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

“Such as fencing with that lubber Robert, and trying to bend his stiff limbs to the noble art of l’escrime.  But that is after dinner work.  There is the mountain of half-raw flesh to be consumed first, and then my father, with Mr. Horncastle and Bob discuss on what they call the news—happy if a poor rogue has been caught by Tom Constable stealing faggots.  ’Tis argument for a week—almost equal to the price of a fat mutton at Portsmouth.  My father and the minister nod in due time over their ale-cup, and Bob and I go our ways till dark, or till the house bell rings for prayers and exposition.  Well, dear good lady, I will not grieve you by telling you how often they make me wish to be again the imp devoid of every shred of self-respect, and too much inured to flogging to heed what my antics might bring on me.”

“I am glad you have that shred of self respect; I hope indeed it is some higher respect.”

“Well, I can never believe that Heaven meant to be served by mortal dullness.  Seven years have only made old Horncastle blow his horn to the same note, only more drearily.”

“I can see indeed that it is a great trial to one used to the life of foreign Courts and to interest in great affairs like you, my poor Peregrine; but what can I say but to entreat you to be patient, try to find interest, and endeavour to win your father’s confidence so that he may accord you more liberty?  Did I not hear that your attention made your mother’s life happier?”

Peregrine laughed.  “My mother!  She has never seen aught but boorishness all her life, and any departure therefrom seems to her unnatural.  I believe she is as much afraid of my courtesy as ever she was of my mischief, and that in her secret heart she still believes me a changeling.  No, Madam Woodford, there is but one way to save me from the frenzy that comes over me.”

“Your father has already been entreated to let you join your uncle.”

“I know it—I know it; but if it were impossible before, that discovery of Dante has made it impossibilissimo, as the Italian would say, to deal with him now.  There is a better way.  Give me the good angel who has always counteracted the evil one.  Give me Mistress Anne!”

“Anne, my Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Woodford in dismay.  “O Peregrine, it cannot be!”

“I knew that would be your first word,” said Peregrine, “but verily, madam, I would not ask it but that I know that I should be another man with her by my side, and that she would have nothing to fear from the evil that dies at her approach.”

“Ah, Peregrine! you think so now; but no man can be sure of himself with any mere human care.  Besides, my child is not of degree to match with you.  Your father would justly be angered if we took advantage of your attachment to us to encourage you in an inclination he could never approve.”

“I tell you, madam—yes, I must tell you all—my madness and my ruin will be completed if I am left to my father’s will.  I know what is hanging over me.  He is only waiting till I am of age—at Midsummer, and the year of mourning is over for poor Oliver—I am sure no one mourns for him more heartily than I—to bind me to Martha Browning.  If she would only bring the plague, or something worse than smallpox, to put an end to it at once!”

“But that would make any such scheme all the more impossible.”

“Listen, madam; do but hear me.  Even as children the very sight of Martha Browning’s solemn face”—Peregrine drew his countenance down into a portentous length—“her horror at the slightest word or sport, her stiff broomstick carriage, all impelled me to the most impish tricks.  And now—letting alone that pock-marks have seamed her grim face till she is as ugly as Alecto—she is a Precisian of the Precisians.  I declare our household is in her eyes sinfully free!  If she can hammer out a text of Scripture, and write her name in characters as big and gawky as herself, ’tis as far as her education has carried her, save in pickling, preserving, stitchery, and clear starching, the only arts not sinful in her eyes.  If I am to have a broomstick, I had rather ride off on one at once to the Witches’ Sabbath on the Wartburg than be tied to one for life.”

“I should think she would scarce accept you.”

“There’s no such hope.  She has been bred up to regard one of us as her lot, and she would accept me without a murmur if I were Beelzebub himself, horns and tail and all!  Why, she ogles me with her gooseberry eyes already, and treats me as a chattel of her own.”

“Hush, hush, Peregrine!  I cannot have you talk thus.  If your father had such designs, it would be unworthy of us to favour you in crossing them.”

“Nay, madam, he hath never expressed them as yet.  Only my mother and brother both refer to his purpose, and if I could show myself contracted to a young lady of good birth and education, he cannot gainsay; it might yet save me from what I will not and cannot endure.  Not that such is by any means my chief and only motive.  I have loved Mistress Anne with all my heart ever since she shone upon me like a being from a better world when I lay sick here.  She has the same power of hushing the wild goblin within me as you have, madam.  I am another man with her, as I am with you.  It is my only hope!  Give me that hope, and I shall be able to endure patiently.—Ah! what have I done?  Have I said too much?”

He had talked longer and more eagerly than would have been good for the invalid even if the topic had been less agitating, and the emotion caused by this unexpected complication, consternation at the difficulties she foresaw, and the present difficulty of framing a reply, were altogether too much for Mrs. Woodford.  She turned deadly white, and gasped for breath, so that Peregrine, in terror, dashed off in search of the maids, exclaiming that their mistress was in a swoon.

