CHAPTER XIX
The Daughter’s Secret
“Thy sister’s naught: O Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here:
I can scarce speak to thee.”King Lear.
“Am I—oh! am I going home?” thought Anne. “My uncle will be at Winchester. I am glad of it. I could not yet bear to see Portchester again. That Shape would be there. Yet how shall I deal with what seems laid on me? But oh! the joy of escaping from this weary, weary court! Oh, the folly that took me hither! Now that the Prince is gone, Lady Strickland will surely speak to the Queen for my dismissal.”
There had been seventeen days of alarms, reports, and counter-reports, and now the King, with the Prince of Denmark, had gone to join the army on Salisbury Plain, and at the same time the little Prince of Wales had been sent off to his half-brother, the Duke of Berwick, at Portsmouth, under charge of Lady Powys, there to be embarked for France. Anne had been somewhat disappointed at not going with them, hoping that when at Portsmouth or in passing Winchester she might see her uncle and obtain her release, for she had no desire to be taken abroad; but it was decreed otherwise. Miss Dunord went, rejoicing and thankful to be returning to France, and the other three rockers remained.
There had already been more than one day of alarms and tumults. The Body-guards within were always on duty; the Life-guards without were constantly patrolling; and on the 5th of November, when the Prince of Orange was known to be near at hand, and was in fact actually landing at Torbay, the mob had with difficulty been restrained from burning in effigy, not only Guy Fawkes, but Pope, cardinals, and mitred bishops, in front of the palace, and actually paraded them all, with a figure of poor Sir Edmondbury Godfrey bearing his head in his hand, tied on horseback behind a Jesuit, full before the windows, with yells of
“The Pope, the Pope,
Up the ladder and down the rope,”
and clattering of warming-pans.
Jane Humphreys was dreadfully frightened. Anne found her crouching close to her bed, with the curtains wrapped round her. “Have they got in?” she cried. “O Miss Woodford, how shall we make them believe we are good Protestants?”
And when this terror had subsided, and it was well known that the Dutch were at Exeter, there was another panic, for one of the Life-guardsmen had told her to beware, since if the Royal troops at Hounslow were beaten, the Papists would surely take their revenge.
“I am to scream from the windows to Mr. Shaw,” she said; but what good will that do if the priests and the Frenchmen have strangled me? And perhaps he won’t be on guard.”
“He was only trying to frighten you,” suggested Anne.
“Dear me, Miss Woodford, aren’t you afraid? You have the stomach of a lion.”
“Why, what would be the good of hurting us?”
However, Anne was not at all surprised, when on the very evening of the Prince’s departure, old Mrs. Humphreys, a venerable-looking dame in handsome but Puritanically-fashioned garments, came in a hackney coach to request in her son’s name that her granddaughter might return with her, as her occupation was at an end.
Jane was transported with joy.
“Ay, ay,” said the grandmother, “look at you now, and think how crazy you were to go to the palace, though ’twas always against my judgment.”
“Ah, I little knew how mortal dull it would be!” said Jane.
“Ye’ve found it no better than the husks that the swine did eat, eh? So much the better and safer for your soul, child.”
Nobody wanted to retain Jane, and while she was hastily putting her things together, the grandmother turned to Anne: “And you, Mistress Woodford, from what I hear, you have been very good in keeping my silly child stanch to her religion and true to her duty. If ever on a pinch you needed a friend in London, my son and I would be proud to serve you—Master Joshua Humphreys, at the Golden Lamb, Gracechurch Street, mind you. No one knows what may hap in these strange and troublesome times, and you might be glad of a house to go to till you can send to your own friends—that is, if we are not all murdered by the Papists first.”
Though Anne did not expect such a catastrophe as this, she was really grateful for the offer, and thought it possible that she might avail herself of it, as she had not been able to communicate with any of her mother’s old friends, and Bishop Ken was not to her knowledge still in London.
She watched anxiously for the opportunity of asking Lady Strickland whether she might apply for her dismissal, and write to her uncle to fetch her home.
“Child,” said the lady, “I think you love the Queen.”
“Indeed I do, madam.”
“It is well that at this juncture all Protestants should not leave her. You are a gentlewoman in manner, and can speak her native tongue, friends are falling from her, scarcely ladies are left enough to make a fit appearance around her; if you are faithful to her, remain, I entreat of you.”
There was no resisting such an appeal, and Anne remained in the rooms now left bare and empty, until a message was brought to her to come to the Queen. Mary Beatrice sat in a chair by her fire, looking sad and listless, her eyes red with weeping, but she gave her sweet smile as the girl entered, and held out her hand, saying in her sweet Italian, “You are faithful, Signorina Anna! you remain! That is well; but now my son is gone, Anna, you must be mine. I make you my reader instead of his rocker.”
As Anne knelt on one knee to kiss hands with tears in her eyes, the Queen impulsively threw her arms round her neck and kissed her. “Ah, you loved him, and he loved you, il mio tesorino?”
Promotion had come—how strangely. She had to enter on her duties at once, and to read some chapters of an Italian version of the Imitation. A reader was of a higher grade of importance than a rocker, and for the ensuing days, when not in attendance on the Queen, Anne was the companion of Lady Strickland and Lady Oglethorpe. In the absence of the King and Prince, the Queen received Princess Anne at her own table, and Lady Churchill and Lady Fitzhardinge joined that of her ladies-in-waiting.
