Read the book: «A Reputed Changeling», page 13
CHAPTER XVIII
Hallowmas Eve
“This more strange
Than such a murder is.”
Macbeth.
“Bambino mio, bambino mio,” wailed Mary Beatrice, as she pressed her child to her bosom, and murmured to him in her native tongue. “And did they say he was not his mother’s son, his poor mother, whose dearest treasure he is! Oimè, crudeli, crudelissimi! Even his sisters hate him and will not own him, the little jewel of his mother’s heart!”
Anne, waiting in the window, was grieved to have overheard the words which the poor Queen had poured out, evidently thinking no one near could understand her.
That evening there were orders to prepare for a journey to Whitehall the next morning.
“And,” said Hester Bridgeman, “I can tell you why, in all confidence, but I have it from a sure hand. The Prince of Orange is collecting a fleet and army to come and inquire into certain matters, especially into the birth of a certain young gentleman we wot of.”
“How can he have the insolence?” cried Anne.
“’Tis no great wonder, considering the vipers in the Cockpit,” said Hester.
“But what will they do to us?” asked Jane Humphreys in terror.
“Nothing to you, my dear, nor to Portia; you are good Protestants,” said Hester with a sneer.
“Mrs. Royer told me it was for the christening,” said Jane, “and then we shall all have new suits. I am glad we are going back to town. It cannot be so mortal dull as ’tis here, with all the leaves falling—enough to give one the vapours.”
There were auguries on either hand in the palace that if the Prince came it would be only another Monmouth affair, and this made Anne shrink, for she had partaken of the grief and indignation of Winchester at the cruel execution of Lady Lisle, and had heard rumours enough of the progress of the Assize to make her start in horror when called to watch the red-faced Lord Chancellor Jeffreys getting out of his coach.
It really seemed for the time as if the royal household were confident in this impression, though as soon as they were again settled in Whitehall there was a very close examination of the witnesses of the Prince’s birth, and a report printed of their evidence, enough it might be thought to satisfy any one; but Jane Humphreys, who went to spend a day at the Golden Lamb, her father’s warehouse, reported that people only laughed at it.
Anne’s spirit burned at the injustice, and warmed the more towards the Queen and little Prince, whose pretty responses to her caresses could not but win her love. Moreover, Pauline’s example continued to attract her, and Father Crump was a better controversialist, or perhaps a better judge of character, than Père Giverlai, and took her on sides where she was more vulnerable, so as to make her begin to feel unsettled, and wonder whether she were not making a vain sacrifice, and holding out after all against the better way.
The sense of the possible gain, and disgust at the shallow conversions of some around her, helped to keep her back. She could not help observing that while Pauline persuaded, Hester had ceased to persuade, and seemed rather willing to hinder her. Just before the State christening or rather admission into the Church, Lady Powys, in the name of the King and Queen, offered her the post of sub-governess, which really would mean for the present chief playfellow to the little Prince, and would place her on an entirely different platform of society from the comparatively menial one she occupied, but of course on the condition of conformity to Rome.
To be above the familiarity of Jane and Hester was no small temptation, but still she hesitated.
“Madam, I thank you, I thank their Majesties,” she said, “but I cannot do it thus.”
“I see what you mean, Miss Woodford,” said Lady Powys, who was a truly noble woman. “Your motives must be above suspicion even to yourself. I respect you, and would not have made you the offer except by express command, but I still trust that when your disinterestedness is above suspicion you will still join us.”
It was sore mortification when Hester Bridgeman was preferred to the office, for which she was far less fitted, being no favourite with the babe, and being essentially vulgar in tastes and habits, and knowing no language save her own, and that ungrammatically and with an accent which no one could wish the Prince to acquire. Yet there she was, promoted to the higher grade of the establishment and at the christening, standing in the front ranks, while Miss Woodford was left far in the rear among the servants.
