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

were declaring that now they had caught his game and given him his toy, they would brook no longer delay than was absolutely necessitated by the storm, and married or not married, he and she should both be carried off together, let the damsel-errant give herself what haughty airs she would.  It was a weak concession on their part to the old Puritan scruples that he might have got rid of by this time, to attempt to bring about the marriage.  They jested at him for being afraid of her, and then there were jokes about gray mares.

The one voice she could not hear was Peregrine’s, perhaps because he realised more than they did that she was within ear-shot, and besides, he was absolutely sober; but she thought he silenced them; and then she heard sounds of card-playing, which made an accompaniment to her agonised prayers.

CHAPTER XXXIII
Black Gang Chine

“Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us grace,
Let us fly this cursed place,
Lest the sorcerer us entice
With some other new device.
Not a word or needless sound
Till we come to holier ground.
I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide.”

MILTON.

Never was maiden in a worse position than that in which Anne Woodford felt herself when she revolved the matter.  The back of the Isle of Wight, all along the Undercliff, had always had a wild reputation, and she was in the midst of the most lawless of men.  Peregrine alone seemed to have any remains of honour or conscience, and apparently he was in some degree in the hands of his associates.  Even if the clergyman came, there was little hope in an appeal to him.  Naval chaplains bore no good reputation, and Portsmouth and Cowes were haunted by the scum of the profession.  All that seemed possible was to commit herself and Charles to Divine protection, and in that strength to resist to the uttermost.  The tempest had returned again, and seemed to be raging as much as ever, and the delay was in her favour, for in such weather there could be no putting to sea.

She was unwilling to leave the stronghold of her chamber, but Hans came to announce breakfast to her, telling her that the Mynheeren were gone, all but Massa Perry; and that gentleman came forward to meet her just as before, hoping ‘those fellows had not disturbed her last night.’

“I could not help hearing much,” she said gravely.

“Brutes!” he said.  “I am sick of them, and of this life.  Save for the King’s sake, I would never have meddled with it.”

The roar of winds and waves and the beat of spray was still to be heard, and in the manifest impossibility of quitting the place and the desire of softening him, Anne listened while he talked in a different mood from the previous day.  The cynical tone was gone, as he spoke of those better influences.  He talked of Mrs. Woodford and his deep affection for her, of the kindness of the good priests at Havre and Douai, and especially of one Father Seyton, who had tried to reason with him in his bitter disappointment, and savage penitence on finding that ‘behind the Cross lurks the Devil,’ as much at Douai as at Havant.  He told how a sermon of the Abbé Fénelon’s had moved him, and how he had spent half a Lent in the severest penance, but only to have all swept away again in the wild and wicked revelry with which Easter came in.  Again he described how his heart was ready to burst as he stood by Mrs. Woodford’s grave at night and vowed to disentangle himself and lead a new life.

“And with you I shall,” he said.

“No,” she answered; “what you win by a crime will never do you good.”

“A crime!  ’Tis no crime.  You know I mean honourable marriage.  You owe no duty to any one.”

“It is a crime to leave the innocent to undeserved death,” she said.

“Do you love the fellow?” he cried, with a voice rising to a shout of rage.

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“Why did not you say so before?”

“Because I hoped to see you act for right and justice sake,” was Anne’s answer, fixing her eyes on him.  “For God’s sake, not mine.”

“Yours indeed!  Think, what can be his love to mine?  He who let them marry him to that child, while I struggled and gave up everything.  Then he runs away—runs away—leaving you all the distress; never came near you all these years.  Oh yes! he looks down on you as his child’s governess!  What’s the use of loving him?  There’s another heiress bespoken for him no doubt.”

“No.  His parents consent, and we have known one another’s love for six years.”

“Oh, that’s the way he bound you to keep his secret!  He would sing another song as soon as he was out of this scrape.”

“You little know!” was all she said.

“Ay!” continued Peregrine, pacing up and down the room, “you know that all that was wanting to fill up the measure of my hatred was that he should have stolen your heart.”

“You cannot say that, sir.  He was my kind protector and helper from our very childhood.  I have loved him with all my heart ever since I durst.”

“Ay, the great straight comely lubbers have it all their own way with the women,” said he bitterly.  “I remember how he rushed headlong at me with the horse-whip when I tripped you up at the Slype, and you have never forgiven that.”

“Oh! indeed I forgot that childish nonsense long ago.  You never served me so again.”

“No indeed, never since you and your mother were the first to treat me like a human being.  You will be able to do anything with me, sweetest lady; the very sense that you are under the same roof makes another man of me.  I loathe what I used to enjoy.  Why, the very sight of you, sitting at supper like the lady in Comus, in your sweet grave dignity, made me feel what I am, and what those men are.  I heard their jests with your innocent ears.  With you by my side the Devil’s power is quelled.  You shall have a peaceful beneficent life among the poor folk, who will bless you; our good and gracious Queen will welcome you with joy and gratitude; and when the good time comes, as it must in a few years, you will have honours and dignities lavished on you.  Can you not see what you will do for me?”

