A Reputed Changeling

It was Peregrine Oakshott with his brother Robert, and she could hardly tell how in a few seconds she had been squeezed through the crowd, and stood in the inn-yard, in a comparatively free space, for a groat was a prohibitory charge to the vulgar.

“Peregrine!  Master Oakshott!”  They heard an exclamation of pleasure, at which Peregrine shrugged his shoulders and looked expressively at Anne, before turning to receive the salutations of an elderly gentleman and a tall young woman, very plainly but handsomely clad in mourning deeper than his own.  She was of a tall, gaunt, angular figure, and a face that never could have been handsome, and now bore evident traces of smallpox in redness and pits.

Dr. Woodford knew the guardian Mr. Browning, and his ward Mistress Martha and Mistress Anne Jacobina were presented to one another.  The former gave a good-humoured smile, as if perfectly unconscious of her own want of beauty, and declared she had hoped to meet all the rest here, especially Mistress Anne Woodford, of whom she had heard so much.  There was just a little patronage about the tone which repelled the proud spirit that was in Anne, and in spite of the ordinary dread and repulsion she felt for Peregrine, she was naughty enough to have the feeling of a successful beauty when Peregrine most manifestly turned away from the heiress in her silk and velvet to do the honours of the exhibition to the parson’s niece.

The elephant was fastened by the leg to a post, which perhaps he could have pulled up, had he thought it worth his while, but he was well contented to wave his trunk about and extend its clever finger to receive contributions of cakes and apples, and he was too well amused to resort to any strong measures.  The tiger, to Anne’s relief, proved to be only a stuffed specimen.  Peregrine, who had seen a good many foreign animals in Holland, where the Dutch captains were in the habit of bringing curiosities home for the delectation of their families in their Lusthausen, was a very amusing companion, having much to tell about bird and beast, while Robert stood staring with open mouth.  The long-legged secretary and the beautiful doves were, however, only stuffed, but Anne was much entertained at second hand with the relation of the numerous objects, which on the word of a Leyden merchant had been known to disappear in the former bird’s capacious crop, and with stories of the graceful dancing of the cobra, though she was not sorry that the present specimen was only visible in a bottle of arrack, where his spectacled hood was scarcely apparent.  Presently a well known shrill young voice was heard.  “Yes, yes, I know I shall swoon at that terrible tiger!  Oh, don’t!  I can’t come any farther.”

“Why, you would come, madam,” said Charles.

“Yes, yes! but—oh, there’s a two-tailed monster!  I know it is the tiger!  It is moving!  I shall die if you take me any farther.”

“Plague upon your folly, madam!  It is only the elephant,” said a gruffer, rude voice.

“Oh, it is dreadful!  ’Tis like a mountain!  I can’t!  Oh no, I can’t!”

“Come, madam, you have brought us thus far, you must come on, and not make fools of us all,” said Charles’s voice.  “There’s nothing to hurt you.”

Anne, understanding the distress and perplexity, here turned back to the passage into the court, and began persuasively to explain to little Mrs. Archfield that the tiger was dead, and only a skin, and that the elephant was the mildest of beasts, till she coaxed forward that small personage, who had of course never really intended to turn back, supported and guarded as she was by her husband, and likewise by a tall, glittering figure in big boots and a handsome scarlet uniform and white feather who claimed her attention as he strode into the court.  “Ha!  Mistress Anne and the Doctor on my life.  What, don’t you know me?”

“Master Sedley Archfield!” said the Doctor; “welcome home, sir!  ’Tis a meeting of old acquaintance.  You and this gentleman are both so much altered that it is no wonder if you do not recognise one another at once.”

“No fear of Mr. Perry Oakshott not being recognised,” said Sedley Archfield, holding out his hand, but with a certain sneer in his rough voice that brought Peregrine’s eyebrows together.  “Kenspeckle enough, as the fools of Whigs say in Scotland.”

“Are you long from Scotland, sir?” asked Dr. Woodford, by way of preventing personalities.

“Oh ay, sir; these six months and more.  There’s not much more sport to be had since the fools of Cameronians have been pretty well got under, and ’tis no loss to be at Hounslow.”

“And oh, what a fright!” exclaimed Mrs. Archfield, catching sight of the heiress.  “Keep her away!  She makes me ill.”

