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

stay at hame,
  For dark’s the gate ye have to go,
For there’s a maike down yonder glen
  Hath frightened me and many me.”

HOGG.

“Nana,” said little Philip in a meditative voice, as he looked into the glowing embers of the hall fire, “when do fairies leave off stealing little boys?”

“I do not believe they ever steal them, Phil.”

“Oh, yes they do;” and he came and stood by her with his great limpid blue eyes wide open.  “Goody Dearlove says they stole a little boy, and his name was Penny Grim.”

“Goody Dearlove is a silly old body to tell my boy such stories,” said Anne, disguising how much she was startled.

“Oh, but Ralph Huntsman says ’tis true, and he knew him.”

“How could he know him when he was stolen?”

“They put another instead,” said the boy, a little puzzled, but too young to make his story consistent.  “And he was an elf—a cross spiteful elf, that was always vexing folk.  And they stole him again every seven years.  Yes—that was it—they stole him every seven years.”

“Whom, Phil; I don’t understand—the boy or the elf?” she said, half-diverted, even while shocked at the old story coming up in such a form.

“The elf, I think,” he said, bending his brows; “he comes back, and then they steal him again.  Yes; and at last they stole him quite—quite away—but it is seven years, and Goody Dearlove says he is to be seen again!”

“No!” exclaimed Anne, with an irrepressible start of dismay.  “Has any one seen him, or fancied so?” she added, though feeling that her chance of maintaining her rational incredulity was gone.

“Goody Dearlove’s Jenny did,” was the answer.  “She saw him stand out on the beach at night by moonlight, and when she screamed out, he was gone like the snuff of a candle.”

“Saw him?  What was he like?” said Anne, struggling for the dispassionate tone of the governess, and recollecting that Jenny Dearlove was a maid at Portchester Rectory.

“A little bit of a man, all twisty on one side, and a feather sticking out.  Ralph said they always were like that;” and Phil’s imitation, with his lithe, graceful little figure, of Ralph’s clumsy mimicry was sufficient to show that there was some foundation for this story, and she did not answer at once, so that he added, “I am seven, Nana; do you think they will get me?”

“Oh no, no, Phil, there’s no fear at all of that.  I don’t believe fairies steal anybody, but even old women like Goody Dearlove only say they steal little tiny babies if they are left alone before they are christened.”

The boy drew a long breath, but still asked, “Was Penny Grim a little baby?”

“So they said,” returned Anne, by no means interfering with the name, and with a quailing heart as she thought of the child’s ever knowing what concern his father had in that disappearance.  She was by no means sorry to have the conversation broken off by Sir Philip’s appearance, booted and buskined, prepared for an expedition to visit a flock of sheep and their lambs under the shelter of Portsdown Hill, and in a moment his little namesake was frisking round eager to go with grandpapa.

“Well, ’tis a brisk frost.  Is it too far for him, think you, Mistress Anne?”

“Oh no, sir; he is a strong little man and a walk will only be good for him, if he does not stand still too long and get chilled.  Run, Phil, and ask nurse for your thick coat and stout shoes and leggings.”

“His grandmother only half trusts me with him,” said Sir Philip, laughing.  “I tell her she was not nearly so careful of his father.  I remember him coming in crusted all over with ice, so that he could hardly get his clothes off, but she fancies the boy may have some of his poor mother’s weakliness about him.”

“I see no tokens of it, sir.”

“Grand-dames will be anxious, specially over one chick.  Heigho!  Winter travelling must be hard in Germany, and posts do not come.  How now, my man!  Are you rolled up like a very Russian bear?  The poor ewes will think you are come to eat up their lambs.”

“I’ll growl at them,” said Master Philip, uttering a sound sufficient to disturb the nerves of any sheep if he were permitted to make it, and off went grandfather and grandson together, Sir Philip only pausing at the door to say—

“My lady wants you, Anne; she is fretting over the delay.  I fear, though I tell her it bodes well.”

Anne watched for a moment the hale old gentleman briskly walking on, the merry child frolicking hither and thither round him, and the sturdy body-servant Ralph, without whom he never stirred, plodding after, while Keeper, the only dog allowed to follow to the sheepfolds, marched decorously along, proud of the distinction.  Then she went up to Lady Archfield, who could not be perfectly easy as to the precious grandchild being left to his own devices in the cold, while Sir Philip was sure to run into a discussion with the shepherd over the turnips, which were too much of a novelty to be approved by the Hampshire mind.  It was quite true that she could not watch that little adventurous spirit with the same absence of anxiety as she had felt for her own son in her younger days, and Anne had to devote herself to soothing and diverting her mind, till Dr. Woodford knocked at the door to read and converse with her.

The one o’clock dinner waited for the grandfather and grandson, and when they came at last, little Philip looked somewhat blue with cold and more subdued than usual, and his grandfather observed severely that he had been a naughty boy, running into dangerous places, sliding where he ought not, and then muttered under his breath that Sedley ought to have known better than to have let him go there.

Discipline did not permit even a darling like little Phil to speak at dinner-time; but he fidgeted, and the tears came into his eyes, and Anne hearing a little grunt behind Sir Philip’s chair, looked up, and was aware that old Ralph was mumbling what to her ears sounded like: ‘Knew too well.’  But his master, being slightly deaf, did not hear, and went on to talk of his lambs and of how Sedley had joined them on the road, but had not come back to dinner.