Lady Churchill, with her long neck, splendid hair and complexion, short chin, and sparkling blue eyes, was beautiful to look at, but not at all disposed to be agreeable to the Queen’s ladies, whom she treated with a sort of blunt scorn, not at all disguised by the forms of courtesy. However, she had, to their relief, a good deal of leave of absence just then to visit her children, as indeed the ladies agreed that she did pretty much as she chose, and that the faithful Mrs. Morley was somewhat afraid of the dear Mrs. Freeman.
One evening in coming up some steps Princess Anne entangled her foot in her pink taffetas petticoat, nearly fell, and tore a large rent, besides breaking the thread of the festoons of seed pearls which bordered it, and scattering them on the floor.
“Lack-a-day! Lack-a-day!” sighed she, as after a little screaming she gathered herself up again. “That new coat! How shall I ever face Danvers again such a figure? She’s an excellent tirewoman, but she will be neither to have nor to hold when she sees that gown—that she set such store by! Nay, I can hardly step for it.”
“I think I could repair it, with Her Majesty’s and your Royal Highness’s permission,” said Anne, who was creeping about on her knees picking up the pearls.”
“Oh! do! do! There’s a good child, and then Danvers and Dawson need know nothing about it,” cried the Princess in great glee. “You remember Dawson, don’t you, little Woodie, as we used to call you, and how she used to rate us when we were children if we soiled our frocks?”
So, in the withdrawing-room, Anne sat on the floor with needle and silk, by the light of the wax candles, deftly repairing the rent, and then threading the scattered pearls, and arranging the festoon so as to hide the darn. The Princess was delighted, and while the poor wife lay back in her chair, thankful that behind her fan she could give way to her terrible anxieties about her little son, who might be crossing to France, and her husband, suffering from fearful nose-bleeding, and wellnigh alone among traitors and deserters, the step-daughter, on the other side of the great hearth, chattered away complacently to ‘little Woodford.’
“Do you recollect old Dawson, and how she used to grumble when I went to sup with the Duchess—my own mother—you know, because she used to give me chocolate, and she said it made me scream at night, and be over fat by day? Ah! that was before you used to come among us. It was after I went to France to my poor aunt of Orleans. I remember she never would let us kiss her for fear of spoiling her complexion, and Mademoiselle and I did so hate living maigre on the fast days. I was glad enough to get home at last, and then my sister was jealous because I talked French better than she did.”
So the Princess prattled on without needing much reply, until her namesake had finished her work, with which she was well pleased, and promised to remember her. To Anne it was an absolute marvel how she could thus talk when she knew that her husband had deserted her father in his need, and that things were in a most critical position.
The Queen could not refrain from a sigh of relief when her step-daughter had retired to the Cockpit; and after seeking her sleepless bed, she begged Anne, “if it did not too much incommode her, to read to her from the Gospel.”
The next day was Sunday, and Anne felt almost as if deserting her cause, when going to the English service in Whitehall Chapel Royal, now almost emptied except of the Princess’s suite, and some of these had the bad taste and profanity to cough and chatter all through the special prayer drawn up by the Archbishop for the King’s safety.
People were not very reverent, and as all stood up at the end of the Advent Sunday service to let the Princess sweep by in her glittering green satin petticoat, peach-coloured velvet train, and feather-crowned head, she laid a hand on Anne’s arm, and whispered, “Follow me to my closet, little Woodford.”
There was no choice but to obey, as the Queen would not require her reader till after dinner, and Anne followed after the various attendants, who did not seem very willing to forward a private interview with a possible rival, though, as Anne supposed, the object must be to convey some message to the Queen. By the time she arrived and had been admitted to the inner chamber or dressing-room, the Princess had thrown off her more cumbrous finery, and sat at ease in an arm-chair. She nodded her be-curled head, and said, “You can keep a secret, little Woodie?”
“I can, madam, but I do not love one,” said Anne, thinking of her most burthensome one.
“Well, no need to keep this long. You are a good young maiden, and my own poor mother’s godchild, and you are handy and notable. You deserve better preferment than ever you will get in that Popish household, where your religion is in danger. Now, I am not going to be in jeopardy here any longer, nor let myself be kept hostage for his Highness. Come to my rooms at bedtime. Slip in when I wish the Queen good-night, and I’ll find an excuse. Then you shall come with me to—no, I’ll not say where, and I’ll make your fortune, only mum’s the word.”
“But—Your Royal Highness is very good, but I am sworn to the Prince and Queen. I could not leave them without permission.”
“Prince! Prince! Pretty sort of a Prince. Prince of brickbats, as Churchill says. Nay, girl, don’t turn away in that fashion. Consider. Your religion is in danger.”
“Nay, madam, my religion would not be served by breaking my oath.”
“Pooh! What’s your oath to a mere pretender? Besides, consider your fortune. Rocker to a puling babe—even if he was what they say he is. And don’t build on the Queen’s favour—even if she remains what she is now, she is too much beset with Papists and foreigners to do anything for you.”