A report of the Dutch fleet having been destroyed by a storm had restored the spirits of the Court; and in the nursery very little was known of the feelings of the kingdom at large. Dr. Woodford did not venture on writing freely to his niece, lest he should compromise her, and she only vaguely detected that he was uneasy.
So came All Saints’ Day Eve, when there was to be a special service late in the evening at the Romanised Chapel Royal at St. James’s, with a sermon by a distinguished Dominican, to which all the elder and graver members of the household were eager to go. And there was another very different attraction at the Cockpit, where good-natured Princess Anne had given permission for a supper, to be followed by burning of nuts and all the divinations proper to Hallowmas Eve, to which were invited all the subordinates of the Whitehall establishment who could be spared.
Pauline Dunord was as eager for the sermon as Jane Humphreys was for the supper, and Hester Bridgeman was in an odd mood of uncertainty, evidently longing after the sports, but not daring to show that she did so, and trying to show great desire to hear the holy man preach, together with a polite profession of self-denial in giving up her place in case there should not be room for all. However, as it appeared that even the two chief nurses meant to combine sermon and the latter end of the supper, she was at ease. The foster-mother and one of the Protestant rockers were supposed to be enough to watch over the Prince, but the former, who had been much petted and spoilt since she had been at the palace, and was a young creature, untrained and wilful, cried so much at the idea of missing the merrymaking, that as it was reckoned important to keep her in good humour and good spirits, Mrs. Labadie decided on winking at her absence from the nursery, since Miss Woodford was quite competent to the charge for the short time that both the church-goers and the supper-goers would all be absent together.
“But are you not afraid to stay alone?” asked Mrs. Labadie, with a little compunction.
“What is there to be afraid of?” asked Anne. “There are the sentinels at the foot of the stairs, and what should reach us here?”
“I would not be alone here,” said more than one voice. “Nor I!”—“Nor I!”
“And on this night of all others!” said Hester.
“But why?”
“They say he walks!” whispered Jane in a voice of awe.
“Who walks?”
“The old King?” asked Hester.
“No; the last King,” said Jane.
“No, no: it was Oliver Cromwell—old Noll himself!” put in another voice.
“I tell you, no such thing,” said Jane. “It was the last King. I heard it from them that saw it, at least the lady’s cousin. ’Twas in the long gallery, in a suit of plain black velvet, with white muslin ruffles and cravat quilled very neat. Why do you laugh, Miss Woodford?”
This was too much for Anne, who managed to say, “Who was his laundress?”
“I tell you I heard it from them that told no lies. The gentleman could swear to it. He took a candle to him, and there was nought but the wainscot behind. Think of that.”
“And that we should be living here!” said another voice. “I never venture about the big draughty place alone at night,” said the laundress.
“No! nor I would not for twenty princes,” added the sempstress.
“Nay, I have heard steps,” said Mrs. Royer, “and wailing—wailing. No wonder after all that has happened here. Oh yes, steps as of the guard being turned out!”
“That is like our Squire’s manor-house, where—”
Every one contributed a story, and only the announcement of Her Majesty’s approach put an end to these reminiscences.
Anne held to her purpose. She had looked forward to this time of solitude, for she wanted leisure to consider the situation, and fairly to revolve the pleas by which Father Crump had shaken her, more in feeling than in her reason, and made her question whether her allegiance to her mother and uncle, and her disgust at interested conversions, were not making her turn aside from what might be the only true Church, the Mother of Saints, and therewith perversely give up earthly advancement. But, oh! how to write to her uncle.
