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

intention up to that moment.  In my inexperience I had no doubt but that he was dead, and in a terror and confusion which I regret heartily, I threw him into the vault, and for the sake of my wife and mother bound Miss Woodford to secrecy.  I mounted my horse, and scarcely knowing what I did, rode till I found it ready to drop.  I asked for rest for it in the first wayside public-house I came to.  I lay down meanwhile among some bushes adjoining, and there waited till my horse could take me home again.  I believe it was at the White Horse, near Bishops Waltham, but the place has changed hands since that time, so that I can only prove my words, as you have heard, by the state of my horse when I came home.  For the condition of the remains in the vault I cannot account; I never touched the poor fellow after throwing him there.  My wife died a few hours after my return home, where I remained for a week, nor did I suggest flight, though I gladly availed myself of my father’s suggestion of sending me abroad with a tutor.  Let me add, to remove misconception, that I visited Paris because my tutor, the Reverend George Fellowes, one of the Fellows of Magdalen College expelled by the late King, and now Rector of Portchester, had been asked to provide for Miss Woodford’s return to her home, and he is here to testify that I never had any concern with politics.  I did indeed accompany him to St. Germain, but merely to find the young gentlewoman, and in the absence of the late King and Queen, nor did I hold intercourse with any other person connected with their Court.  After escorting her to Ostend, I went to Hungary to serve in the army of our ally, the Emperor, against the Turks, the enemies of all Christians.  After a severe wound, I have come home, knowing nothing of conspiracies, and I was taken by surprise on arriving here at Winchester at finding that my cousin was on his trial for the unfortunate deed into which I was betrayed by haste and passion, but entirely without premeditation or intent to do more than to defend the young lady.  So that I plead that my crime does not amount to murder from malicious intent; and likewise, that those who charge me with the actual death of Peregrine Oakshott should prove him to be dead.”

Charles’s first witness was Mrs. Lang, his late wife’s ‘own woman,’ who spared him many questions by garrulously declaring ‘what a work’ poor little Madam had made about the rose-coloured sarcenet, causing the pattern to be searched out as soon as she came home from the bonfire, and how she had ‘gone on at’ her husband till he promised to give it to Mistress Anne, and how he had been astir at four o’clock in the morning, and had called to her (Mrs. Lang) to look to her mistress, who might perhaps get some sleep now that she had her will and hounded him out to go over to Portchester about that silk.

Nothing was asked of this witness by the prosecution except the time of Mr. Archfield’s return.  The question of jealousy was passed over.

Of the pond apparition nothing was said.  Anne had told Charles of it, but no one could have proved its identity but Sedley, and his share in it was too painful to be brought forward.  Three other ghost seers were brought forward: Mrs. Fellowes’s maid, the sentry, and the sexton; but only the sexton had ever seen Master Perry alive, and he would not swear to more than that it was something in his likeness; the sentry was already bound to declare it something unsubstantial; and the maid was easily persuaded into declaring that she did not know what she had seen or whether she had seen anything.

There only remained Mr. Fellowes to bear witness of his pupil’s entire innocence of political intrigues, together with a voluntary testimony addressed to the court, that the youth had always appeared to him a well-disposed but hitherto boyish lad, suddenly sobered and rendered thoughtful by a shock that had changed the tenor of his mind.

Mr. Baron Hatsel summed up in his dreary vacillating way.  He told the gentlemen of the jury that young men would be young men, especially where pretty wenches were concerned, and that all knew that there was bitterness where Whig and Tory were living nigh together.  Then he went over the evidence, at first in a tone favourable to the encounter having been almost accidental, and the stroke an act of passion.  But he then added, it was strange, and he did not know what to think of these young sparks and the young gentlewoman all meeting in a lonely place when honest folks were abed, and the hiding in the vault, and the state of the clothes were strange matters scarce agreeing with what either prisoner or witness said.  It looked only too like part of a plot of which some one should make a clean breast.  On the other hand, the prisoner was a fine young gentleman, an only son, and had been fighting the Turks, though it would have been better to have fought the French among his own countrymen.  He had come ingenuously forward to deliver his cousin, and a deliberate murderer was not wont to be so generous, though may be he expected to get off easily on this same plea of misadventure.  If it was misadventure, why did he not try to do something for the deceased, or wait to see whether he breathed before throwing him into this same pit? though, to be sure, a lad might be inexperienced.  For the rest, as to these same sights of the deceased or his likeness, he (the judge) was no believer in ghosts, though he would not say there were no such things, and the gentlemen of the jury must decide whether it was more likely the poor youth was playing pranks in the body, or whether he were haunting in the spirit those who had most to do with his untimely end.  This was the purport, or rather the no-purport, of the charge.

The jury were absent for a very short time, and as it leaked out afterwards, their intelligence did not rise above the idea that the young gentleman was thick with they Frenchies who wanted to bring in murder and popery, warming-pans and wooden shoes.  He called stoning poultry a trifle, so of what was he not capable?  Of course he spited the poor young chap, and how could the fact be denied when the poor ghost had come back to ask for his blood?