“I do not,” Anne began to say, but the Princess gave her no time.
“Besides, pride will have a fall, and if you are a good maid, and hold your tongue, and serve me well in this strait, I’ll make you my maid of honour, and marry you so that you shall put Lady before your name. Ay, and get good preferment for your uncle, who has had only a poor stall from the King here.”
Anne repressed an inclination to say this was not the way in which her uncle would wish to get promotion, and only replied, “Your Royal Highness is very good, but—”
Whereat the Princess, in a huff, exclaimed, “Oh, very well, if you choose to be torn to pieces by the mob, and slaughtered by the priests, like poor Godfrey, and burnt by the Papists at last, unless you go to Mass, you may stay for aught I care, and joy go with you. I thought I was doing you a kindness for my poor mother’s sake, but it seems you know best. If you like to cast in your lot with the Pope, I wash my hands of you.”
Accordingly Anne courtesied herself off, not seriously alarmed as to the various catastrophes foretold by the Princess, though a little shaken in nerves. Here then was another chance of promotion, certainly without treason to her profession of faith, but so offered that honour could not but revolt against it, though in truth poor Princess Anne was neither so foolish nor so heartless a woman as she appeared in the excitement to which an uneasy conscience, the expectation of a great enterprise, and a certain amount of terror had worked her up; but she had high words again in the evening, as was supposed, with the Queen. Certainly Anne found her own Royal Mistress weeping and agitated, though she only owned to being very anxious about the health of the King, who had had a second violent attack of bleeding at the nose, and she did not seem consoled by the assurances of her elder attendants that the relief had probably saved him from a far more dangerous attack. Again Anne read to her till a late hour, but next morning was strangely disturbed.
The Royal household had not been long dressed, and breakfast had just been served to the ladies, when loud screams were heard, most startling in the unsettled and anxious state of affairs. The Queen, pale and trembling, came out of her chamber with her hair on her shoulders. “Tell me at once, for pity’s sake. Is it my husband or my son?” she asked with clasped hands, as two or three of the Princess’s servants rushed forward.
“The Princess, the Princess!” was the cry, “the priests have murdered her.”
“What have you done with her, madam?” rudely demanded Mrs. Buss, one of the lost lady’s nurses.
Mary Beatrice drew herself up with grave dignity, saying, “I suppose your mistress is where she likes to be. I know nothing of her, but I have no doubt that you will soon hear of her.”
There was something in the Queen’s manner that hushed the outcry in her presence, but the women, with Lady Clarendon foremost of them, continued to seek up and down the two palaces as if they thought the substantial person of the Princess Anne could be hidden in a cupboard.
Anne, in the first impulse, exclaimed, “She is gone!”
In a moment Mrs. Royer turned, “Gone, did you say? Do you know it?”
“You knew it and kept it secret!” cried Lady Strickland.
“A traitor too!” said Lady Oglethorpe, in her vehement Irish tone. “I would not have thought it of Nanny Moore’s daughter!” and she turned her eyes in sad reproach on Anne.
“If you know, tell me where she is gone,” cried Mrs. Buss, and the cry was re-echoed by the other women, while Anne’s startled “I cannot tell! I do not know!” was unheeded.
Only the Queen raising her hand gravely said, “Silence! What is this?”
“Miss Woodford knew.”
“And never told!” cried the babble of voices.
“Come hither, Mistress Woodford,” said the Queen. “Tell me, do you know where Her Highness is?”
“No, please your Majesty,” said Anne, trembling from head to foot. “I do not know where she is.”
“Did you know of her purpose?”
“Your Majesty pardon me. She called me to her closet yesterday and pledged me to secrecy before I knew what she would say.”
“Only youthful inexperience will permit that pledge to be implied in matters of State,” said the Queen. “Continue, Mistress Woodford; what did she tell you?”
“She said she feared to be made a hostage for the Prince of Denmark, and meant to escape, and she bade me come to her chamber at night to go with her.”
“And wherefore did you not? You are of her religion,” said the Queen bitterly.
“Madam, how could I break mine oath to your Majesty and His Royal Highness?”
“And you thought concealing the matter according to that oath? Nay, nay, child, I blame you not. It was a hard strait between your honour to her and your duty to the King and to me, and I cannot but be thankful to any one who does regard her word. But this desertion will be a sore grief to His Majesty.”
Mary Beatrice was fairer-minded than the women, who looked askance at the girl, Princess Anne’s people resenting that one of the other household should have been chosen as confidante, and the Queen’s being displeased that the secret had been kept. But at that moment frightful yells and shouts arose, and a hasty glance from the windows showed a mass of men, women, and children howling for their Princess. They would tear down Whitehall if she were not delivered up to them. However, a line of helmeted Life-guards on their heavy horses was drawn up between, with sabres held upright, and there seemed no disposition to rush upon these. Lord Clarendon, uncle to the Princess, had satisfied himself that she had really escaped, and he now came out and assured the mob, in a stentorian voice, that he was perfectly satisfied of his niece’s safety, waving the letter she had left on her toilet-table.
