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

and tried to think himself more so, as in duty bound, she really was fretting and wearing the very life—no, perhaps not the life, but the temper—out of him.  What I believe it to be the cause is, that my father must have been writing to him about that young gentlewoman in the island that he is so set upon, because she would bring a landed estate which would give Charles something to do.  They say that Peregrine Oakshott ran away to escape wedding his cousin; Charley will banish himself for the like cause.”

“He said nothing of it,” said Anne.

“O Anne, I wish you had a landed estate!  You would make him happier than any other, and would love his poor little Phil!  Anne! is it so?  I have guessed!” and Lucy kissed her on each cheek.

“Indeed, indeed I have not promised.  I know it can never, never be—and that I am not fit for him.  Do not speak of it, Lucy?  He spoke of it once as we rode together—”

“And you could not be so false as to tell him you did not love him?  No, you could not?” and Lucy kissed her again.

“No,” faltered Anne; “but I would not do as he wished.  I have given him no troth-plight.  I told him it would never be permitted.  And he said no more, but he put this ring on my finger in the boat without a word.  I ought not to wear it; I shall not.”

“Oh yes, you shall.  Indeed you shall.  No one need understand it but myself, and it makes us sisters.  Yes, Anne, Charley was right.  My father will not consent now, but he will in due time, if he does not hear of it till he wearies to see Charles again.  Trust it to me, my sweet sister that is to be.”

“It is a great comfort that you know,” said Anne, almost moved to tell her the greater and more perilous secret that lay in the background, but withheld by receiving Lucy’s own confidence that she herself was at present tormented by her cousin Sedley’s courtship.  He was still, more’s the pity, she said, in garrison at Portsmouth, but there were hopes of his regiment being ere long sent to the Low Countries, since it was believed to be more than half inclined to King James.  In the meantime he certainly had designs on Lucy’s portion, and as her father never believed half the stories of his debaucheries that were rife, and had a kindness for his only brother’s orphan, she did not feel secure against his yielding so as to provide for Sedley without continuance in the Dutch service.

“I could almost follow the example of running away!” said Lucy.

“I suppose,” Anne ventured to say, faltering, “that nothing has been heard of poor Mr. Oakshott.”

“Nothing at all.  His uncle’s people, who have come home from Muscovy, know nothing of him, and it is thought he may have gone off to the plantations.  The talk is that Mistress Martha is to be handed on to the third brother, but that she is not willing.”  It was clear that there could have been no spectres here, and Lucy went on, “But you have told me nothing yet of yourself and your doings, my Anne.  How well you look, and more than ever the Court lady, even in your old travelling habit.  Is that the watch the King gave you?”

In private and in public there was quite enough to tell on that evening for intimate friends who had not met for a year, and one of whom had gone through so many vicissitudes.  Nor were the other two guests by any means left out of the welcome, and the evening was a very happy one.

Mr. Fellowes intimated his intention of going himself to Walwyn with the news of Miss Darpent’s arrival, and Naomi accepted the invitation to remain at Portchester till she could be sent for from home.

It was not till the next morning that Anne Woodford could be alone with her uncle.  As she came downstairs in the morning she saw him waiting for her; he held out his hands, and drew her out with him into the walled garden that lay behind the house.

“Child! dear child!” said he, “you are welcome to my old eyes.  May God bless you, as He has aided you to be faithful alike to Him and to your King through much trial.”

“Ah, sir!  I have sorely repented the folly and ambition that would not heed your counsel.”

“No doubt, my maid; but the spirit of humility and repentance hath worked well in you.  I fear me, however, that you are come back to further trials, since probably Portchester may be no longer our home.”

“Nor Winchester?”

“Nor Winchester.”

“Then is this new King going to persecute as in the old times you talk of?  He who was brought over to save the Church!”

“He accepts the English Church, my maid, so far as it accepts him.  All beneficed clergy are required to take the oath of allegiance to him before the first of August, now approaching, under pain of losing their preferments.  Many of my brethren, even our own Bishop and Dean, think this merely submission to the powers that be, and that it may be lawfully done; but as I hear neither the Archbishop himself, nor my good old friends Doctors Ken and Frampton can reconcile it to their conscience, any more than my brother Stanbury, of Botley, nor I, to take this fresh oath, while the King to whom we have sworn is living.  Some hold that he has virtually renounced our allegiance by his flight.  I cannot see it, while he is fighting for his crown in Ireland.  What say you, Anne, who have seen him; did he treat his case as that of an abdicated prince?”

“No, sir, certainly not.  All the talk was of his enjoying his own again.”

“How can I then, consistently with my duty and loyalty, swear to this William and Mary as my lawful sovereigns?  I say not ’tis incumbent on me to refuse to live under them a peaceful life, but make oath to them as my King and Queen I cannot, so long as King James shall live.  True, he has not been a friend to the Church, and has wofully trampled on the rights of Englishmen, but I cannot hold that this absolves me from my duty to him, any more than David was freed from duty to Saul.  So, Anne, back must we go to the poverty in which I was reared with your own good father.”