So the awful suspense ended with ‘Guilty, my Lord.’

“Of murder or manslaughter?”

“Of murder.”

The prisoner stood as no doubt he had faced Turkish batteries.

The judge asked the customary question whether he had any reason to plead why he should not be condemned to death.

“No, my lord.  I am guilty of shedding Peregrine Oakshott’s blood, and though I declare before God and man that I had no such purpose, and it was done in the heat of an undesigned struggle, I hated him enough to render the sentence no unjust one.  I trust that God will pardon me, if man does not.”

The gentlemen around drew the poor old father out of the court so as not to hear the final sentence, and Anne, half stunned, was taken away by her uncle, and put into the same carriage with him.  The old man held her hands closely and could not speak, but she found voice, “Sir, sir, do not give up hope.  God will save him.  I know what I can do.  I will go to Princess Anne.  She is friendly with the King now.  She will bring me to tell him all.”

Hurriedly she spoke, her object, as it seemed to be that of every one, to keep up such hope and encouragement as to drown the terrible sense of the actual upshot of the trial.  The room at the George was full in a moment of friends declaring that all would go well in the end, and consulting what to do.  Neither Sir Philip nor Dr. Woodford could be available, as their refusal to take the oaths to King William made them marked men.  The former could only write to the Imperial Ambassador, beseeching him to claim the prisoner as an officer of the Empire, though it was doubtful whether this would be allowed in the case of an Englishman born.  Mr. Fellowes undertook to be the bearer of the letter, and to do his best through Archbishop Tenison to let the King know the true bearings of the case.  Almost in pity, to spare Anne the misery of helpless waiting, Dr. Woodford consented to let her go under his escort, starting very early the next morning, since the King might immediately set off for the army in Holland, and the space was brief between condemnation and execution.

Sir Edmund proposed to hurry to Carisbrooke Castle, being happily on good terms with that fiery personage, Lord Cutts, the governor of the Isle of Wight as well as a favoured general of the King, whose intercession might do more than Princess Anne’s.  Moreover, a message came from old Mr. Cromwell, begging to see Sir Edmund.  It was on behalf of Major Oakshott, who entreated that Sir Philip might be assured of his own great regret at the prosecution and the result, and his entire belief that the provocation came from his unhappy son.  Both he and Richard Cromwell were having a petition for pardon drawn up, which Sir Henry Mildmay and almost all the leading gentlemen of Hampshire of both parties were sure to sign, while the sheriff would defer the execution as long as possible.  Pardons, especially in cases of duelling, had been marketable articles in the last reigns, and there could not but be a sigh for such conveniences.  Sir Philip wanted to go at once to the jail, which was very near the inn, but consented on strong persuasion to let his son-in-law precede him.

Anne longed for a few moments to herself, but durst not leave the poor old man, who sat holding her hand, and at each interval of silence saying how this would kill the boy’s mother, or something equally desponding, so that she had to talk almost at random of the various gleams of hope, and even to describe how the little Duke of Gloucester might be told of Philip and sent to the King, who was known to be very fond of him.  It was a great comfort when Dr. Woodford came and offered to pray with them.

By and by Sir Edmund returned, having been making arrangements for Charles’s comfort.  Ordinary prisoners were heaped together and miserably treated, but money could do something, and by application to the High Sheriff, permission had been secured for Charles to occupy a private room, on a heavy fee to the jailor, and for his friends to have access to him, besides other necessaries, purchased at more than their weight in gold.  Sir Edmund brought word that Charles was in good heart; sent love and duty to his father, whom he would welcome with all his soul, but that as Miss Woodford was—in her love and bravery—going so soon to London, he prayed that she might be his first visitor that evening.

There was little more to do than to cross the street, and Sir Edmund hurried her through the flagged and dirty yard, and the dim, foul hall, filled with fumes of smoke and beer, where melancholy debtors held out their hands, idle scapegraces laughed, heavy degraded faces scowled, and evil sounds were heard, up the stairs to a nail-studded door, where Anne shuddered to hear the heavy key turned by the coarse, rude-looking warder, only withheld from insolence by the presence of a magistrate.  Her escort tarried outside, and she saw Charles, his rush-light candle gleaming on his gold lace as he wrote a letter to the ambassador to be forwarded by his father.

He sprang up with outstretched arms and an eager smile.  “My brave sweetheart! how nobly you have done.  Truth and trust.  It did my heart good to hear you.”

Her head was on his shoulder.  She wanted to speak, but could not without loosing the flood of tears.

“Faith entire,” he went on; “and you are still striving for me.”

“Princess Anne is—” she began, then the choking came.

“True!” he said.  “Come, do not expect the worst.  I have not made up my mind to that!  If the ambassador will stir, the King will not be disobliging, though it will probably not be a free pardon, but Hungary for some years to come—and you are coming with me.”

“If you will have one who might be—may have been—your death.  Oh, every word