The mob shouted, “Bless the Princess! Hurrah for the Protestant faith! No warming-pans!” but in a good-tempered mood; and the poor little garrison breathed more freely; but Anne did not feel herself forgiven. She was in a manner sent to Coventry, and treated as if she were on the enemy’s side. Never had her proud nature suffered so much, and she shed bitter tears as she said to herself, “It is very unjust! What could I have done? How could I stop Her Highness from speaking? Could they expect me to run in and accuse her? Oh, that I were at home again! Mother, mother, you little know! Of what use am I now?”
It was the very question asked by Hester Bridgeman, whom she found packing her clothes in her room.
“Take care that this is sent after me,” she said, “when a messenger I shall send calls for it.”
“What, you have your dismissal?”
“No, I should no more get it than you have done. They cannot afford to let any one go, you see, or they will have to dress up the chambermaids to stand behind the Queen’s chair. I have settled it with my cousin, Harry Bridgeman, I shall mix with the throng that come to ask for news, and be off with him before the crowd breaks in, as they will some of these days, for the guards are but half-hearted. My Portia, why did not you take a good offer, and go with the Princess?”
“I thought it would be base.”
“And much you gained by it! You are only suspected and accused.”
“I can’t be a rat leaving a sinking ship.”
“That is courteous, but I forgive it, Portia, as I know you will repent of your folly. But you never did know which side to look for the butter.”
Perhaps seeing how ugly desertion and defection looked in others made constancy easier to Anne, much as she longed for the Close at Winchester, and she even thought with a hope of the Golden Lamb, Gracechurch, as an immediate haven sure to give her a welcome.
Her occupation of reading to the Queen was ended by the King’s return, so physically exhausted by violent nose-bleeding, so despondent at the universal desertion, and so broken-hearted at his daughter’s defection, that his wife was absorbed in attending upon him.
Anne began to watch for an opportunity to demand a dismissal, which she thought would exempt her from all blame, but she was surprised and a little dismayed by being summoned to the King in the Queen’s chamber. He was lying on a couch clad in a loose dressing-gown instead of his laced coat, and a red night-cap replacing his heavy peruke, and his face was as white and sallow as if he were recovering from a long illness.
“Little godchild,” he said, holding out his hand as Anne made her obeisance, “the Queen tells me you can read well. I have a fancy to hear.”
Immensely relieved at the kindness of his tone, Anne courtesied, and murmured out her willingness.
“Read this,” he said; “I would fain hear this; my father loved it. Here.”
Anne felt her task a hard one when the King pointed to the third Act of Shakespeare’s Richard II. She steeled herself and strengthened her voice as best she could, and struggled on till she came to—
“I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking-staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave.”
There she fairly broke down, and sobbed.
“Little one, little one,” said James, you are sorry for poor Richard, eh?”
“Oh, sir!” was all she could say.
“And you are in disgrace, they tell me, because my daughter chose to try to entice you away,” said James, “and you felt bound not to betray her. Never mind; it was an awkward case of conscience, and there’s not too much faithfulness to spare in these days. We shall know whom to trust to another time. Can you continue now? I would take a lesson how, ‘with mine own hands to give away my crown.’”
It was well for Anne that fresh tidings were brought in at that moment, and she had to retire, with the sore feeling turned into an enthusiastic pity and loyalty, which needed the relief of sobs and mental vows of fidelity. She felt herself no longer in disgrace with her Royal master and mistress, but she was not in favour with her few companions left—all who could not get over her secrecy, and thought her at least a half traitor as well as a heretic.
Whitehall was almost in a state of siege, the turbulent mob continually coming to shout, ‘No Popery!’ and the like, though they proceeded no farther. The ministers and other gentlemen came and went, but the priests and the ladies durst not venture out for fear of being recognised and insulted, if not injured. Bad news came in from day to day, and no tidings of the Prince of Wales being in safety in France. Once Anne received a letter from her uncle, which cheered her much.
DEAR CHILD—So far as I can gather, your employment is at an end, if it be true as reported that the Prince of Wales is at Portsmouth, with the intent that he should be carried to France; but the gentlemen of the navy seem strongly disposed to prevent such a transportation of the heir of the realm to a foreign country. I fear me that you are in a state of doubt and anxiety, but I need not exhort your good mother’s child to be true and loyal to her trust and to the Anointed of the Lord in all things lawful at all costs. If you are left in any distress or perplexity, go either to Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe’s house, or to that of my good old friend, the Dean of Westminster; and as soon as I hear from you I will endeavour to ride to town and bring you home to my house, which is greatly at a loss without its young mistress.
The letter greatly refreshed Anne’s spirits, and gave her something to look forward to, giving her energy to stitch at a set of lawn cuffs and bands for her uncle, and think with the more pleasure of a return that his time of residence at Winchester lay between her and that vault in the castle.
There were no more attempts made at her conversion. Every one was too anxious and occupied, and one or more of the chiefly obnoxious priests were sent privately away from day to day. While summer friends departed, Anne often thought of Bishop Ken’s counsel as to loyalty to Heaven and man.
CHAPTER XX
The Flight
“Storms may rush in, and crimes and woes
Deform that peaceful bower;
They may not mar the deep repose
Of that immortal flower.
Though only broken hearts be found
To watch his cradle by,
No blight is on his slumbers sound,
No touch of harmful eye.”KEBLE.