“Do you think a broken-hearted victim would be able to do you any good?” said she, looking up with tears in her eyes.  “I do believe, sir, that you mean well by me, in your own way, and I could, yes, I can, be sorry for you, for my mother did feel for you, and yours has been a sad life; but how could I be of any use or comfort to you if you dragged me away as these cruel men propose, knowing that he who has all my heart is dying guiltless, and thinking I have failed him!” and here she broke down in an agony of weeping, as she felt the old power in his eyes that enforced submission.

He marched up and down in a sort of passion.  “Don’t let me see you weep for him!  It makes me ready to strangle him with my own hands!”

A shout of ‘Pilpignon!’ at the door here carried him off, leaving Anne to give free course to the tears that she had hitherto been able to restrain, feeling the need of self-possession.  She had very little hope, since her affection for Charles Archfield seemed only to give the additional sting of jealousy, ‘cruel as the grave,’ to the vindictive temper Peregrine already nourished, and which certainly came from his evil spirit.  She shed many tears, and sobbed unrestrainingly till the Bretonne came and patted her shoulder, and said, “Pauvre, pauvre!”  And even Hans looked in, saying, “Missee Nana no cry, Massa Perry great herr—very goot.”

She tried to compose herself, and think over alternatives to lay before Peregrine.  He might let her go, and carry to Sir Edmund Nutley letters to which his father would willingly swear, while he was out of danger in Normandy.  Or if this was far beyond what could be hoped for, surely he could despatch a letter to his father, and for such a price she must sacrifice herself, though it cost her anguish unspeakable to call up the thought of Charles, of little Philip, of her uncle, and the old people, who loved her so well, all forsaken, and with what a life in store for her!  For she had not the slightest confidence in the power of her influence, whatever Peregrine might say and sincerely believe at present.  If there were, more palpably than with all other human beings, angels of good and evil contending for him, swaying him now this way and now that; it was plain from his whole history that nothing had yet availed to keep him under the better influence for long together; and she believed that if he gained herself by these unjust and cruel means the worse spirit would thereby gain the most absolute advantage.  If her heart had been free, and she could have loved him, she might have hoped, though it would have been a wild and forlorn hope; but as it was, she had never entirely surmounted a repulsion from him, as something strange and unnatural, a feeling involving fear, though here he was her only hope and protector, and an utter uncertainty as to what he might do.  She could only hope that she might pine away and die quickly, and perhaps Charles Archfield might know at last that it had been for his sake.  And would it be in her power to make even such terms as these?

How long she wept and prayed and tried to ‘commit her way unto the Lord’ she did not know, but light seemed to be making its way far more than previously through the shutters closed against the storm when Peregrine returned.

“You will not be greatly troubled with those fellows to-day,” he said; “there’s a vessel come on the rocks at Chale, and every man and mother’s son is gone after it.”  So saying he unfastened the shutters and let in a flood of sunshine.  “You would like a little air,” he said; “’tis all quiet now, and the tide is going down.”

After two days’ dark captivity, Anne could not but be relieved by coming out, and she was anxious to understand where she was.  It was, though only in March, glowing with warmth, as the sun beat against the cliffs behind, of a dark red brown, in many places absolutely black, in especial where a cascade, swelled by the rains into imposing size, came roaring, leaping, and sparkling down a sheer precipice.  On either side the cove or chine was closely shut in by treeless, iron-coloured masses of rock, behind one of which the few inhabited hovels were clustered, and the boat which had brought her was drawn up.  In front was the sea, still lashed by a fierce wind, which was driving the fantastically shaped remains of the great storm cloud rapidly across an intensely blue sky.  The waves, although it was the ebb, were still tremendous, and their roar re-echoed as they reared to fearful heights and broke with the reverberations that she had heard all along.  Peregrine kept quite high up, not venturing below the washed line of shingle, saying that the back draught of the waves was most perilous, and in a high wind could not be reckoned upon.

“No escape!” he said, as he perceived Anne’s gaze on the inaccessible cliff and the whole scene, the wild beauty of which was lost to her in its terrors.

“Where’s your ship?” she asked.

“Safe in Whale Chine.  No putting to sea yet, though it may be fair to-morrow.”

Then she put before him the first scheme she had thought out, of letting her escape to Sir Edmund Nutley’s house, whence she could make her way back, taking with her a letter that would prove his existence without involving him or his friends in danger.  And eagerly she argued, “You do not know me really!  It is only an imagination that you can be the better for my presence.”  Then, unheeding his fervid exclamation, “It was my dear mother who did you good.  What would she think of the way in which you are trying to gain me?”

“That I cannot do without you.”

“And what would you have in me?  I could be only wretched, and feel all my life—such a life as it would be—that you had wrecked my happiness.  Oh yes!  I do believe that you would try to make me happy, but don’t you see that it would be quite impossible with