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

“M. Barillon tells me that her judge, the Lord Chancellor, was actually forced to commit himself to the Tower to escape being torn to pieces by the populace, and it is since reported that he has there died of grief and shame.  I should think his prison cell must have been haunted by hundreds of ghosts.”

“I pray you, madame! do you believe that there are apparitions?”

“I have heard of none that were not explained by some accident, or else were the produce of an excited brain;” and Anne said no more on that head, though it was a comfort to tell of her own foolish preference for the chances of Court preferment above the security of Lady Russell’s household, and Madame de Bellaise smiled, and said her experience of Courts had not been too agreeable.

And thus they reached Poissy, where Queen Mary Beatrice had separate rooms set apart for visitors, and thus did not see them from behind the grating, but face to face.

“You wish to leave me, signorina,” she said, using the appellation of their more intimate days, as Anne knelt to kiss her hand.  “I cannot wonder.  A poor exile has nothing wherewith to reward the faithful.”

“Ah! your Majesty, that is not the cause; if I were of any use to you or to His Royal Highness.”

“True, signorina; you have been faithful and aided me to the best of your power in my extremity, but while you will not embrace the true faith I cannot keep you about the person of my son as he becomes more intelligent.  Therefore it may be well that you should leave us, until such time as we shall be recalled to our kingdom, when I hope to reward you more suitably.  You loved my son, and he loved you—perhaps you would like to bid him farewell.”

For this Anne was very grateful, and the Prince was sent for by the mother, who was too proud of him to miss any opportunity of exhibiting him to an experienced mother and grandmother like the vicomtesse.  He was a year old, and had become a very beautiful child, with large dark eyes like his mother’s, and when Mrs. Labadie carried him in, he held out his arms to Anne with a cry of glad recognition that made her feel that if she could have been allowed the charge of him she could hardly have borne to part with him.  And when the final leave-taking came, the Queen made his little hand present her with a little gold locket, containing his soft hair, with a J in seed pearls outside, in memory, said Mary Beatrice, of that night beneath the church wall.

“Ah, yes, you had your moment of fear, but we were all in terror, and you hushed him well.”

Thus with another kiss to the white hand, returned on her own forehead, ended Anne Jacobina’s Court life.  Never would she be Jacobina again—always Anne or sweet Nancy!  It was refreshing to be so called, when Charles Archfield let the name slip out, then blushed and apologised, while she begged him to resume it, which he was now far too correct to do in public.  Noémi quite readily adopted it.

“I am tired of fine French names,” she said: “an English voice is quite refreshing; and do you call me Naomi, not Noémi.  I did not mind it so much at first, because my father sometimes called me so, after his good old mother, who was bred a Huguenot, but it is like the first step towards home to hear Naomi—Little Omy, as my brothers used to shout over the stairs.”

That was a happy fortnight.  Madame de Bellaise said it would be a shame to let Anne have spent a half year in France and have seen nothing, so she took the party to the theatre, where they saw the Cid with extreme delight.  She regretted that the season was so far advanced that the winter representations of Esther, at St. Cyr by the young ladies, were over, but she invited M. Racine for an evening, when Mr. Fellowes took extreme pleasure in his conversation, and he was prevailed on to read some of the scenes.  She also used her entrée at Court to enable them to see the fountains at Versailles, which Winchester was to have surpassed but for King Charles’s death.

“Just as well otherwise,” remarked Charles to Anne.  “These fine feathers and flowers of spray are beautiful enough in themselves, but give me the clear old Itchen not tortured into playing tricks, with all the trout killed; and the open down instead of all these terraces and marble steps where one feels as cramped as if it were a perpetual minuet.  And look at the cost!  Ah! you will know what I mean when we travel through the country.”

Another sight was from a gallery, whence they beheld the King eat his dinner alone at a silver-loaded table, and a lengthy ceremony it was.  Four plates of soup to begin with, a whole capon with ham, followed by a melon, mutton, salad, garlic, pâté de foie gras, fruit, and confitures.  Charles really grew so indignant, that, in spite of his newly-acquired politeness, Anne, who knew his countenance, was quite glad when she saw him safe out of hearing.

“The old glutton!” he said; “I should like to put him on a diet of buckwheat and sawdust like his poor peasants for a week, and then see whether he would go on gormandising, with his wars and his buildings, starving his poor.  It is almost enough to make a Whig of a man to see what we might have come to.  How can you bear it, madame?”

“Alas! we are powerless,” said the Vicomtesse.  “A seigneur can do little for his people, but in Anjou we have some privileges, and our peasants are better off than those you have seen, though indeed I grieved much for them when first I came among them from England.”

She was perhaps the less sorry that Paris was nearly emptied of fashionable society since her guest had the less chance of uttering dangerous sentiments before those who might have repeated them, and much as she liked him, she was relieved when letters came from her son undertaking to expedite them on their way provided they made haste to forestall any outbreak of the war in that quarter.