The news was even worse and worse in that palace of despondency and terror. Notice had arrived that Lord Dartmouth was withheld from despatching the young Prince to France by his own scruples and those of the navy; and orders were sent for the child’s return. Then came a terrible alarm. The escort sent to meet him were reported to have been attacked by the rabble on entering London and dispersed, so that each man had to shift for himself.
There was a quarter of an hour which seemed many hours of fearful suspense, while King and Queen both knelt at their altar, praying in agony for the child whom they pictured to themselves in the hands of the infuriated mob, too much persuaded of his being an imposture to pity his unconscious innocence. No one who saw the blanched cheeks and agonised face of Mary Beatrice, or James’s stern, mute misery, could have believed for a moment in the cruel delusion that he was no child of theirs.
The Roman Catholic women were with them. To enter the oratory would in those circumstances have been a surrender of principle, but none the less did Anne pray with fervent passion in her chamber for pity for the child, and comfort for his parents. At last there was a stir, and hurrying out to the great stair, Anne saw a man in plain clothes replying in an Irish accent to the King, who was supporting the Queen with his arm. Happily the escort had missed the Prince of Wales. They had been obliged to turn back to London without meeting him, and from that danger he had been saved.
A burst of tears and a cry of fervent thanksgiving relieved the Queen’s heart, and James gave eager thanks instead of the reprimand the colonel had expected for his blundering.
A little later, another messenger brought word that Lord and Lady Powys had halted at Guildford with their charge. A French gentleman, Monsieur de St. Victor, was understood to have undertaken to bring him to London—understood—for everything was whispered rather than told among the panic-stricken women. No one who knew the expectation could go to bed that night except that the King and Queen had—in order to disarm suspicion—to go through the accustomed ceremonies of the coucher. The ladies sat or lay on their beds intently listening, as hour after hour chimed from the clocks.
At last, at about three in the morning, the challenge of the sentinels was heard from point to point. Every one started up, and hurried almost pell-mell towards the postern door. The King and Queen were both descending a stair leading from the King’s dressing-room, and as the door was cautiously opened, it admitted a figure in a fur cloak, which he unfolded, and displayed the sleeping face of the infant well wrapped from the December cold.
With rapture the Queen gathered him into her arms, and the father kissed him with a vehemence that made him awake and cry. St. Victor had thought it safer that his other attendants should come in by degrees in the morning, and thus Miss Woodford was the only actually effective nursery attendant at hand. His food was waiting by the fire in his own sleeping chamber, and thither he was carried. There the Queen held him on her lap, while Anne fed him, and he smiled at her and held out his arms.
The King came, and making a sign to Anne not to move, stood watching.
Presently he said, “She has kept one secret, we may trust her with another.”
“Oh, not yet, not yet,” implored the Queen. “Now I have both my treasures again, let me rest in peace upon them for a little while.”
The King turned away with eyes full of tears while Anne was lulling the child to sleep. She wondered, but durst not ask the Queen, where was the tiler’s wife; but later she learnt from Miss Dunord, that the woman had been so terrified by the cries of the multitude against the ‘pretender,’ and still more at the sight of the sea, that she had gone into transports of fright, implored to go home, and perhaps half wilfully, become useless, so that the weaning already commenced had to be expedited, and the fretfulness of the poor child had been one of the troubles for some days. However, he seemed on his return to have forgotten his troubles, and Anne had him in her arms nearly all the next day.
It was not till late in the evening that Anne knew what the King had meant. Then, while she was walking up and down the room, amusing the little Prince with showing by turns the window and his face in a large mirror, the Queen came in, evidently fresh from weeping, and holding out her arms for him, said, after looking to see that there was no other audience—
“Child, the King would repose a trust in you. He wills that you should accompany me to-night on a voyage to France to put this little angel in safety.”
“As your Majesty will,” returned Anne; “I will do my best.”
“So the King said. He knew his brave sailor’s daughter was worthy of his trust, and you can speak French. It is well, for we go under the escort of Messieurs de Lauzun and St. Victor. Be ready at midnight. Lady Strickland or the good Labadie will explain more to you, but do not speak of this to anyone else. You have leave now,” she added, as she herself carried the child towards his father’s rooms.
The maiden’s heart swelled at the trust reposed in her, and the King’s kind words, and she kept back the sense of anxiety and doubt as to so vague a future. She found Mrs. Labadie lying on her bed awake, but trying to rest between two busy nights, and she was then told that there was to be a flight from the palace of the Queen and Prince at midnight, Mrs. Labadie and Anne alone going with them, though Lord and Lady Powys and Lady Strickland, with the Queen’s Italian ladies, would meet them on board the yacht which was waiting at Gravesend. The nurse advised Anne to put a few necessary equipments into a knapsack bound under a cloak, and to leave other garments with her own in charge of Mr. Labadie, who would despatch them with those of the suite, and would follow in another day with the King. Doubt or refusal there could of course be none in such circumstances, and a high-spirited girl like Anne could not but feel a thrill of heart at selection for such confidential and signal service at her age, scarcely seventeen. Her one wish was to write to her uncle what had become of her. Mrs. Labadie hardly thought it safe, but said her husband would take charge of a note, and if possible, post it when they were safe gone, but nothing of the King’s plans must be mentioned.
