A Reputed Changeling; Or, Three Seventh Years Two Centuries Ago, Yonge [best adventure books to read txt] 📗

led him the life of a dog, though they knew no better.  If I had had him at Emsworth, I would have shown them what he was;” and she sighed heavily.  “Well, I did not so much wonder when he disappeared, I made sure that he could bear it no longer and had run away.  I waited as long as there was any reason, till there should be tidings of him, and only took his brother at last because I found they could not do without me at home.”

Remarkable frankness! but it struck both the Doctor and Anne that if Peregrine could have submitted, his life might have been freer and less unhappy than he had expected, though Mrs. Martha spoke the broadest Hampshire.

Naomi asked, “Then you no longer think that he ran away?”

“No, madam; I am certain there was worse than that.  You remember the night of the bonfire for the Bishops’ acquittal, Miss Woodford?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Well, he was never seen again after that, as you know.  The place was full of wild folk.  There was brawling right and left.”

“Were you there?” asked Anne surprised.

“Yes; in my coach with my uncle and aunt that lived with me, though, except Robin, none of the young sparks would come near me, except some that I knew were after my pockets,” said Martha, with a good-humoured laugh.  “Properly frightened we were too by the brawling sailors ere we got home!  Now, what could be more likely than that some of them got hold of poor Perry?  You know he always would go about with the rapier he brought from Germany, with amber set in the hilt, and the mosaic snuff-box he got in Italy, and what could be looked for but that the poor dear lad should be put out of the way for the sake of these gewgaws?”  This supposition was gratifying to Anne, but her uncle must needs ask why Mrs. Oakshott thought so more than before.

“Because,” she said impressively, “there is no doubt but that he has been seen, and not in the flesh, once and again, and always about these ruins.”

“By whom, madam, may I ask?”

“Mrs. Fellowes’s maids, as she knows, saw him once on the beach at night, just there.  The sentry, who is Tom Hart, from our parish, saw a shape at the opening of the old vault before the keep and challenged him, when he vanished out of sight ere there was time to present a musket.  There was once more, when one moonlight night our sexton, looking out of his cottage window, saw what he declares was none other than Master Perry standing among the graves of our family, as if, poor youth, he were asking why he was not among them.  When I heard that, I said to my husband, ‘Depend upon it,’ says I, ‘he met with his death that night, and was thrown into some hole, and that’s the reason he cannot rest.  If I pay a hundred pounds for it, I’ll not give up till his poor corpse is found to have Christian burial, and I’ll begin with the old vault at Portchester!’  My good father, the Major, would not hear of it at first, nor my husband either, but ’tis my money, and I know how to tackle Robin.”

It was with strangely mingled feelings that Anne listened.  That search in the vault, inaugurated by faithful Martha, was what she had always felt ought to be made, and she had even promised to attempt it if the apparitions recurred.  The notion of the deed being attributed to lawless sailors and smugglers or highwaymen, who were known to swarm in the neighbourhood, seemed to remove all danger of suspicion.  Yet she could not divest herself of a vague sense of alarm at this stirring up of what had slept for seven years.  Neither she nor her uncle deemed it needful to mention the appearance seen by little Philip, but to her surprise Naomi slowly and hesitatingly said it was very remarkable, that her husband having occasion to be at the church at dusk one evening just after Midsummer, had certainly seen a figure close to Mrs. Woodford’s grave, and lost sight of it before he could speak of it.  He thought nothing more of it till these reports began to be spread, but he had then recollected that it answered the descriptions given of the phantom.

Here the ladies were interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Fellowes and Robert Oakshott, now grown into a somewhat heavy but by no means foolish-looking young man.

“Well, madam,” said he, in Hampshire as broad as his wife’s, “you will have your will.  Not that Captain Henslowe believes a word of your ghosts—not he; but he took fire when he heard of queer sights about the castle.  He sent for the chap who stood sentry, and was downright sharp on him for not reporting what he had seen, and he is ordering out a sergeant’s party to open the vault, so you may come and see, if you have any stomach for it.”

“I could not but come!” said Madam Oakshott, who certainly did not look squeamish, but who was far more in earnest than her husband, and perhaps doubted whether without her presence the quest would be thorough.  Anne was full of dread, and almost sick at the thought of what she might see, but she was far too anxious to stay away.  Mrs. Fellowes made some excuse about the children for not accompanying them.

It always thrilled Anne to enter that old castle court, the familiar and beloved play-place of her childhood, full of memories of Charles and of Lucy, and containing in its wide precincts the churchyard where her mother lay.  She moved along in a kind of dream, glad to be let alone, since Mr. Fellowes naturally attended Mrs. Oakshott, and Robert was fully occupied in explaining to the Doctor that he only gave in to this affair for the sake of pacifying madam, since women folk would have their little megrims.  Assuredly that tall, solid, resolute figure stalking on in front, looked as little subject to megrims as any of her sex.  Her determination had brought her husband thither, and her determination further carried the day, when the captain, after staring at the solid-looking turf, stamping on the one stone that was visible, and trampling down the bunch of nettles beside it, declared that the entrance had been so thoroughly stopped that it was of no use to dig farther.  It was Madam Martha who demanded permission to offer the four soldiers a crown apiece if they opened the vault, a guinea each if they found anything.  The captain could not choose but grant it, though with something of a sneer, and the work was begun.  He walked up and down with Robert, joining in hopes that the lady would be satisfied before dinner-time.  The two clergymen likewise walked together, arguing, as was their wont, on the credibility of apparitions.  The two ladies stood in almost breathless watch, as the bricks that had covered in the opening were removed, and the dark hole brought to light.  Contrary to expectation, when the opening had been enlarged, it was found that there were several steps of stone, and where they were broken away, there was a rude ladder.