The very intention made her imagination and memory too powerful for the consideration of controversy. She went back first to a merry Hallowmas Eve long ago, among the Archfield party and other Winchester friends, and how the nuts had bounced in a manner which made the young ones shout in ecstasy of glee, but seemed to displease some of the elders, and had afterwards been the occasion of her being told that it was all folly, and therewith informed of Charles Archfield’s contract to poor little Alice Fitzhubert. Then came other scenes. All the various ghostly tales she had heard, and as she sat with her knitting in the shaded room with no sound but the soft breathing of her little charge in his cradle, no light save from a shaded lamp and the fire on the hearth, strange thoughts and dreams floated over her; she started at mysterious cracks in the wainscotting from time to time, and beheld in the dark corners of the great room forms that seemed grotesque and phantom-like till she went up to them and resolved them into familiar bits of furniture or gowns and caps of Mrs. Labadie. She repeated half aloud numerous Psalms and bits of poetry, but in the midst would come some disturbing noise, a step or a shout from the street, though the chamber being at the back of the house looking into the Park few of such sounds penetrated thither. She began to think of King Charles’s last walk from St. James’s to Whitehall, and of the fatal window of the Banqueting-hall which had been pointed out to her, and then her thoughts flew back again to that vault in the castle yard, and she saw only too vividly in memory that open vault, veiled partly by nettles and mulleins, which was the unblest, unknown grave of the old playfellow who had so loved her mother and herself. Perhaps she had hitherto more dwelt on and pitied the living than the dead, as one whom fears and prayers still concerned, but now as she thought of the lively sprite-like being who had professed such affection for her, and for whom her mother had felt so much, and recollected him so soon and suddenly cut down and consigned to that dreary darkness, the strange yearning spirit dismissed to the unknown world, instead of her old terror and repulsion, a great tenderness and compunction came over her, and she longed to join those who would in two days more be keeping All Souls’ Day in intercessions for their departed, so as to atone for her past dislike; and there was that sort of feeling about her which can only be described by the word ‘eerie.’ To relieve it Anne walked to the window and undid a small wicket in the shutter, so as to look out into the quiet moonlight park where the trees cast their long shadows on the silvery grass, and there was a great calm that seemed to reach her heart and spirits.
Suddenly, across the sward towards the palace there came the slight, impish, almost one-sided figure, with the peculiar walk, swift though suggestive of a limp, the elfish set of the plume, the foreign adjustment of short cloak. Anne gazed with wide-stretched eyes and beating heart, trying to rally her senses and believe it fancy, when the figure crossed into a broad streak of light cast by the lamp over the door, the face was upturned for a moment. It was deadly pale, and the features were beyond all doubt Peregrine Oakshott’s.
She sprang back from the window, dropped on her knees, with her face hidden in her hands, and was hardly conscious till sounds of the others returning made her rally her powers so as to prevent all inquiries or surmises. It was Mrs. Labadie and Pauline Dunord, the former to see that all was well with the Prince before repairing to the Cockpit.
“How pale you are!” she exclaimed. “Have you seen anything?”
“I—It may be nothing. He is dead!” stammered Anne.
“Oh then, ’tis naught but a maid’s fancies,” said the nurse good-humouredly. “Miss Dunord is in no mind for the sports, so she will stay with His Highness, and you had best come with me and drive the cobwebs out of your brain.”
“Indeed, I thank you, ma’am, but I could not,” said Anne.
“You had best, I tell you, shake these megrims out of your brain,” said Mrs. Labadie; but she was in too great haste not to lose her share of the amusements to argue the point, and the two young women were left together. Pauline was in a somewhat exalted state, full of the sermon on the connection of the Church with the invisible world.
“You have seen one of your poor dead,” she said. “Oh, may it not be that he came to implore you to have pity, and join the Church, where you could intercede and offer the Holy Sacrifice for him?”
Anne started. This seemed to chime in with proclivities of poor Peregrine’s own, and when she thought of his corpse in that unhallowed vault, it seemed to her as if he must be calling on her to take measures for his rest, both of body and of spirit. Yet something seemed to seal her tongue. She could not open her lips on what she had seen, and while Pauline talked on, repeating the sermon which had so deeply touched her feelings, Anne heard without listening to aught besides her own perturbations, mentally debating whether she could endure to reveal the story to Father Crump, if she confessed to him, or whether she should write to her uncle; and she even began to compose the letter in her own mind, with the terrible revelation that must commence it, but every moment the idea became more formidable. How transfer her own heavy burthen to her uncle, who might feel bound to take steps that would cut young Archfield off from parents, sister, child, and home. Or supposing Dr. Woodford disbelieved the apparition of to-night, the whole would be discredited in his eyes, and he might suppose the summer morning’s duel as much a delusion of her fancy as the autumn evening’s phantom, and what evidence had she to adduce save Charles’s despair, Peregrine’s absence, and what there might be in the vault?