The hours passed away anxiously, and yet only too fast. So many had quitted the palace that there was nothing remarkable in packing, but as Anne collected her properties, she could not help wondering whether she should ever see them again. Sometimes her spirit rose at the thought of serving her lovely Queen, saving the little Prince, and fulfilling the King’s trust; at others, she was full of vague depression at the thought of being cut off from all she knew and loved, with seas between, and with so little notice to her uncle, who might never learn where she was; but she knew she had his approval in venturing all, and making any sacrifice for the King whom all deserted; and she really loved her Queen and little Prince.
The night came, and she and Mrs. Labadie, fully equipped in cloaks and hoods, waited together, Anne moving about restlessly, the elder woman advising her to rest while she could. The little Prince, all unconscious of the dangers of the night, or of his loss of a throne, lay among his wraps in his cradle fast asleep.
By and by the door opened, and treading softly in came the King in his dressing-gown and night-cap, the Queen closely muffled, Lady Strickland also dressed for a journey, and two gentlemen, the one tall and striking-looking, the other slim and dark, in their cloaks, namely, Lauzun and St. Victor.
It was one of those supreme moments almost beyond speech or manifestation of feeling.
The King took his child in his arms, kissed him, and solemnly said to Lauzun, “I confide my wife and son to you.”
Both Frenchmen threw themselves on their knees kissing his hand with a vow of fidelity. Then giving the infant to Mrs. Labadie, James folded his wife in his arms in a long mute embrace; Anne carried the basket containing food for the child; and first with a lantern went St. Victor, then Lauzun, handing the Queen; Mrs. Labadie with the child, and Anne following, they sped down the stairs, along the great gallery, with steps as noiseless as they could make them, down another stair to a door which St. Victor opened.
A sentry challenged, sending a thrill of dismay through the anxious hearts, but St. Victor had the word, and on they went into the privy gardens, where often Anne had paced behind Mrs. Labadie as the Prince took his airing. Startling lights from the windows fell on them, illuminating the drops of rain that plashed round them on that grim December night, and their steps sounded on the gravel, while still the babe, sheltered under the cloak, slept safely. Another door was reached, more sentries challenged and passed; here was a street whose stones and silent houses shone for a little space as St. Victor raised his lantern and exchanged a word with a man on the box of a carriage.
One by one they were handed in, the Queen, the child, the nurse, Anne, and Lauzun, St. Victor taking his place outside. As if in a dream they rattled on through the dark street, no one speaking except that Lauzun asked the Queen if she were wet.
It was not far before they stopped at the top of the steps called the Horseferry. A few lights twinkled here and there, and were reflected trembling in the river, otherwise a black awful gulf, from which, on St. Victor’s cautious hail, a whistle ascended, and a cloaked figure with a lantern came up the steps glistening in the rain.
One by one again, in deep silence, they were assisted down, and into the little boat that rocked ominously as they entered it. There the women crouched together over the child unable to see one another, Anne returning the clasp of a hand on hers, believing it Mrs. Labadie’s, till on Lauzun’s exclaiming, “Est ce que j’incommode sa Majesté?” the reply showed her that it was the Queen’s hand that she held, and she began a startled “Pardon, your Majesty,” but the sweet reply in Italian was, “Ah, we are as sisters in this stress.”
The eager French voice of Lauzun went on, in undertones certainly, but as if he had not the faculty of silence, and amid the plash of the oars, the rush of the river, and the roar of the rain, it was not easy to tell what he said, his voice was only another of the noises, though the Queen made little courteous murmurs in reply. It was a hard pull against wind and tide towards a little speck of green light which was shown to guide the rowers; and when at last they reached it, St. Victor’s hail was answered by Dusions, one of the servants, and they drew to the steps where he held a lantern.
“To the coach at once, your Majesty.”
“It is at the inn—ready—but I feared to let it stand.”
Lauzun uttered a French imprecation under his breath, and danced on the step with impatience, only restrained so far as to hand out the Queen and her two attendants. He was hotly ordering off Dusions and St. Victor to bring the coach, when the former suggested that they must find a place for the Queen to wait in where they could find her.
“What is that dark building above?”
“Lambeth Church,” Dusions answered.
“Ah, your Protestant churches are not open; there is no shelter for us there,” sighed the Queen.
“There is shelter in the angle of the buttress; I have been there, your Majesty,” said Dusions.
Thither then they turned.
“What can that be?” exclaimed the Queen, starting and shuddering as a fierce light flashed in the windows and played on the wall.
“It is not within, madame,” Lauzun encouraged; “it is reflected light from a fire somewhere on the other side of the river.”
“A bonfire for our expulsion. Ah! why should they hate us so?” sighed the poor Queen.
“’Tis worse than that, only there’s no need to tell Her Majesty so,” whispered Mrs. Labadie, who, in the difficulties of the ascent, had been fain to hand the still-sleeping child to Anne. “’Tis the Catholic chapel of St. Roque. The heretic miscreants!”
“Pray Heaven no life be lost,” sighed Anne.
