics, as though old Terence and Lucan were lesser heathens than the great Florentine.  However, I have bribed the young maid, and rescued my Dante and Boiardo with small damage, but I dare not read them save with door locked.”

Mrs. Woodford could scarcely shake her head at the disobedience, and she asked if