They were glad to divert her attention to feeding the elephant, and she was coquetting a little about making up her mind to approach even the defunct tiger, while she insisted on having the number of his victims counted over to her.  Anne asked for Lucy, to whom she wanted to show the pigeons, but was answered that, “my lady wanted Lucy at home over some matter of jellies and blancmanges.”

Charles shrugged his shoulders a little and Sedley grumbled to Anne.  “The little vixen sets her heart on cates that she won’t lay a finger to make, and poor Lucy is like to be no better than a cook-maid, while they won’t cross her, for fear of her tantrums.”

At that instant piercing screams, shriek upon shriek, rang through the court, and turning hastily round, Anne beheld a little monkey perched on Mrs. Archfield’s head, having apparently leapt thither from the pole to which it was chained.

The keeper was not in sight, being in fact employed over a sale of some commodities within.  There was a general springing to the rescue.  Charles tried to take the creature off, Sedley tugged at the chain fastened to a belt round its body, but the monkey held tight by the curls on the lady’s forehead with its hands, and crossed its legs round her neck, clasping the hands so that the effect of the attempts of her husband and his cousin was only to throttle her, so that she could no longer scream and was almost in a fit, when on Peregrine holding out a nut and speaking coaxingly in Dutch, the monkey unloosed its hold, and with another bound was on his arm.  He stood caressing and feeding it, talking to it in the same tongue, while it made little squeaks and chatterings, evidently delighted, though its mournful old man’s visage still had the same piteous expression.  There was something most grotesque and almost weird in the sight of Peregrine’s queer figure toying with its odd hands which seemed to be in black gloves, and the strange language he talked to it added to the uncanny effect.  Even the Doctor felt it as he stood watching, and would have muttered ‘Birds of a feather,’ but that the words were spoken more gruffly and plainly by Sedley Archfield, who said something about the Devil and his dam, which the good Doctor did not choose to hear, and only said to Peregrine, “You know how to deal with the jackanapes.”

“I have seen some at Leyden, sir.  This is a pretty little beast.”

Pretty!  There was a recoil in horror, for the creature looked to the crowd demoniacal.  Something the same was the sensation of Charles, who, assisted by Anne and Martha, had been rather carrying than leading his wife into the inn parlour, where she immediately had a fit of hysterics—vapours, as they called it—bringing all the women of the inn about her, while Martha and Anne soothed her as best they could, and he was reduced to helplessly leaning out at the bay window.

When the sobs and cries subsided, under cold water and essences without and strong waters within, and the little lady in Martha’s strong arms, between the matronly coaxing of the fat hostess and the kind soothings of the two young ladies, had been restored to something of equanimity, Mistress Martha laid her down and said with the utmost good humour and placidity to the young husband, “Now I’ll go, sir.  She is better now, but the sight of my face might set her off again.”

“Oh, do not say so, madam.  We are infinitely obliged.  Let her thank you.”

But Martha shook her hand and laughed, turning to leave the room, so that he was fain to give her his arm and escort her back to her guardian.

Then ensued a scream.  “Where’s he going?  Mr. Archfield, don’t leave me.”

“He is only taking Mistress Browning back to her guardian,” said Anne.

“Eh? oh, how can he?  A hideous fright!” she cried.

To say the truth, she was rather pleased to have had such a dreadful adventure, and to have made such a commotion, though she protested that she must go home directly, and could never bear the sight of those dreadful monsters again, or she should die on the spot.

“But,” said she, when the coach was at the door, and Anne had restored her dress to its dainty gaiety, “I must thank Master Peregrine for taking off that horrible jackanapes.”

“Small thanks to him,” said Charles crossly.  “I wager it was all his doing out of mere spite.”

“He is too good a beau ever to spite me,” said Mrs. Alice, her head a little on one side.

“Then to show off what he could do with the beast—Satan’s imp, like himself.”

“No, no, Mr. Archfield,” pleaded Anne, “that was impossible; I saw him myself.  He was with that sailor-looking man measuring the height of the secretary bird.”

“I believe you are always looking after him,” grumbled Charles.  “I can’t guess what all the women see in him to be always gazing after him.”

“Because he is so charmingly ugly,” laughed the young wife, tripping out in utter forgetfulness that she was to die if she went near the beasts again.  She met Peregrine half way across the yard with outstretched hands, exclaiming—

“O Mr. Oakshott! it was so good in you to take away that nasty beast.”