The Doctor came out of his study much distressed, and in Anne’s absence the household was almost helpless in giving the succours in which she had always been the foremost.  Peregrine lingered about in remorse and despair, offering to fetch her or to go for the doctor, and finally took the latter course, thereto impelled by the angry words of the old cook, an enemy of his in former days.

“No better? no, sir, nor ’tis not your fault if ever she be.  You’ve been and frought her nigh to death with your terrifying ways.”

Peregrine was Hampshire man enough to know that to terrify only meant to tease, but he was in no mood to justify himself to old Patience, so he galloped off to Portsmouth, and only returned with the doctor to hear that Madam Woodford was in bed, and her daughter with her.  She was somewhat better, but still very ill, and it was plain that this was no moment for pressing his suit even had it not been time for him to return home.  Going to fetch the doctor might be accepted as a valid reason for missing the evening exhortation and prayer, but there were mistrustful looks that galled him.

Anne’s return was more beneficial to Mrs. Woodford than the doctor’s visit, and the girl was still too ignorant of all that her mother’s attacks of spasms and subsequent weakness implied to be as much alarmed as to depress her hopes.  Yet Mrs. Woodford, lying awake in the night, detected that her daughter was restless and unhappy, and asked what ailed her, and how the visit had gone off.

“You do not wish me to speak of such things, madam,” was the answer.

“Tell me all that is in your heart, my child.”

It all came out with the vehemence of a reserved nature when the flood is loosed.  ‘Young Madam’ had been more than usually peevish and exacting, jealous perhaps at Lucy’s being the heroine of the day, and fretful over a cold which confined her to the house, how she worried and harassed all around her with her whims, megrims and complaints could only too well be imagined, and how the entire pleasure of the day was destroyed.  Lucy was never allowed a minute’s conversation with her friend without being interrupted by a whine and complaints of unkindness and neglect.

Lady Archfield’s ill-usage, as the young wife was pleased to call every kind of restriction, was the favourite theme next to the daughter-in law’s own finery, her ailments, and her notions of the treatment befitting her.

And young Mr. Archfield himself, while handing his old friend out to the carriage that had fetched her, could not help confiding to her that he was nearly beside himself.  His mother meant to be kind, but expected too much from one so brought up, and his wife—what could be done for her?  She made herself miserable here, and every one else likewise.  Yet even if his father would consent, she was utterly unfit to be mistress of a house of her own; and poor Charles could only utter imprecations on the guardians who could have had no idea how a young woman ought to be brought up.  It was worse than an ill-trained hound.”

Mrs. Woodford heard what she extracted from her daughter with grief and alarm, and not only for her friends.

“Indeed, my dear child,” she said, “you must prevent such confidences.  They are very dangerous things respecting married people.”

“It was all in a few moments, mamma, and I could not stop him.  He is so unhappy;” and Anne’s voice revealed tears.

“The more reason why you should avoid hearing what he will soon be very sorry you have heard.  Were he not a mere lad himself, it would be as inexcusable as it is imprudent thus to speak of the troubles and annoyances that often beset the first year of wedded life.  I am sorry for the poor youth, who means no harm nor disloyalty, and is only treating you as his old companion and playmate; but he has no right thus to talk of his wife, above all to a young maiden too inexperienced to counsel him, and if he should attempt to do so again, promise me, my daughter, that you will silence him—if by no other means, by telling him so.”

“I promise!” said Anne, choking back her tears and lifting her head.  “I am sure I never want to go to Fareham again while that Lieutenant Sedley Archfield is there.  If those be army manners, they are what I cannot endure.  He is altogether mean and hateful, above all when he scoffs at Master Oakshott.”

“I am afraid a great many do so, child, and that he often gives some occasion,” put in Mrs. Woodford, a little uneasy that this should be the offence.

“He is better than Sedley Archfield, be he what he will, madam,” said the girl.  “He never pays those compliments, those insolent disgusting compliments, such as he—that Sedley, I mean—when he found me alone in the hall, and I had to keep him at bay from trying to kiss me, only Mr. Archfield—Charley—came down the stairs before he was aware, and called out, ‘I will thank you to behave yourself to a lady in my father’s house.’  And then he, Sedley, sneered ‘The Parson’s niece!’ with such a laugh, mother, I shall never get it out of my ears.  As if I were not as well born as he!”

“That is not quite the way to take it, my child.  I had rather you stood on your maidenly dignity and discretion than on your birth.  I trust he will soon be away.”

“I fear he will not, mamma, for I heard say the troop are coming down to be under the Duke of Berwick at Portsmouth.”

“Then, dear daughter, it is the less mishap that you should be thus closely confined by loving attendance on me.  Now, goodnight.  Compose yourself to sleep, and think no more of these troubles.”

Nevertheless mother and daughter lay long awake, side by side, that night; the daughter in all the flutter of nerves induced by offended yet flattered feeling—hating the compliment, yet feeling that it was a compliment to the features that she was beginning to value.  She was substantially a good, well-principled maiden, modest and discreet, with much dignified reserve, yet it was impossible that she should not have seen heads turned to look at her in Portsmouth, and know that she was admired above her contemporaries, so that even if it brought