A Reputed Changeling

But Sir Philip, who had started up at the opening of the door, had no sooner glanced at the packet than he cried out, “’Tis not his hand!” and when he tried to break the heavy seals and loosen the string, his hands shook so much that he pushed it over to Anne, saying, “You open it; tell me if my boy is dead.”

Anne’s alarm took the course of speed.  She tore off the wrapper, and after one glance said, “No, no, it cannot be the worst; here is something from himself at the end.  Here, sir.”

“I cannot!  I cannot,” said the poor old man, as the tears dimmed his spectacles, and he could not adjust them.  “Read it, my dear wench, and let me know what I am to tell his poor mother.”

And he sank into a chair, holding between his knees his little grandson, who stood gazing with widely-opened blue eyes.

“He sends love, duty, blessing.  Oh, he talks of coming home, so do not fear, sir!” cried Anne, a vivid colour on her cheeks.

“But what is it?” asked the father.  “Tell me first—the rest after.”

“It is in the side—the left side,” said Anne, gathering up in her agitation the sense of the crabbed writing as best she could.  “They have not extracted the bullet, but when they have, he will do well.”

“God grant it!  Who writes?”

“Norman Graham of Glendhu—captain in his K. K. Regiment of Volunteer Dragoons.  That’s his great friend!  Oh, sir, he has behaved so gallantly!  He got his wound in saving the colours from the Turks, and kept his hands clutched over them as his men carried him out of the battle.”

Philip gave another little spring, and his grandfather bade Anne read the letter to him in detail.

It told how the Imperial forces had met a far superior number of Turks at Lippa, and had sustained a terrible defeat, with the loss of their General Veterani, how Captain Archfield had received a scimitar wound in the cheek while trying to save his commander, but had afterwards dashed forward among the enemy, recovered the colours of the regiment, and by a desperate charge of his fellow-soldiers, who were devotedly attached to him, had been borne off the field with a severe wound on the left side.  Retreat had been immediately necessary, and he had been taken on an ammunition waggon along rough roads to the fortress called the Iron Gates of Transylvania, whence this letter was written, and sent by the messenger who was to summon the Elector of Saxony to the aid of the remnant of the army.  It had not yet been possible to probe the wound, but Charles gave a personal message, begging his parents not to despond but to believe him recovering, so long as they did not see his servant return without him, and he added sundry tender and dutiful messages to his parents, and a blessing to his son, with thanks for the pretty letter he had not been able to answer (but which, his friend said, was lying spread on his pillow, not unstained with blood), and he also told his boy always to love and look up to her who had ever been as a mother to him.  Anne could hardly read this, and the scrap in feeble irregular lines she handed to Sir Philip.  It was—

With all my heart I entreat pardon for all the errors that have grieved you.  I leave you my child to comfort you, and mine own true love, whom yon will cherish.  She will cherish you as a daughter, as she will be, with your consent, if God spares me to come home.  The love of all my soul to her, my mother, sister, and you.”

There was a scrawl for conclusion and signature, and Captain Graham added—

Writing and dictating have greatly exhausted him.  He would have said more, but he says the lady can explain much, and he repeats his urgent entreaties that you will take her to your heart as a daughter, and that his son will love and honour her.

There was a final postscript—

The surgeon thinks him better for having disburthened his mind.

“My child,” said Sir Philip, with a long sigh, looking up at Anne, who had gathered the boy into her arms, and was hiding her face against his little awe-struck head, “my child, have you read?”

“No,” faltered Anne.

“Read then.”  And as she would have taken it, he suddenly drew her into his embrace and kissed her as the eyes of both overflowed.  “My poor girl!” he said, “this is as hard to you as to us!  Oh, my brave boy!” and he let her lay her head on his shoulder and held her hand as they wept together, while little Phil stared for a moment or two at so strange a sight and then burst out with a great cry—

“You shall not cry! you shall not! my papa is not dead!” and he stamped his little foot.  “No, he isn’t.  He will get well; the letter said so, and I will go and tell grandmamma.”

The need of stopping this roused them both; Sir Philip, heavily groaning, went away to break the tidings to his wife, and Anne went down on her knees on the hearth to caress the boy, and help him to understand his father’s state and realise the valorous deeds that would always be a crown to him, and which already made the little fellow’s eye flash and his fair head go higher.

By and by she was sent for to Lady Archfield’s room, and there she had again to share the grief and the fears and try to dwell on the glory and the hopes.  When in a calmer moment the parents interrogated her on what had passed with Charles, it was not in the spirit of doubt and censure, but rather as dwelling on all that was to be told of one whom alike they loved, and finally Sir Philip said, “I see, dear child, I would not believe how far it had gone before, though you tried to tell me.  Whatever betide, you have won a daughter’s place.”

It was true that naturally a far more distinguished match would have been sought for the heir, and he could hardly have carried out his purpose without more opposition than under their present feelings, his parents supposed themselves likely to make, but they really loved Anne enough to have yielded at last; and Lady Nutley, coming home with a fuller knowledge of her brother’s heart, prevented any reaction, and Anne was allowed full sympathies as a betrothed maiden, in the wearing anxiety that continued in the absence of all intelligence.  On the principle of doing everything to please him, she was even encouraged to write to Charles in the packet in which he was almost implored to recover, though all felt doubts whether he were alive even while the letters were in hand, and this doubt lasted long and long.  It was all very well to say that as long as the servant did not return his master must be safe—perhaps himself on the way home; but the journey from Transylvania was so long, and there were so many difficulties in the way of an Englishman, that there was little security in this assurance.  And so the winter set in while the suspense lasted; and still Dr. Woodford spoke Charles’s name in the intercessions in the panelled household chapel, and his mother and Anne prayed together and separately, and his little son morning and evening entreated God to “Bless papa, and make him well, and bring him home.”