“I am glad, madam, to have been of use,” said Peregrine, bowing and smiling, a smile that might explain something of his fascination.  “The poor brute was only drawn, as all of our kind are.  He wanted to see so sweet a lady nearer.  He is quite harmless.  Will you stroke him?  See, there he sits, gazing after you.  Will you give him a cake and make friends?”

“No, no, madam, it cannot be; it is too much,” grumbled Charles; and though Alice had backed at first, perhaps for the pleasure of teasing him, or for that of being the centre of observation, actually, with all manner of pretty airs and graces, she let herself be led forward, lay a timid hand on the monkey’s head, and put a cake in its black fingers, while all the time Peregrine held it fast and talked Dutch to it; and Charles Archfield hardly contained his rage, though Anne endeavoured to argue the impossibility of Peregrine’s having incited the attack; and Sedley blustered that they ought to interfere and make the fellow know the reason why.  However, Charles had sense enough to know that though he might exhale his vexation in grumbling, he had no valid cause for quarrelling with young Oakshott, so he contented himself with black looks and grudging thanks, as he was obliged to let Peregrine hand his wife into her carriage amid her nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

They would have taken Dr. Woodford and his niece home in the coach, but Anne had an errand in the town, and preferred to return by boat.  She wanted some oranges and Turkey figs to allay her mother’s constant thirst, and Peregrine begged permission to accompany them, saying that he knew where to find the best and cheapest.  Accordingly he took them to a tiny cellar, in an alley by the boat camber, where the Portugal oranges certainly looked riper and were cheaper than any that Anne had found before; but there seemed to be an odd sort of understanding between Peregrine and the withered old weather-beaten sailor who sold them, such as rather puzzled the Doctor.

“I hope these are not contraband,” he said to Peregrine, when the oranges had been packed in the basket of the servant who followed them.

Peregrine shrugged his shoulders.

“Living is hard, sir.  Ask no questions.”

The Doctor looked tempted to turn back with the fruit, but such doubts were viewed as ultra scruples, and would hardly have been entertained even by a magistrate such as Sir Philip Archfield.

It was not a time for questions, and Peregrine remained with them till they embarked at the point, asking to be commended to Mrs. Woodford, and hoping soon to come and see both her and poor Hans, he left them.

CHAPTER XI

Proposals

“Hear me, ye venerable core,  As counsel for poor mortals,That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door  For glaikit Folly’s portals;I for their thoughtless, careless sakes  Would here propose defences,Their doucie tricks, their black mistakes,  Their failings and mischances.”BURNS.

For seven years Anne Woodford had kept Lucy Archfield’s birthday with her, and there was no refusing now, though there was more and more unwillingness to leave Mrs. Woodford, whose declining state became so increasingly apparent that even the loving daughter could no longer be blind to it.

The coach was sent over to fetch Mistress Anne to Fareham, and the invalid was left, comfortably installed in her easy-chair by the parlour fire, with a little table by her side, holding a hand-bell, a divided orange, a glass of toast and water, and the Bible and Prayer-book, wherein lay her chief studies, together with a little needlework, which still amused her feeble hands.  The Doctor, divided between his parish, his study, and his garden, had promised to look in from time to time.

Presently, however, the door was gently tapped, and on her call “Come in,” Hans, all one grin, admitted Peregrine Oakshott, bowing low in his foreign, courteous manner, and entreating her to excuse his intrusion, “For truly, madam, in your goodness is my only hope.”

Then he knelt on one knee and kissed the hand she held out to him, while desiring him to speak freely to her.

“Nay, madam, I fear I shall startle you, when I lay before you the only chance that can aid me to overcome the demon that is in me.”

“My poor—”

“Call me your boy, as when I was here seven years ago.  Let me sit at your feet as then and listen to me.”

“Indeed I will, my dear boy,” and she laid her hand on his dark head.  “Tell me all that is in your heart.”

“Ah, dear lady, that is not soon done!  You and Mistress Anne, as you well know, first awoke me from my firm belief that I was none other than an elf, and yet there have since been times when I have doubted whether it were not indeed the truth.”

“Nay, Peregrine, at years of discretion you should have outgrown old wives’ tales.”