Phil was certainly quieter than usual that afternoon, and sat at Anne’s feet by the fire, filling little sacks with bran to be loaded on his toy cart to go to the mill, but not chattering as usual.  She thought him tired, and hearing a sort of sigh took him on her knee, when he rested his fair little head on her shoulder, and presently said in a low voice—

“I’ve seen him.”

“Who?  Not your father?  Oh, my child!” cried Anne, in a sudden horror.

“Oh no—the Penny Grim thing.”

“What?  Tell me, Phil dear, how or where?”

“By the end of the great big pond; and he threw up his arms, and made a horrid grin.”  The boy trembled and hid his face against her.

“But go on, Phil.  He can’t hurt you, you know.  Do tell me.  Where were you?”

“I was sliding on the ice.  Grandpapa was ever so long talking to Bill Shepherd, and looking at the men cutting turnips, and I got cold and tired, and ran about with Cousin Sedley till we got to the big pond, and we began to slide, and the ice was so nice and hard—you can’t think.  He showed me how to take a good long slide, and said I might go out to the other end of the pond by the copse, by the great old tree.  And I set off, but before I got there, out it jumped, out of the copse, and waved its arms, and made that face.”

He cowered into her bosom again and almost cried.  Anne knew the place, and was ready to start with dismay in her turn.  It was such a pool as is frequent in chalk districts—shallow at one end, but deep and dangerous with springs at the other.

“But, Phil dear,” she said, “it was well you were stopped; the ice most likely would have broken at that end, and then where would Nana’s little man have been?”

“Cousin Sedley never told me not,” said the boy in self-defence; “he was whistling to me to go on.  But when I tumbled down Ralph and grandpapa and all did scold me so—and Cousin Sedley was gone.  Why did they scold me, Nana?  I thought it was brave not to mind danger—like papa.”

“It is brave when one can do any good by it, but not to slide on bad ice, when one must be drowned,” said Anne.  “Oh, my dear, dear little fellow, it was a blessed thing you saw that, whatever it was!  But why do you call it Pere—Penny Grim?”

“It was, Nana!  It was a little man—rather.  And one-sided looking, with a bit of hair sticking out, just like the picture of Riquet-with-a-tuft in your French fairy-book.”

This last was convincing to Anne that the child must have seen the phantom of seven years ago, since he was not repeating the popular description he had given her in the morning, but one quite as individual.  She asked if grandpapa had seen it.

“Oh no; he was in the shed, and only came out when he heard Ralph scolding me.  Was it a wicked urchin come to steal me, Nana?”

“No, I think not,” she answered.  “Whatever it was, I think it came because God was taking care of His child, and warning him from sliding into the deep pool.  We will thank him, Phil.  ‘He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’”  And to that verse she soothed the tired child till he fell asleep, and she could lay him on the settle, and cover him with a cloak, musing the while on the strange story, until presently she started up and repaired to the buttery in search of the old servant.

“Ralph, what is this Master Philip tells me?” she asked.  “What has he seen?”

“Well, Mistress Anne, that is what I can’t tell—no, not I; but I knows this, that the child has had a narrow escape of his precious life, and I’d never trust him again with that there Sedley—no, not for hundreds of pounds.”

“You really think, Ralph—?”

“What can I think, ma’am?  When I finds he’s been a-setting that there child to slide up to where he’d be drownded as sure as he’s alive, and you see, if we gets ill news of Master Archfield (which God forbid), there’s naught but the boy atween him and this here place—and he over head and ears in debt.  Be it what it might that the child saw, it saved the life of him.”

“Did you see it?”

“No, Mistress Anne; I can’t say as I did.  I only heard the little master cry out as he fell.  I was in the shed, you see, taking a pipe to keep me warm.  And when I took him up, he cried out like one dazed.  ’Twas Penny Grim, Ralph!  Keep me.  He is come to steal me.”  But Sir Philip wouldn’t hear nothing of it, only blamed Master Phil for being foolhardy, and for crying for the fall, and me for letting him out of sight.”

“And Mr. Sedley—did he see it?”

“Well, mayhap he did, for I saw him as white as a sheet and his eyes staring out of his head; but that might have been his evil conscience.”

“What became of him?”

“To say the truth, ma’am, I believe he be at the Brocas Arms, a-drowning of his fright—if fright it were, with Master Harling’s strong waters.”

“But this apparition, this shape—or whatever it is?  What put it into Master Philip’s head?  What has been heard of it?”

Ralph looked unwilling.  “Bless you, Mistress Anne, there’s been some idle talk among the women folk, as how that there crooked slip of Major Oakshott’s, as they called Master Perry or Penny, and said was a changeling, has been seen once and again.  Some says as the fairies have got him, and ’tis the seven year for him to come back again.  And some says that he met with foul play, and ’tis the ghost of him, but I holds it all mere tales, and I be sure ’twere nothing bad as stopped little master on that there pond.  So I be.”

Anne could not but be of the same mind, but her confusion, alarm, and perplexity were great.  It seemed strange, granting that this were either spirit or elf connected with Peregrine Oakshott, that it should interfere on behalf of Charles Archfield’s child, and on the sweet hypothesis that a guardian angel had come to save the child, it was