Anne might grieve, but she felt the gratification of being talked to by her uncle as a woman who could understand, as he had talked to her mother.

“The first of August!” she repeated, as if it were a note of doom.

“Yes; I hear whispers of a further time of grace, but I know not what difference that should make.  A Christian man’s oath may not be broken sooner or later.  Well, poverty is the state blessed by our Lord, and it may be that I have lived too much at mine ease; but I could wish, dear child, that you were safely bestowed in a house of your own.”

“So do not I,” said Anne, “for now I can work for you.”

He smiled faintly, and here Mr. Fellowes joined them; a good man likewise, but intent on demonstrating the other side of the question, and believing that the Popish, persecuting King had forfeited his rights, so that there need be no scruple as to renouncing what he had thrown up by his flight.  It was an endless argument, in which each man could only act according to his own conscience, and endeavour that this conscience should be as little biassed as possible by worldly motives or animosity.

Mr. Fellowes started at once with his servant for Walwyn, and Naomi accompanied the two Woodfords to Portchester.  In spite of the cavalier sentiments of her family, Naomi had too much of the spire of her Frondeur father to understand any feeling for duty towards the King, who had so decidedly broken his covenant with his people, and moreover had so abominably treated the Fellows of Magdalen College; and her pity for Anne as a sufferer for her uncle’s whim quite angered her friend into hot defence of him and his cause.

The dear old parsonage garden under the gray walls, the honeysuckle and monthly roses trailing over the porch, the lake-like creek between it and green Portsdown Hill, the huge massive keep and towers, and the masts in the harbour, the Island hills sleeping in blue summer haze—Anne’s heart clave to them more than ever for the knowledge that the time was short and that the fair spot must be given up for the right’s sake.  Certainly there was some trepidation at the thought of the vault, and she had made many vague schemes for ascertaining that which her very flesh trembled at the thought of any one suspecting; but these were all frustrated, for since the war with France had begun, the bailey had been put under repair and garrisoned by a detachment of soldiers, the vault had been covered in, there was a sentry at the gateway of the castle, and the postern door towards the vicarage was fastened up, so that though the parish still repaired to church through the wide court solitary wanderings there were no longer possible, nor indeed safe for a young woman, considering what the soldiery of that period were.

The thought came over her with a shudder as she gazed from her window at the creek where she remembered Peregrine sending Charles and Sedley adrift in the boat.

The tide was out, the mud glistened in the moonlight, but nothing was to be seen more than Anne had beheld on many a summer night before, no phantom was evoked before her eyes, no elfin-like form revealed his presence, nor did any spirit take shape to upbraid her with his unhallowed grave, so close at hand.

No, but Naomi Darpent, yearning for sympathy, came to her side, caressed her on that summer night, and told her that Mr. Fellowes had gone to ask her of her father, and though she could never love again as she had once loved, she thought if her parents wished it, she could be happy with so good a man.

CHAPTER XXIV
In The Moonlight

I have had a dream this evening,
While the white and gold were fleeting,
But I need not, need not tell it.
Where would be the good?

Requiescat in Pace.—JEAN INGELOW.

Anne Woodford sat, on a sultry summer night, by the open window in Archfield House at Fareham, busily engaged over the tail of a kite, while asleep in a cradle in the corner of the room lay a little boy, his apple-blossom cheeks and long flaxen curls lying prone upon his pillow as he had tossed when falling asleep in the heat.

The six years since her return had been eventful.  Dr. Woodford had adhered to his view that his oath of allegiance could not be forfeited by James’s flight; and he therefore had submitted to be ousted from his preferments, resigning his pleasant prebendal house, and his sea-side home, and embracing poverty for his personal oath’s sake, although he was willing to acquiesce in the government of William and Mary, and perhaps to rejoice that others had effected what he would not have thought it right to do.

Things had been softened to him as regarded his flock by the appointment of Mr. Fellowes to Portchester, which was a Crown living, though there had been great demur at thus slipping into a friend’s shoes, so that Dr. Woodford had been obliged to asseverate that nothing so much comforted him as leaving the parish in such hands, and that he blamed no man for seeing the question of Divine right as he did in common with the Non-jurors.  The appointment opened the way to the marriage with Naomi Darpent, and the pair were happily settled at Portchester.

Dr. Woodford and his niece found a tiny house at Winchester, near the wharf, with the clear Itchen flowing in front and the green hills rising beyond, while in the rear were the ruins of Wolvesey, and the buildings of the Cathedral and College.  They retained no servant except black Hans, poor Peregrine’s legacy, who was an excellent cook, and capable of all that Anne could not accomplish in her hours of freedom.

It was a fall indeed from her ancient aspirations, though there was still that bud of hope within her heart.  The united means of uncle and niece were so scanty that she was fain to offer her services daily at Mesdames Reynaud’s still flourishing school, where the freshness of her continental experiences made her very welcome.

Dr. Woodford occasionally assisted some student preparing for the university, but this was not regular occupation, and it was poorly