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

contrive, though the heaving of the waves, as the little yacht lay to, did not conduce to their recovery.  The Count de Lauzun went ashore as soon as a boat could be lowered to apprise M. Charot, the Governor of Calais, of the guest he was to receive, and after an interval of considerable discomfort, in full view of the massive fortifications, boats came off to bring the Queen and her attendants on shore, this time as a Queen, though she refused to receive any honours.  Lady Strickland, recovering as soon as she was on dry land, resumed her Prince, who was fondled with enthusiastic praises for his excellent conduct on the voyage.

Anne could not help feebly thinking some of the credit might be due to her, since she had held him by land and water nearly ever since leaving Whitehall, but she was too much worn out by her nights of unrest, and too much battered and beaten by the tossings of her voyage, to feel anything except in a languid half-conscious way, under a racking headache; and when the curious old house where they were to rest was reached, and all the rest were eating with ravenous appetites, she could taste nothing, and being conducted by a compassionate Frenchwoman in a snow-white towering cap to a straw mattress spread on the ground, she slept the twenty-four hours round without moving.

CHAPTER XXI
Exile

“‘Oh, who are ye, young man?’ she said.
‘What country come ye frae?’
‘I flew across the sea,’ he said;
‘’Twas but this very day.’”

Old Ballad.

Five months had passed away since the midnight flight from England, when Anne Woodford was sitting on a stone bench flanked with statues in the stately gardens of the Palace of St. Germain, working away at some delicate point lace, destined to cover some of the deficiencies of her dress, for her difficulties were great, and these months had been far from happy ones.

The King was in Ireland, the Queen spent most of the time of his absence in convents, either at Poissy or Chaillot, carrying her son with her to be the darling of the nuns, who had for the most part never even seen a baby, and to whom a bright lively child of a year old was a perfect treasure of delight.  Not wishing to encumber the good Sisters with more attendants than were needful, the Queen only took with her one lady governess, one nurse, and one rocker, and this last naturally was Pauline Dunord, both a Frenchwoman and a Roman Catholic.

This was in itself no loss to Anne.  Her experience of the nunnery at Boulogne, where had been spent three days in expectation of the King, had not been pleasant.  The nuns had shrunk from her as a heretic, and kept their novices and pensionnaires from the taint of communication with her; and all the honour she might have deserved for the Queen’s escape seemed to have been forfeited by that moment of fear, which in the telling had become greatly exaggerated.

It was true that the Queen had never alluded to it; but probably through Mrs. Labadie, it had become current that Miss Woodford had been so much alarmed under the churchyard wall that her fancy had conjured up a phantom and she had given a loud scream, which but for the mercy of the Saints would have betrayed them all.

Anne was persuaded that she had done nothing worse than give an involuntary start, but it was not of the least use to say so, and she began to think that perhaps others knew better than she did.  Miss Dunord, who had never been more than distantly polite to her in England, was of course more thrown with her at St. Germain, and examined her closely.  Who was it?  What was it?  Had she seen it before?  It was of no use to deny.  Pauline knew she had seen something on that All Saints’ Eve.  Was it true that it was a lover of hers, and that she had seen him killed in a duel on her account?  Who would have imagined it in cette demoiselle si sage!  Would she not say who it was!

But though truth forced more than one affirmative to be pumped out of Anne, she clung to that last shred of concealment, and kept her own counsel as to the time, place, and persons of the duel, and thus she so far offended Pauline as to prevent that damsel from having any scruples in regarding her as an obnoxious and perilous rival, with a dark secret in her life.  Certainly Miss Dunord did earnestly assure her that to adopt her Church, invoke the Saints, and have Masses for the dead was the only way to lay such ghosts; but Anne remained obdurate, and thus was isolated, for there were very few Protestants in the fugitive Court, and those were of too high a degree to consort with her.  Perhaps that undefined doubt of her discretion was against her; perhaps too her education and knowledge of languages became less useful to the Queen when surrounded by French, for she was no longer called upon to act as reader; and the little Prince, during his residence in the convent, had time to forget her and lose his preference for her.  She was not discharged, but except for taking her turn as a nursery-maid when the Prince was at St. Germain, she was a mere supernumerary, nor was there any salary forthcoming.  The small amount of money she had with her had dwindled away, and when she applied to Lady Strickland, who was kinder to her than any one else, she was told that the Queen was far too much distressed for money wherewith to aid the King to be able to pay any one, and that they must all wait till the King had his own again.  Her clothes were wearing out, and scarcely in condition for attendance on the Prince when he was shown in state to the King of France.  Worse than all, she seemed entirely cut off from home.  She had written several times to her uncle when opportunity seemed to offer, but had never heard from him, and she did not know whether her letters could reach him, or if he were even aware of what had become of her.  People came with passports from England to join the exiled Court, but no one returned thither, or she would even have offered herself as a waiting-maid to have a chance of going back.  Lady Strickland would have forwarded her, but no means or opportunity offered, and there was nothing for it but to look to the time that everybody declared to be approaching when the King was to be reinstated, and they would all go home in triumph.