“Better be an elf at once—a soulless creature of the elements—than the sport of an evil spirit doomed to perdition,” he bitterly exclaimed.

“Hush, hush!  You know not what you are saying!”

“I know it too well, madam!  There are times when I long and wish after goodness—nay, when Heaven seems open to me—and I resolve and strive after a perfect life; but again comes the wild, passionate dragging, as it were, into all that at other moments I most loathe and abhor, and I become no more my own master.  Ah!”

There was misery in his voice, and he clutched the long hair on each side of his face with his hands.

“St. Paul felt the same,” said Mrs. Woodford gently.

“‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’  Ay, ay! how many times have I not groaned that forth!  And so, if that Father at Turin were right, I am but as Paul was when he was Saul.  Madam, is it not possible that I was never truly baptized?” he cried eagerly.

“Impossible, Peregrine.  Was not Mr. Horncastle chaplain when you were born?  Yes; and I have heard my brother say that both he and your father held the same views as the Church upon baptism.”

“So I thought; but Father Geronimo says that at the best it was but heretical baptism, and belike hastily and ineffectually performed.”

“Put that aside, Peregrine.  It is only a temptation and allurement.”

“It is an allurement you know not how strong,” said the poor youth.  “Could I only bring myself to believe all that Father Geronimo does, and fall down before his Madonnas and saints, then could I hope for a new nature, and scourge away the old”—he set his teeth as he spoke—“till naught remains of the elf or demon, be it what it will.”

“Ah, Peregrine, scourging will not do it, but grace will, and that grace is indeed yours, as is proved by these higher aspirations.”

“I tell you, madam, that if I live on as I am doing now, grace will be utterly stifled, if it ever abode in me at all.  Every hour that I live, pent in by intolerable forms and immeasurable dulness, the maddening temper gains on me!  Nay, I have had to rush out at night and swear a dozen round oaths before I could compose myself to sit down to the endless supper.  Ah, I shock you, madam! but that’s not the worst I am driven to do.”

“Nor the way to bring the better spirit, my poor youth.  Oh, that you would pray instead of swearing!”

“I cannot pray at Oakwood.  My father and Mr. Horncastle drive away all the prayers that ever were in me, and I mean nothing, even though I keep my word to you.”

“I am glad you do that.  While I know you are doing so, I shall still believe the better angel will triumph.”

“How can aught triumph but hatred and disgust where I am pinned down?  Listen, madam, and hear if good spirits have any chance.  We break our fast, ere the sun is up, on chunks of yesterday’s half-dressed beef and mutton.  If I am seen seeking for a morsel not half raw, I am rated for dainty French tastes; and the same with the sour smallest of beer.  I know now what always made me ill-tempered as a child, and I avoid it, but at the expense of sneers on my French breeding, even though my drink be fair water; for wine, look you, is a sinful expense, save for after dinner, and frothed chocolate for a man is an invention of Satan.  The meal is sauced either with blame of me, messages from the farm-folk, or Bob’s exploits in the chase.  Then my father goes his rounds on the farm, and would fain have me with him to stand knee-deep in mire watching the plough, or feeling each greasy and odorous old sheep in turn to see if it be ready for the knife, or gloating over the bullocks or swine, or exchanging auguries with Thomas Vokes on this or that crop.  Faugh!  And I am told I shall never be good for a country gentleman if I contemn such matters!  I say I have no mind to be a country gentleman, whereby I am told of Esau till I am sick of his very name.”

“But surely you have not always to follow on this round?”

“Oh no!  I may go out birding with Bob, who is about as lively as an old jackass, or meet the country boobies for a hunt, and be pointed at as the Frenchman, and left to ride alone; or there’s mine own chamber, when the maids do not see fit to turn me out with their pails and besoms, as they do at least twice a week—I sit there in my cloak and furs (by the way, I am chidden for an effeminate fop if ever I am seen in them).  I would give myself to books, as my uncle counselled, but what think you?  By ill hap Bob, coming in to ask some question, found me studying the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, and hit upon one of the engravings representing the torments of purgatory.  What must he do but report it, and immediately a hue and cry arises that I am being corrupted with Popish books.  In vain do I tell them that their admirable John Milton, the only poet save Sternhold and Hopkins that my father deems not absolute pagan, knew, loved, and borrowed from Dante.  All my books are turned over as ruthlessly as ever Don Quixote’s by the curate and the barber, and whatever Mr. Horncastle’s erudition cannot vouch for is summarily handed over to the kitchen wench to light the fires.  The best of it is that they have left me my classics, as though old Terence and Lucan were lesser heathens than the great Florentine.  However, I have bribed the young maid, and rescued my Dante and Boiardo with small damage, but I dare not read them save with door locked.”