Thus passed more than six weeks, during which Sir Philip’s attention was somewhat diverted from domestic anxieties by an uninvited visit to Portchester from Mr. Charnock, who had once been a college mate of Mr. Fellowes, and came professing anxiety, after all these years, to renew the friendship which had been broken when they took different sides on the election of Dr. Hough to the Presidency of Magdalen College.  From his quarters at the Rectory Mr. Charnock had gone over to Fareham, and sounded Sir Philip on the practicability of a Jacobite rising, and whether he and his people would join it.  The old gentleman was much distressed, his age would not permit him to exert himself in either cause, and he had been too much disturbed by James’s proceedings to feel desirous of his restoration, though his loyal heart would not permit of his opposing it, and he had never overtly acknowledged William of Orange as his sovereign.

He could only reply that in the present state of his family he neither could nor would undertake anything, and he urgently pleaded against any insurrection that could occasion a civil war.

There was reason to think that Sedley had no hesitation in promising to use all his influence over his uncle’s tenants, and considerably magnifying their extremely small regard to him—nay, probably, dwelling on his own expectations.

At any rate, even when Charnock was gone, Sedley continued to talk big of the coming changes and his own distinguished part in them.  Indeed one very trying effect of the continued alarm about Charles was that he took to haunting the place, and report declared that he had talked loudly and coarsely of his cousin’s death and his uncle’s dotage, and of his soon being called in to manage the property for the little heir—insomuch that Sir Edmund Nutley thought it expedient to let him know that Charles, on going on active service soon after he had come of age, had sent home a will, making his son, who was a young gentleman of very considerable property on his mother’s side, ward to his grandfather first, and then to Sir Edmund Nutley himself and to Dr. Woodford.

CHAPTER XXVI

The Legend Of Penny Grim

“O dearest Marjorie, 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 in a most unaccountable form.

And more pressing than any such mysterious idea was the tangible horror of Ralph’s suggestion, too well borne out by the boy’s own unconscious account of the adventure.  It was too dreadful, too real a peril to be kept to herself, and she carried the story to her uncle on his return, but without speaking of the spectral warning.  Not only did she know that he would not attend to it, but the hint, heard for the first time, that Peregrine was supposed to have met with foul play, sealed her lips, just when she still was hoping against hope that Charles might be on the way home.  But that Ralph believed, and little Philip’s own account confirmed, that his cousin had incited the little heir to the slide that would have been fatal save for his fall, she told with detail, and entreated that the grandfather might be warned, and some means be found of ensuring the safety of her darling, the motherless child!

To her disappointment Dr. Woodford was not willing to take alarm.  He did not think so ill of Sedley as to believe him capable of such a secret act of murder, and he had no great faith in Ralph’s sagacity, besides that he thought his niece’s nerves too much strained by the long suspense to be able to judge fairly.  He thought it would be cruel to the grandparents, and unjust to Sedley, to make such a frightful suggestion without further grounds during their present state of anxiety, and as to the boy’s safety, which Anne pleaded with an uncontrollable passion of tears, he believed that it was provided for by watchfulness on the part of his two constant guardians, as well as himself, since, even supposing the shocking accusation to be true, Sedley would not involve himself in danger of suspicion, and it was already understood that he was not a fit companion for his little cousin to be trusted with.  Philip had already brought home words and asked questions that distressed his grandmother, and nobody was willing to leave him alone with the ex-lieutenant.  So again the poor maiden had to hold her peace under an added burthen of anxiety and many a prayer.

When the country was ringing with the tidings of Sir George Barclay’s conspiracy for the assassination of William III, it was impossible not to hope that Sedley’s boastful tongue might have brought him sufficiently under suspicion to be kept for a while under lock and key; but though he did not appear at Fareham, there was reason to suppose that he was as usual haunting the taverns and cockpits of Portsmouth.

No one went much abroad that winter.  Sir Philip, perhaps from anxiety and fretting, had a fit of the gout, and Anne kept herself and her charge within the garden or the street of the town.  In fact there was a good deal of danger on the roads.  The neighbourhood of the seaport was always lawless, and had become more so since Sir Philip had ceased to act as Justice of the Peace, and there were reports of highway robberies of an audacious kind, said to be perpetrated by a band calling themselves the Black Gang, under a leader known as Piers Pigwiggin, who were alleged to be half smuggler, half Jacobite, and to have their headquarters somewhere in the back of the Isle of Wight, in spite of the Governor, the terrible Salamander, Lord Cutts, who was, indeed, generally absent with the army.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Vault

“Heaven awards the vengeance due.”COWPER.

The weary days had begun to lengthen before the door of the hall was flung open, and little Phil, forgetting his bow at the door, rushed in, “Here’s a big packet from foreign parts!  Harry had to pay ever so much for it.”