Читать книгу A Reputed Changeling - Yonge Charlotte Mary - Страница 11

The Woodford family did not long remain at Winchester.  Anne declared the cold to be harming her mother, and became very anxious to bring her to the milder sea breezes of Portchester, and though Mrs. Woodford had little expectation that any place would make much difference to her, she was willing to return to the quiet and repose of her home under the castle walls beside the tranquil sea.

Thus they travelled back, as soon as the Doctor’s Residence was ended, plodding through the heavy chalk roads as well as the big horses could drag the cumbrous coach up and down the hills, only halting for much needed rest at Sir Philip Archfield’s red house, round three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth with a low wall backed by a row of poplar trees, looking out on the alternate mud and sluggish waters of Fareham creek, but with a beautiful garden behind the house.

The welcome was hearty.  Lady Archfield at once conducted Mrs. Woodford to her own bedroom, where she was to rest and be served apart, and Anne disrobed her of her wraps, covered her upon the bed, and at her hostess’s desire was explaining what refreshment would best suit her, when there was a shrill voice at the door: “I want Mistress Anne!  I want to show her my clothes and jewels.”

“Coming, child, she is coming when she has attended to her mother,” responded the lady.  “White wine, or red, did you say, Anne, and a little ginger?”

“Is she never coming?” was again the call; and Lady Archfield muttering, “Was there ever such an impatient poppet?” released Anne, who was instantly pounced upon by young Mrs. Archfield.  Linking her arm into that of her visitor, and thrusting Lucy into the background, the little heiress proceeded to her own wainscotted bedroom, bare according to modern views, but very luxurious according to those of the seventeenth century, and with the toilette apparatus, scanty indeed, but of solid silver, and with a lavish amount of perfumery.  Her ‘own woman’ was in waiting to display and refold the whole wedding wardrobe, brocade, satin, taffetas, cambric, Valenciennes, and point d’Alençon.  Anne had to admire each in detail, and then to give full meed to the whole casket of jewels, numerous and dazzling as befitted a constellation of heirlooms upon one small head.  They were beautiful, but it was wearisome to repeat ‘Vastly pretty!’ ‘How exquisite!’ ‘That becomes you very well,’ almost mechanically, when Lucy was standing about all the time, longing to exchange the girlish confidences that were burning to come forth.  ‘Young Madam,’ as every one called her in those times when Christian names were at a discount, seemed to be jealous of attention to any one else, and the instant she saw the guest attempt to converse with her sister-in-law peremptorily interrupted, almost as if affronted.

Perhaps if Anne had enjoyed freedom of speech with Lucy she would not have learnt as much as did her mother, for the young are often more scrupulous as to confidences than their seniors, who view them as still children, and freely discuss their affairs among themselves.

So Lady Archfield poured out her troubles: how her daughter-in-law refused employment, and disdained instruction in needlework, housewifery, or any domestic art, how she jangled the spinnet, but would not learn music, and was unoccupied, fretful, and exacting, a burthen to herself and every one else, and treating Lucy as the slave of her whims and humours.  As to such discipline as mothers-in-law were wont to exercise upon young wives, the least restraint or contradiction provoked such a tempest of passion as to shake the tiny, delicate frame to a degree that alarmed the good old matron for the consequences.  Her health was a continual difficulty, for her constitution was very frail, every imprudence cost her suffering, and yet any check to her impulses as to food, exertion, or encountering weather was met by a spoilt child’s resentment.  Moreover, her young husband, and even his father, always thought the ladies were hard upon her, and would not have her vexed; and as their presence always brightened and restrained her, they never understood the full amount of her petulance and waywardness, and when they found her out of spirits, or out of temper, they charged all on her ailments or on want of consideration from her mother and sister-in-law.

Poor Lady Archfield, it was trying for her that her husband should be nearly as blind as his son.  The young husband was wonderfully tender, indulgent, and patient with the little creature, but it would not be easy to say whether the affection were not a good deal like that for his dog or his horse, as something absolutely his own, with which no one else had a right to interfere.  It was a relief to the family that she always wanted to be out of doors with him whenever the weather permitted, nay, often when it was far from suitable to so fragile a being; but if she came home aching and crying ever so much with chill or fatigue, even if she had to keep her bed afterwards, she was equally determined to rush out as soon as she was up again, and as angry as ever at remonstrance.

Charles was gone to try a horse; and as the remains of the effects of her last imprudence had prevented her accompanying him, the arrival of the guests had been a welcome diversion to the monotony of the morning.

He was, however, at home again by the time the dinner-bell summoned the younger ladies from the inspection of the trinkets and the gentlemen from the live stock, all to sit round the heavy oaken table draped with the whitest of napery, spun by Lady Archfield in her maiden days, and loaded with substantial joints, succeeded by delicacies manufactured by herself and Lucy.

As to the horse, Charles was fairly satisfied, but ‘that fellow, young Oakshott, had been after him, and had the refusal.’