A lantern was fetched from the guard-room in the bailey, and after much shaking and trying of the ladder, one of the soldiers descended, finding the place less deep than was commonly supposed, and soon calling out that he was at the bottom.  Another followed him, and presently there was a shout.  Something was found!  “A rusty old chain, no doubt,” grumbled Robert; but his wife shrieked.  It was a sword in its sheath, the belt rotted, the clasp tarnished, but of silver.  Mrs. Oakshott seized it at once, rubbed away the dust from the handle, and brought to light a glistening yellow piece of amber, which she mutely held up, and another touch of her handkerchief disclosed on a silver plate in the scabbard an oak-tree, the family crest, and the twisted cypher P. O.  Her eyes were full of tears, and she did not speak.  Anne, white and trembling, was forced to sink down on the stone, unnoticed by all, while Robert Oakshott, convinced indeed, hastily went down himself.  The sword had been hidden in a sort of hollow under the remains of the broken stair.  Thence likewise came to light the mouldy remnant of a broad hat and the quill of its plume, and what had once been a coat, even in its present state showing that it had been soaked through and through with blood, the same stains visible on the watch and the mosaic snuff-box.  That was all; there was no purse, and no other garments, though, considering the condition of the coat, they might have been entirely destroyed by the rats and mice.  There was indeed a fragment of a handkerchief, with the cypher worked on it, which Mrs. Oakshott showed to Anne with the tears in her eyes: “There!  I worked that, though he never knew it.  No!  I know he did not like me!  But I would have made him do so at last.  I would have been so good to him.  Poor fellow, that he should have been lying there all this time!”

Lying there; but where, then, was he?  No signs of any corpse were to be found, though one after another all the gentlemen descended to look, and Mrs. Oakshott was only withheld by her husband’s urgent representations, and promise to superintend a diligent digging in the ground, so as to ascertain whether there had been a hasty burial there.

Altogether, Anne was so much astonished and appalled that she could hardly restrain herself, and her mind reverted to Bishop Ken’s theory that Peregrine still lived; but this was contradicted by the appearance at Douai, which did not rest on the evidence of her single perceptions.

Mrs. Fellowes sent out an entreaty that they would come to dinner, and the gentlemen were actually base enough to wish to comply, so that the two ladies had no choice save to come with them, especially as the soldiers were unwilling to work on without their meal.  Neither Mrs. Oakshott nor Anne felt as if they could swallow, and the polite pressure to eat was only preferable in Anne’s eyes to the conversation on the discoveries that had been made, especially the conclusion arrived at by all, that though the purse and rings had not been found, the presence of the watch and snuff-box precluded the idea of robbery.

“These would be found on the body,” said Mr. Oakshott.  “I could swear to the purse.  You remember, madam, your uncle bantering him about French ladies and their finery, asking whose token it was, and how black my father looked?  Poor Perry, if my father could have had a little patience with him, he would not have gone roaming about and getting into brawls, and we need not be looking for him in yonder black pit.”

“You’ll never find him there, Master Robert,” spoke out the old Oakwood servant, behind Mrs. Oakshott’s chair, free and easy after the manner of the time.

“And wherefore not, Jonadab?” demanded his mistress, by no means surprised at the liberty.

“Why, ma’am, ’twas the seven years, you sees, and in course when them you wot of had power to carry him off, they could not take his sword, nor his hat, not they couldn’t.”

“How about his purse, then?” put in Dr. Woodford.

“I’ll be bound you will find it yet, sir,” responded Jonadab, by no means disconcerted, “leastways unless some two-legged fairies have got it.”

At this some of the party found it impossible not to laugh, and this so upset poor Martha’s composure that she was obliged to leave the table, and Anne was not sorry for the excuse of attending her, although there were stings of pain in all her rambling lamentations and conjectures.

Very tardily, according to the feelings of the anxious women, was the dinner finished, and their companions ready to take them out again.  Indeed, Madam Oakshott at last repaired to the dining-parlour, and roused her husband from his glass of Spanish wine to renew the search.  She would not listen to Mrs. Fellowes’s advice not to go out again, and Anne could not abstain either from watching for what could not be other than grievous and mournful to behold.

The soldiers were called out again by their captain, and reinforced by the Rectory servant and Jonadab.

There was an interval of anxious prowling round the opening.  Mr. Oakshott and the captain had gone down again, and found, what the military man was anxious about, that if there were passages to the outer air, they had been well blocked up and not re-opened.

Meantime the digging proceeded.

It was just at twilight that a voice below uttered an exclamation.  Then came a pause.  The old sergeant’s voice ordered care and a pause, somewhere below