Yet if all that Father Crump and Pauline said was true, that dear uncle might be under a fatal delusion, and it might be the best hope for herself—nay, even for that poor restless spirit—to separate herself from them. Here was Pauline talking of the blessedness of being able to offer prayers on ‘All Souls’ Day’ for all those of whose ultimate salvation there were fears, or who might be in a state of suffering. It even startled her as she thought of her mother, whom she always gave thanks for as one departed in faith and fear. Would Father Crump speak of her as one in a state of inevitable ignorance to be expiated in the invisible world? It shocked the daughter as almost profane. Yet if it were true, and prayers and masses could aid her?
Altogether Anne was in a mood on which the voices broke strangely returning from the supper full of news. Jane Humphreys was voluble on her various experiments. The nuts had burnt quietly together, and that was propitious to the Life-guardsman, Mr. Shaw, who had shared hers; but on the other hand, the apple-paring thrown over her shoulder had formed a P, and he whom she had seen in the vista of looking-glasses had a gold chain but neither a uniform nor a P in his name, and Mrs. Buss declared that it meant that she should be three times married, and the last would be an Alderman, if not Lord Mayor; and Mrs. Royer was joking Miss Bridgeman on the I of her apple-paring, which could stand for nothing but a certain Incle among ‘the Cockpit folk,’ who was her special detestation.
Princess Anne and her husband had come down to see the nuts flying, and had laughed enough to split their sides, till Lord Cornbury came in and whispered something to Prince George, who said, “Est il possible?” and spoke to the Princess, and they all went away together. Yes, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been laughing before looked very grave, and went with them.
“Oh!” exclaimed Anne, “is the Bishop of Bath and Wells here?”
“Yes, in spite of his disgrace. I hear he is to preach in your Protestant chapel to-morrow.”
Anne had brought a letter of introduction from her uncle in case she should have any opportunity of seeing his old fellow canon, who had often been kind to her when she was a little girl at Winchester. She was in many minds of hope and fear as to the meeting him or speaking to him, under the consciousness of the possible defection from his Church, and the doubt and dread whether to confide her secret and consult him. However, the extreme improbability of her being able to do so made the yearning for the sight of a Winchester face predominate, and her vigil of the night past made the nursery authorities concede that she had fairly earned her turn to go to church in the forenoon, since she was obstinate enough to want to run after an old heretic so-called Bishop who had so pragmatically withstood His Majesty. Jane Humphreys went too, for though she was not fond of week-day services, any escape from the nursery was welcome, and there was a chance of seeing Lady Churchill’s new mantle.
In this she was disappointed, for none of the grandees were present, indeed it was whispered as the two girls made their way to the chapel, that there was great excitement over the Declaration of the Prince of Orange, which had arrived last night, that he had been invited by the lords spiritual and temporal to take up the cause of the liberties of England, and inquire into the evidence of the birth of the Prince of Wales.
People shrugged their shoulders, but looked volumes, though it was no time nor place for saying more; and when in the chapel, that countenance of Bishop Ken, so beautiful in outward form, so expressive of strength, sweetness, and devotion, brought back such a flood of old associations to Anne, that it was enough to change the whole current of her thoughts and make her her own mother’s child again, even before he opened his mouth. She caught his sweet voice in the Psalms, and closing her eyes seemed to be in the Cathedral once more among those mighty columns and arches; and when he began his sermon, on the text, ‘Let the Saints be joyful with glory, let them rejoice in their beds,’ she found the Communion of Saints in Paradise and on earth knit together in one fellowship as truly and preciously brought home to her as ever it had been to Pauline, and moreover when she thought of her mother, ‘the lurid mist’ was dispelled which had so haunted her the night before.