Mrs. Woodford could scarcely shake her head at the disobedience, and she asked if there were really no other varieties.

“Such as fencing with that lubber Robert, and trying to bend his stiff limbs to the noble art of l’escrime.  But that is after dinner work.  There is the mountain of half-raw flesh to be consumed first, and then my father, with Mr. Horncastle and Bob discuss on what they call the news—happy if a poor rogue has been caught by Tom Constable stealing faggots.  ’Tis argument for a week—almost equal to the price of a fat mutton at Portsmouth.  My father and the minister nod in due time over their ale-cup, and Bob and I go our ways till dark, or till the house bell rings for prayers and exposition.  Well, dear good lady, I will not grieve you by telling you how often they make me wish to be again the imp devoid of every shred of self-respect, and too much inured to flogging to heed what my antics might bring on me.”

“I am glad you have that shred of self respect; I hope indeed it is some higher respect.”

“Well, I can never believe that Heaven meant to be served by mortal dullness.  Seven years have only made old Horncastle blow his horn to the same note, only more drearily.”

“I can see indeed that it is a great trial to one used to the life of foreign Courts and to interest in great affairs like you, my poor Peregrine; but what can I say but to entreat you to be patient, try to find interest, and endeavour to win your father’s confidence so that he may accord you more liberty?  Did I not hear that your attention made your mother’s life happier?”

Peregrine laughed.  “My mother!  She has never seen aught but boorishness all her life, and any departure therefrom seems to her unnatural.  I believe she is as much afraid of my courtesy as ever she was of my mischief, and that in her secret heart she still believes me a changeling.  No, Madam Woodford, there is but one way to save me from the frenzy that comes over me.”

“Your father has already been entreated to let you join your uncle.”

“I know it—I know it; but if it were impossible before, that discovery of Dante has made it impossibilissimo, as the Italian would say, to deal with him now.  There is a better way.  Give me the good angel who has always counteracted the evil one.  Give me Mistress Anne!”

“Anne, my Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Woodford in dismay.  “O Peregrine, it cannot be!”

“I knew that would be your first word,” said Peregrine, “but verily, madam, I would not ask it but that I know that I should be another man with her by my side, and that she would have nothing to fear from the evil that dies at her approach.”

“Ah, Peregrine! you think so now; but no man can be sure of himself with any mere human care.  Besides, my child is not of degree to match with you.  Your father would justly be angered if we took advantage of your attachment to us to encourage you in an inclination he could never approve.”

“I tell you, madam—yes, I must tell you all—my madness and my ruin will be completed if I am left to my father’s will.  I know what is hanging over me.  He is only waiting till I am of age—at Midsummer, and the year of mourning is over for poor Oliver—I am sure no one mourns for him more heartily than I—to bind me to Martha Browning.  If she would only bring the plague, or something worse than smallpox, to put an end to it at once!”

“But that would make any such scheme all the more impossible.”

“Listen, madam; do but hear me.  Even as children the very sight of Martha Browning’s solemn face”—Peregrine drew his countenance down into a portentous length—“her horror at the slightest word or sport, her stiff broomstick carriage, all impelled me to the most impish tricks.  And now—letting alone that pock-marks have seamed her grim face till she is as ugly as Alecto—she is a Precisian of the Precisians.  I declare our household is in her eyes sinfully free!  If she can hammer out a text of Scripture, and write her name in characters as big and gawky as herself, ’tis as far as her education has carried her, save in pickling, preserving, stitchery, and clear starching, the only arts not sinful in her eyes.  If I am to have a broomstick, I had rather ride off on one at once to the Witches’ Sabbath on the Wartburg than be tied to one for life.”

“I should think she would scarce accept you.”

“There’s no such hope.  She has been bred up to regard one of us as her lot, and she would accept me without a murmur if I were Beelzebub himself, horns and tail and all!  Why, she ogles me with her gooseberry eyes already, and treats me as a chattel of her own.”