By the next day, however, he was in a quieter and more reasonable state, and Mrs. Woodford was able to have a long talk with him. She represented that the difference of opinions made it almost certain that his father would never consent to his remaining under her roof, and that even if this were possible, Portchester was far too much infected with the folly from which he had suffered so much; and his uncle would take care that no one he would meet should ever hear of it.
“There’s little good in that,” said the boy moodily. “I’m a thing they’ll jibe at and bait any way.”
“I do not see that, if you take pains with yourself. Your uncle said you showed blood and breeding, and when you are better dressed, and with him, no one will dare to mock his Excellency’s nephew. Depend upon it, Peregrine, this is the fresh start that you need.”
“If you were there—”
“My boy, you must not ask for what is impossible. You must learn to conquer in God’s strength, not mine.”
All, however, that passed may not here be narrated, and it apparently left that wayward spirit unconvinced. Nevertheless, when on the second day Major Oakshott himself came over with his brother, and informed Peregrine that his uncle was good enough to undertake the charge of him, and to see that he was bred up in godly ways in a Protestant land, free from prelacy and superstition, the boy seemed reconciled to his fate. Major Oakshott spoke more kindly than usual to him, being free from fresh irritation at his misdemeanours; but even thus there was a contrast with the gentler, more persuasive tones of the diplomatist, and no doubt this tended to increase Peregrine’s willingness to be thus handed over.
The next question was whether he should go home first, but both the uncle and the friends were averse to his remaining there, amid the unavoidable gossip and chatter of the household, and it was therefore decided that he should only ride over with Dr. Woodford for an hour or two to take leave of his mother and brothers.
This settled, Mrs. Woodford found him much easier to deal with. He had really, through his midnight invocation of the fairies, obtained an opening into a new world, and he was ready to believe that with no one to twit him with being a changeling or worse, he could avoid perpetual disgrace and punishment and live at peace. Nor was he unwilling to promise Mrs. Woodford to say daily, and especially when tempted, one or two brief collects and ejaculations which she selected to teach him, as being as unlike as possible to the long extempore exercises which had made him hate the very name of prayer. The Doctor gave him a Greek Testament, as being least connected with unpleasant recollections.
“And,” entreated Peregrine humbly, in a low voice to Mrs. Woodford on his last Sunday evening, “may I not have something of yours, to lay hold of, and remember you if—when—the evil spirit tries to lay hold of me again?”
She would fain have given him a prayer-book, but she knew that would be treason to his father, and with tears in her eyes and something of a pang, she gave him a tiny miniature of herself, which had been her husband’s companion at sea, and hung it round his neck with the chain of her own hair that had always held it.
“It will always keep my heart warm,” said Peregrine, as he hid it under his vest. There was a shade of disappointment on Anne’s face when he showed it to her, for she had almost deemed it her own.
“Never mind, Anne,” he said; “I am coming back a knight like my uncle to marry you, and then it will be yours again.”
“I—I’m not going to wed you—I have another sweetheart,” added Anne in haste, lest he should think she scorned him.
“Oh, that lubberly Charles Archfield! No fear of him. He is promised long ago to some little babe of quality in London. You may whistle for him. So you’d better wait for me.”
“It is not true. You only say it to plague me.”
“It’s as true as Gospel! I heard Sir Philip telling one of the big black gowns one day in the Close, when I was sitting up in a tree overhead, how they had fixed a marriage between his son and his old friend’s daughter, who would have ever so many estates. So I’d give that”—snapping his fingers—“for your chances of being my Lady Archfield in the salt mud at Fareham.”
“I shall ask Lucy. It is not kind of you, Perry, when you are just going away.”
“Come, come, don’t cry, Anne.”
“But I knew Charley ever so long first, and—”
“Oh, yes. Maids always like straight, comely, dull fellows, I know that. But as you can’t have Charles Archfield, I mean to have you, Anne—for I shall look to you as the only one as can ever make a good man of me! Ay—your mother—I’d wed her if I could, but as I can’t, I mean to have you, Anne Woodford.”
“I don’t mean to have you! I shall go to Court, and marry some noble earl or gentleman! Why do you laugh and make that face, Peregrine? you know my father was almost a knight—”
“Nobody is long with you without knowing that!” retorted Peregrine; “but a miss is as good as a mile, and you will find the earls and the lords will think so, and be fain to take the crooked stick at last!”
Mistress Anne tossed her head—and Peregrine returned a grimace. Nevertheless they parted with a kiss, and for some time the thought of Peregrine haunted the little girl with a strange, fateful feeling, between aversion and attraction, which wore off, as a folly of her childhood, with her growth in years.
CHAPTER VIII
The Return
“I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.”
It was autumn, but in the year 1687, when again Lucy Archfield and Anne Jacobina Woodford were pacing the broad gravel walk along the south side of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. Lucy, in spite of her brocade skirt and handsome gown of blue velvet tucked up over it, was still devoid of any look of distinction, but was a round-faced, blooming, cheerful maiden, of that ladylike thoroughly countrified type happily frequent in English girlhood throughout all time.
Anne, or Jacobina, as she tried to be called, towered above her head, and had never lost that tincture of courtly grace that early breeding had given her, and though her skirt was of gray wool, and the upper gown of cherry tabinet, she wore both with an air that made them seem more choice and stylish than those of her companion, while the simple braids and curls of her brown hair set off an unusually handsome face, pale and clear in complexion, with regular features, fine arched eyebrows over clear brown eyes, a short chin, and a mouth of perfect outline, but capable of looking very resolute.
Altogether she looked fit for a Court atmosphere, and perhaps she was not without hopes of it, for Dr. Woodford had become a royal chaplain under Charles II, and was now continued in the same office; and though this was a sinecure as regarded the present King, yet Tory and High Church views were as much in the ascendant as they could be under a Romanist king, and there were hopes of a canonry at Windsor or Westminster, or even higher preferment still, if he were not reckoned too staunch an Anglican. That Mrs. Woodford’s health had been failing for many months past would, her sanguine daughter thought, be remedied by being nearer the best physicians in London, which had been quitted with regret. Meantime Lucy’s first experiences of wedding festivities were to be heard. For the Archfield family had just returned from celebrating the marriage of the heir. Long ago Anne Jacobina had learnt to reckon Master Charles’s pledges of affection among the sports and follies of childhood, and the strange sense of disappointment and shame with which she recollected them had perhaps added to her natural reserve, and made her feel it due to maidenly dignity to listen with zest to the account of the bride, who was to