Meantime Naomi and Anne had been drawn much nearer together by a common interest.  The door between their rooms having some imperfection in the latch swung open as they were preparing for bed, and Anne was aware of a sound of sobbing, and saw one of the white-capped, short-petticoated femmes de chambre kneeling at Naomi’s feet, ejaculating, “Oh, take me! take me, mademoiselle!  Madame is an angel of goodness, but I cannot go on living a lie.  I shall do something dreadful.”

“Poor Suzanne! poor Suzanne!” Naomi was answering: “I will do what I can, I will see if it is possible—”

They started at the sound of the step, Suzanne rising to her feet in terror, but Naomi, signing to Anne and saying, “It is only Mademoiselle Woodford, a good Protestant, Suzanne.  Go now; I will see what can be done; I know my aunt would like to send a maid with us.”

Then as Suzanne went out with her apron to her eyes, and Anne would have apologised, she said, “Never mind; I must have told you, and asked your help.  Poor Suzanne, she is one of the Rotrous, an old race of Huguenot peasants whom my aunt always protected; she would protect any one, but these people had a special claim because they sheltered our great-grandmother, Lady Walwyn, when she fled after the S. Barthélémi.  When the Edict of Nantes was revoked, the two brothers fled.  I believe she helped them, and they got on board ship, and brought a token to my father; but the old mother was feeble and imbecile, and could not move, and the monks and the dragoons frightened and harassed this poor wench into what they called conforming.  When the mother died, my aunt took Suzanne and taught her, and thought she was converted; and indeed if all Papists were like my aunt it would not be so hard to become one.”

“Oh yes!  I know others like that.”

“But this poor Suzanne, knowing that she only was converted out of terror, has always had an uneasy conscience, and the sight of me has stirred up everything.  She says, though I do not know if it be true, that she was fast drifting into bad habits, when finding my Bible, though it was English and she could not read it, seems to have revived everything, and recalled the teaching of her good old father and pastor, and now she is wild to go to England with us.”

“You will take her?” exclaimed Anne.

“Of course I will.  Perhaps that is what I was sent here for.  I will ask her of my aunt, and I think she will let me have her.  You will keep her secret, Anne.”

“Indeed I will.”

Madame de Bellaise granted Suzanne to her niece without difficulty, evidently guessing the truth, but knowing the peril of the situation too well to make any inquiry.  Perhaps she was disappointed that her endeavours to win the girl to her Church had been ineffectual, but to have any connection with one ‘relapsed’ was so exceedingly perilous that she preferred to ignore the whole subject, and merely let it be known that Suzanne was to accompany Mademoiselle Darpent, and this was only disclosed to the household on the very last morning, after the passports had been procured and the mails packed, and she hushed any remark of the two English girls in such a decided manner as quite startled them by the manifest need of caution.

“We should have come to that if King James were still allowed to have his own way,” said Naomi.

“Oh no! we are too English,” said Anne.

“Our generation might not see it,” said Naomi; “but who can be safe when a Popish king can override law?  Oh, I shall breathe more freely when I am on the other side of the Channel.  My aunt is much too good for this place, and they don’t approve of her, and keep her down.”

“But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me.”

Hamlet.

Floods of tears were shed at the departure of the two young officers of sixteen and seventeen.  The sobs of the household made the English party feel very glad when it was over and the cavalcade was in motion.  A cavalcade it was, for each gentleman rode and so did his body-servant, and each horse had a mounted groom.  The two young officers had besides each two chargers, requiring a groom and horse boy, and each conducted half a dozen fresh troopers to join the army.  A coach was the regulation mode of travelling for ladies, but both the English girls had remonstrated so strongly that Madame de Bellaise had consented to their riding, though she took them and Suzanne the first day’s journey well beyond the ken of the Parisians in her own carriage, as far as Senlis, where there was a fresh parting with the two lads, fewer tears, and more counsel and encouragement, with many fond messages to her son, many to her sister in England, and with affectionate words to her niece a whisper to her to remember that she would not be in a Protestant country till she reached Holland or England.

The last sight they had of the tall dignified figure of the old lady was under the arch of the cathedral, where she was going to pray for their safety.  Suzanne was to ride on a pillion behind the Swiss valet of Mr. Fellowes, whom Naomi had taken into her confidence, and the two young ladies each mounted a stout pony.  Mr. Fellowes had made friends with the Abbé Leblanc, who was of the old Gallican type, by no means virulently set against Anglicanism, and also a highly cultivated man, so that they had many subjects in common, besides the question of English Catholicity.  The two young cousins, Ribaumont and D’Aubépine, were chiefly engaged in looking out for sport, setting their horses to race with one another, and the like, in which Charles Archfield sometimes took a share, but he usually rode with the two young ladies, and talked to them very pleasantly of his travels in Italy, the pictures and antiquities which had made into an interesting reality the studies that he had hated when a boy, also the condition of the country he had seen with a mind which seemed to have opened and enlarged with a sudden start beyond the interests of the next fox-hunt or game at bowls.  All were, as he had predicted, greatly shocked at the aspect of the country through which they passed: the meagre crops ripening