“Don’t you be outbid, Mr. Archfield,” exclaimed the wife.  “What is the matter of a few guineas to us?”

“Little fear,” replied Charles.  “The old Major is scarcely like to pay down twenty gold caroluses, but if he should, the bay is his.”

“Oh, but why not offer thirty?” she cried.

Charles laughed.  “That would be a scurvy trick, sweetheart, and if Peregrine be a crooked stick, we need not be crooked too.”

“I was about to ask,” said the Doctor, “whether you had heard aught of that same young gentleman.”

“I have seen him where I never desire to see him again,” said Sir Philip, “riding as though he would be the death of the poor hounds.”

“Nick Huntsman swears that he bewitches them,” said Charles, “for they always lose the scent when he is in the field, but I believe ’tis the wry looks of him that throw them all out.”

“And I say,” cried the inconsistent bride, “that ’tis all jealousy that puts the gentlemen beside themselves, because none of them can dance, nor make a bow, nor hand a cup of chocolate, nor open a gate on horseback like him.”

“What does a man on horseback want with opening gates?” exclaimed Charles.

“That’s your manners, sir,” said young Madam with a laugh.  “What’s the poor lady to do while her cavalier flies over and leaves her in the lurch?”

Her husband did not like the general laugh, and muttered, “You know what I mean well enough.”

“Yes, so do I!  To fumble at the fastening till your poor beast can bear it no longer and swerves aside, and I sit waiting a good half hour before you bring down your pride enough to alight and open it.”

“All because you would send Will home for your mask.”

“You would like to have had my poor little face one blister with the glare of sun and sea.”

“Blisters don’t come at this time of the year.”

“No, nor to those who have no complexion to lose,” she cried, with a triumphant look at the two maidens, who certainly had not the lilies nor the roses that she believed herself to have, though, in truth, her imprudences had left her paler and less pretty than at Winchester.

If this were the style of the matrimonial conversations, Anne again grieved for her old playfellow, and she perceived that Lucy looked uncomfortable; but there was no getting a moment’s private conversation with her before the coach was brought round again for the completion of the journey.  All that neighbourhood had a very bad reputation as the haunt of lawless characters, prone to violence; and though among mere smugglers there was little danger of an attack on persons well known like the Woodford family, they were often joined by far more desperate men from the seaport, so that it was never desirable to be out of doors after dark.

The journey proved to have been too much for Mrs. Woodford’s strength, and for some days she was so ill that Anne never left the house; but she rallied again, and on coming downstairs became very anxious that her daughter should not be more confined by attendance than was wholesome, and insisted on every opportunity of change or amusement being taken.

One day as Anne was in the garden she was surprised by Peregrine dashing up on horseback.

“You would not take the Queen’s rosary before,” he said.  “You must now, to save it.  My father has smelt it out.  He says it is teraphim!  Micah—Rachel, what not, are quoted against it.  He would have smashed it into fragments, but that Martha Browning said it would be a pretty bracelet.  I’d sooner see it smashed than on her red fist.  To think of her giving in to such vanities!  But he said she might have it, only to be new strung.  When he was gone she said, ‘I don’t really want the thing, but it was hard you should lose the Queen’s keepsake.  Can you bestow it safely?’  I said I could, and brought it hither.  Keep it, Anne, I pray.”

Anne hesitated, and referred it to her mother upstairs.

“Tell him,” she said, “that we will keep it in trust for him as a royal gift.”

Peregrine was disappointed, but had to be content.

A Dutch vessel from the East Indies had brought home sundry strange animals, which were exhibited at the Jolly Mariner at Portsmouth, and thus announced on a bill printed on execrable paper, brought out to Portchester by some of the market people:—

“An Ellefante twice the Bignesse of an Ocks, the Trunke or Probosces whereof can pick up a Needle or roote up an Ellum Tree.  Also the Royale Tyger, the same as has slaine and devoured seven yonge Gentoo babes, three men, and two women at the township at Chuttergong, nie to Bombay, in the Eastern Indies.  Also the sacred Ape, worshipped by the heathen of the Indies, the Dancing Serpent which weareth Spectacles, and whose Bite is instantly mortal, with other rare Fish, Fowle, Idols and the like.  All to be seene at the Charge of one Groat per head.”

Mrs. Woodford declared herself to be extremely desirous that her daughter should see and bring home an account of all these marvels, and though Anne had no great inclination to face the tiger with the formidable appetite, she could not refuse to accompany her uncle.

The Jolly Mariner stood in one of the foulest and narrowest of the streets of the unsavoury seaport, and Dr. Woodford sighed, and fumed, and wished for a good pipe of tobacco more than once as he hesitated to try to force a way for his niece through the throng round the entrance to the stable-yard of the Jolly Mariner, apparently too rough to pay respect to gown and cassock.  Anne clung to his arm, ready to give up the struggle, but a voice said, “Allow me, sir.  Mistress Anne, deign to take my arm.”

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