Sinister as the light was, it aided the poor fugitives at that dead hour of night to find an angle between the church wall and a buttress where the eaves afforded a little shelter from the rain, which slackened a little, when they were a little concealed from the road, so that the light need not betray them in case any passenger was abroad at such an hour, as two chimed from the clock overhead.
The women kept together close against the wall to avoid the drip of the eaves. Lauzun walked up and down like a sentinel, his arms folded, and talking all the while, though, as before, his utterances were only an accompaniment to the falling rain and howling wind; Mary Beatrice was murmuring prayers over the sleeping child, which she now held in the innermost corner; Anne, with wide-stretched eyes, was gazing into the light cast beyond the buttress by the fire on the opposite side, when again there passed across it that form she had seen on All Saints’ Eve—the unmistakable phantom of Peregrine.
It was gone into the darkness in another second; but a violent start on her part had given a note of alarm, and brought back the Count, whose walk had been in the opposite direction.
“What was it? Any spy?”
“Oh no—no—nothing! It was the face of one who is dead,” gasped Anne.
“The poor child’s nerve is failing her,” said the Queen gently, as Lauzun drawing his sword burst out—
“If it be a spy it shall be the face of one who is dead;” and he darted into the road, but returned in a few moments, saying no one had passed except one of the rowers returning after running up to the inn to hasten the coach; how could he have been seen from the church wall? The wheels were heard drawing up at that moment, so that the only thought was to enter it as quickly as might be in the same order as before, after which the start was made, along the road that led through the marshes of Lambeth; and then came the inquiry—an anxious one—whom or what mademoiselle, as Lauzun called her, had seen.
“O monsieur!” exclaimed the poor girl in her confusion, her best French failing, “it was nothing—no living man.”
“Can mademoiselle assure me of that? The dead I fear not, the living I would defy.”
“He lives not,” said she in an undertone, with a shudder.
“But who is he that mademoiselle can be so certain?” asked the Frenchman.
“Oh! I know him well enough,” said Anne, unable to control her voice.
“Mademoiselle must explain herself,” said M. de Lauzun. “If he be spirit—or phantom—there is no more to say, but if he be in the flesh, and a spy—then—” There was a little rattle of his sword.
“Speak, I command,” interposed the Queen; “you must satisfy M. le Comte.”
Thus adjured, Anne said in a low voice of horror: “It was a gentleman of our neighbourhood; he was killed in a duel last summer!”
“Ah! You are certain?”
“I had the misfortune to see the fight,” sighed Anne.
“That accounts for it,” said the Queen kindly. “If mademoiselle’s nerves were shaken by such a remembrance, it is not wonderful that it should recur to her at so strange a watch as we have been keeping.”
“It might account for her seeing this revenant cavalier in any passenger,” said Lauzun, not satisfied yet.
“No one ever was like him,” said Anne. “I could not mistake him.”
“May I ask mademoiselle to describe him?” continued the count.
Feeling all the time as if this first mention were a sort of betrayal, Anne faltered the words: “Small, slight, almost misshapen—with a strange one-sided look—odd, unusual features.”
Lauzun’s laugh jarred on her. “Eh! it is not a flattering portrait. Mademoiselle is not haunted by a hero of romance, it appears, so much as by a demon.”
“And none of those monsieur has employed in our escape answer to that description?” asked the Queen.
“Assuredly not, your Majesty. Crooked person and crooked mind go together, and St. Victor would only have trusted to your big honest rowers of the Tamise. I think we may be satisfied that the demoiselle’s imagination was excited so as to evoke a phantom impressed on her mind by a previous scene of terror. Such things have happened in my native Gascony.”
Anne was fain to accept the theory in silence, though it seemed to her strange that at a moment when she was for once not thinking of Peregrine, her imagination should conjure him up, and there was a strong feeling within her that it was something external that had flitted across the shadow, not a mere figment of her brain, though the notion was evidently accepted, and she could hear a muttering of Mrs. Labadie that this was the consequence of employing young wenches with their whims and megrims.
The Count de Lauzun did his best to entertain the Queen with stories of revenants in Gascony and elsewhere, and with reminiscences of his eleven years’ captivity at Pignerol, and his intercourse with Fouquet; but whenever in aftertimes Anne Woodford tried to recall her nocturnal drive with this strange personage, the chosen and very unkind husband of the poor old Grande Mademoiselle, she never could recollect anything but the fierce glare of his eyes in the light of the lamps as he put her to that terrible interrogation.
The talk was chiefly monologue. Mrs. Labadie certainly slept, perhaps the Queen did so too, and Anne became conscious that she must have slumbered likewise, for she found every one gazing at her in the pale morning dawn and asking why she cried, “O Charles, hold!”
As she hastily entreated pardon, Lauzun was heard to murmur, “Je parie que le revenant se nomme Charles,” and she collected her senses just in time to check her contradiction, recollecting that happily such a name as Charles revealed nothing. The little Prince, who had slumbered so opportunely all night, awoke and received infinite praise, and what he better appreciated, the food that had been provided for him. They were near their journey’s end, and it was well, for people were awakening and going to their work as they passed one of the villages, and once the remark was heard, “There goes a coach full of Papists.”