Meanwhile Anne Woodford felt herself a supernumerary, treated with civility, and no more, as she ate her meals with a very feminine Court, for almost all the gentlemen were in Ireland with the King.  She had a room in the entresol to herself, in Pauline’s absence, and here she could in turn sit and dream, or mend and furbish up her clothes—a serious matter now—or read the least scrap of printed matter in her way, for books were scarcer than even at Whitehall; and though her ‘mail’ had safely been forwarded by Mr. Labadie, some jealous censor had abstracted her Bible and Prayer-book.  Probably there was no English service anywhere in France at that time, unless among the merchants at Bordeaux—certainly neither English nor Reformed was within her reach—and she had to spend her Sundays in recalling all she could, and going over it, feeling thankful to the mother who had made her store Psalms, Gospels, and Collects in her memory week by week.

She was so far forgotten that active attempts to convert her had been dropped, except by Pauline.  Perhaps it was thought that isolation would be effectual, but in fact the sight of popular Romanism not kept in check by Protestant surroundings shocked her, and made her far more averse to change than when she saw it at its best at Whitehall.  In fine, the end of her ambition had been neglect and poverty, and the real service that she had rendered was unacknowledged, and marred by that momentary alarm.  No wonder she felt sore.

She had never once been to Paris, and seldom beyond the gardens, which happily were free in the absence of the Queen, and always had secluded corners apart from the noble terraces, safe from the intrusion of idle gallants.  Anne had found a sort of bower of her own, shaded by honeysuckles and wild roses, where she could sit looking over the slopes and the windings of the Seine and indulge her musings and longings.

The lonely life brought before her all the anxieties that had been stifled for the time by the agitations of the escape.  Again and again she lived over the scene in the ruins.  Again and again she recalled those two strange appearances, and shivering at the thought of the anniversary that was approaching in another month, still felt sometimes that, alive or dead, Peregrine’s would be a home face, and framed to herself imaginary scenes in which she addressed him, and demanded whether he could not rest in his unhallowed grave.  What would Bishop Ken say?  Sometimes even she recollected the strange theory which had made him crave execution from the late King, seven years, yes, a little more than seven years ago, and marvel whether at that critical epoch he had indeed between life and death been snatched away to his native land of faëry.  Imagination might well run riot in the solitary, unoccupied condition to which she was reduced; and she also brooded much over the fragments of doubtful news which reached her.

Something was said of all loyal clergy being expelled and persecuted, and this of course suggested those sufferings of the clergy during the Commonwealth, of which she had often heard, making her very anxious about her uncle, and earnestly long for wings to fly to him.  The Archfields too!  Had Charles returned, and did that secret press upon him as it did upon her?  Did Lucy think herself utterly forgotten and cast aside, receiving no word or message from her friend?  “Perhaps,” thought Anne, “they fancy me sailing about at Court in silks and satins, jewels and curls, and forgetting them all, as I remember Lucy said I should when she first heard that I was going to Whitehall.  Nay, and I even took pleasure in the picture of myself so decked out, though I never, never meant to forget her.  Foolish, worse than foolish, that I was!  And to think that I might now be safe and happy with good Lady Russell, near my uncle and all of them.  I could almost laugh to think how my fine notions of making my fortune have ended in sitting here, neglected, forgotten, banished, almost in rags!  I suppose it was all self-seeking, and that I must take it meekly as no more than I deserve.  But oh, how different! how different is this captivity!  ‘Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away, and be at rest.’  Swallow, swallow! you are sweeping through the air.  Would that my spirit could fly like you! if only for one glimpse to tell me what they are doing.  Ah! there’s some one coming down this unfrequented walk, where I thought myself safe.  A young gentleman!  I must rise and go as quietly as I can before he sees me.  Nay,” as the action following the impulse, she was gathering up her work, “’tis an old abbé with him! no fear!  Abbé?  Nay, ’tis liker to an English clergyman!  Can a banished one have strayed hither?  The younger man is in mourning.  Could it be?  No graver, older, more manly—Oh!”

“Anne!  Anne!  We have found you!”

“Mr. Archfield!  You!”

And as Charles Archfield, in true English fashion, kissed her cheek, Anne fairly choked with tears of joy, and she ever after remembered that moment as the most joyful of her life, though the joy was almost agony.

“This is Mistress Anne Woodford, sir,” said Charles, the next moment.  “Allow me, madam, to present Mr. Fellowes, of Magdalen College.”

Anne held out her hand, and courtesied in response to the bow and wave of the shovel hat.

“How did you know that I was here?” she said.

“Doctor Woodford thought it likely, and begged us to come and see whether we could do anything for you,” said Charles; “and you may believe that we were only too happy to do so.  A lady to whom we had letters, who is half English, the Vicomtesse de Bellaise, was so good as to go to the convent at Poissy and discover for us from some of the suite where you were.”

“My uncle—my dear uncle—is he well?”

“Quite well, when last we heard,” said Charles.  “That was at