The longing to speak to him awoke; and as he was quitting the chapel in full procession his kindly eye lit upon her with a look of recognition; and before she had moved from her place, one of the attendant clergy came back by his desire to conduct her to him.
He held out his hand as she courtesied low.
“Mistress Woodford,” he said, “my old friend’s niece! He wrote to me of you, but I have had no opportunity of seeing you before.”
“Oh, my Lord! I was so much longing to see and speak with you.”
“I am lodging at Lambeth,” said the Bishop, “and it is too far to take you with me thither, but perhaps my good brother here,” turning to the chaplain, “can help us to a room where we can be private.”
This was done; the chaplain’s parlour at the Cockpit was placed at their disposal, and there a few kind words from Bishop Ken led to the unburthening of her heavy heart. Of Ken’s replies to the controversial difficulties there is no need to tell. Indeed, ambition was far more her temptation than any real difficulties as to doctrine. Her dissatisfaction at being unable to answer the questions raised by Father Crump was exaggerated as the excuse and cover to herself of her craving for escape from her present subordinate post; and this the Bishop soon saw, and tenderly but firmly drew her to own both this and to confess the ambitious spirit which had led her into this scene of temptation. “It was true indeed,” he said, “that trial by our own error is hardest to encounter, but you have repented, and by God’s grace, my child, I trust you will be enabled to steer your course aright through the trials of loyalty to our God and to our King that are coming upon us all. Ever remember God and the plain duty first, His anointed next. Is there more that you would like to tell me? for you still bear a troubled look, and I have full time.”
Then Anne told him all the strange adventure of Portchester Castle, and even of the apparition of the night before. That gentleness and sympathy seemed to draw out all that was in her heart, and to her surprise, he did not treat the story of that figure as necessarily a delusion. He had known and heard too much of spiritual manifestations to the outward senses to declare that such things could not be.
What she had seen might be explained by one of four hypotheses. It was either a phantom of her brain, and her being fully awake, although recently dwelling on the recollection, rendered that idea less probable, or the young man had not been killed and she had seen him in propriâ personâ.
She had Charles Archfield’s word that the death was certain. He had never been heard of again, and if alive, the walk before Whitehall was the last place where he would be. As to mistaking any one else for him, the Bishop remembered enough of the queer changeling elf to agree with her that it was not a very probable contingency. And if it were indeed a spirit, why should it visit her? There had been one good effect certainly in the revival of home thoughts and turning her mind from the allurements of favour, but that did not seem to account for the spirit seeking her out.
Was it, Anne faltered, a sign that she ought to confess all, for the sake of procuring Christian burial for him. Yet how should she, when she had promised silence to young Archfield? True, it was for his wife’s sake, and she was dead; but there were the rest of his family and himself to be considered. What should she do?
The Bishop thought a little while, then said that he did not believe that she ought to speak without Mr. Archfield’s consent, unless she saw any one else brought into danger by her silence. If it ever became possible, he thought, that she should ascertain whether the body were in the vault, and if so, it might be possible to procure burial for it, perhaps without identification, or at any rate without making known what could only cause hostility and distress between the two families, unless the young man himself on his return should make the confession. This the Bishop evidently considered the sounder, though the harder course, but he held that Anne had no right to take the initiative. She could only wait, and bear her load alone; but the extreme kindness and compassion with which he talked to her soothed and comforted her so much that she felt infinitely relieved and strengthened when he dismissed her with his blessing, and far happier and more at peace than she had been since that terrible summer morning, though greatly humbled, and taught to repent of her aspirations after earthly greatness, and to accept her present condition as a just retribution, and a trial of constancy.