However, no attempt was made to stop the party, and as it would be daylight when they reached Gravesend, the Queen arranged her disguise to resemble, as she hoped, a washerwoman—taking off her gloves, and hiding her hair, while the Prince, happily again asleep, was laid in a basket of linen. Anne could not help thinking that she thus looked more remarkable than if she had simply embarked as a lady; but she meant to represent the attendant of her Italian friend Countess Almonde, whom she was to meet on board.
Leaving the coach outside a little block of houses, the party reached a projecting point of land, where three Irish officers received them, and conducted them to a boat. Then, wrapped closely in cloaks from the chill morning air, they were rowed to the yacht, on the deck of which stood Lord and Lady Powys, Lady Strickland, Pauline Dunord, and a few more faithful followers, who had come more rapidly. There was no open greeting nor recognition, for the captain and crew were unaware whom they were carrying, and, on the discovery, either for fear of danger or hope of reward, might have captured such a prize.
Therefore all the others, with whispered apologies, were hoisted up before her, and Countess Almonde had to devise a special entreaty that the chair might be lowered again for her poor laundress as well as for the other two women.
The yacht, which had been hired by St. Victor, at once spread her sails; Mrs. Labadie conversed with the captain while the countess took the Queen below into the stifling crowded little cabin. It was altogether a wretched voyage; the wind was high, and the pitching and tossing more or less disabled everybody in the suite. The Queen was exceedingly ill, so were the countess and Mrs. Labadie. Nobody could be the least effective but Signora Turini, who waited on her Majesty, and Anne, who was so far seasoned by excursions at Portsmouth that she was capable of taking sole care of the little Prince, as the little vessel dashed along on her way with her cargo of alarm and suffering through the Dutch fleet of fifty vessels, none of which seemed to notice her—perhaps by express desire not to be too curious as to English fugitives.
Between the care of the little one, who needed in the tossing of the ship to be constantly in arms though he never cried and when awake was always merry, and the giving as much succour as possible to her suffering companions, Anne could not either rest or think, but seemed to live in one heavy dazed dream of weariness and endurance, hardly knowing whether it were day or night, till the welcome sound was heard that Calais was in sight.
Then, as well as they could, the poor travellers crawled from the corners, and put themselves in such array as they could contrive, though the heaving of the waves, as the little yacht lay to, did not conduce to their recovery. The Count de Lauzun went ashore as soon as a boat could be lowered to apprise M. Charot, the Governor of Calais, of the guest he was to receive, and after an interval of considerable discomfort, in full view of the massive fortifications, boats came off to bring the Queen and her attendants on shore, this time as a Queen, though she refused to receive any honours. Lady Strickland, recovering as soon as she was on dry land, resumed her Prince, who was fondled with enthusiastic praises for his excellent conduct on the voyage.
Anne could not help feebly thinking some of the credit might be due to her, since she had held him by land and water nearly ever since leaving Whitehall, but she was too much worn out by her nights of unrest, and too much battered and beaten by the tossings of her voyage, to feel anything except in a languid half-conscious way, under a racking headache; and when the curious old house where they were to rest was reached, and all the rest were eating with ravenous appetites, she could taste nothing, and being conducted by a compassionate Frenchwoman in a snow-white towering cap to a straw mattress spread on the ground, she slept the twenty-four hours round without moving.
CHAPTER XXI
Exile
“‘Oh, who are ye, young man?’ she said.
‘What country come ye frae?’
‘I flew across the sea,’ he said;
‘’Twas but this very day.’”Old Ballad.
Five months had passed away since the midnight flight from England, when Anne Woodford was sitting on a stone bench flanked with statues in the stately gardens of the Palace of St. Germain, working away at some delicate point lace, destined to cover some of the deficiencies of her dress, for her difficulties were great, and these months had been far from happy ones.
The King was in Ireland, the Queen spent most of the time of his absence in convents, either at Poissy or Chaillot, carrying her son with her to be the darling of the nuns, who had for the most part never even seen a baby, and to whom a bright lively child of a year old was a perfect treasure of delight. Not wishing to encumber the good Sisters with more attendants than were needful, the Queen only took with her one lady governess, one nurse, and one rocker, and this last naturally was Pauline Dunord, both a Frenchwoman and a Roman Catholic.
This was in itself no loss to Anne. Her experience of the nunnery at Boulogne, where had been spent three days in expectation of the King, had not been pleasant. The nuns had shrunk from her as a heretic, and kept their novices and pensionnaires from the taint of communication with her; and all the honour she might have deserved for the Queen’s escape seemed to have been forfeited by that moment of fear, which in the telling had become greatly exaggerated.
It was true that the Queen had never alluded to it; but probably through Mrs. Labadie, it had become current that Miss Woodford had been so much alarmed under the churchyard wall that her fancy had conjured up a phantom and she had given a loud scream, which but for the mercy of the Saints would have betrayed them all.
Anne was persuaded that she had done nothing worse than give an involuntary start, but it was not of the least use to say so, and she began to think that perhaps others knew better than she did. Miss Dunord, who had never been more than distantly polite to her in England, was of course more thrown with her at St. Germain, and examined her closely. Who was it? What was it? Had she seen it before? It was of no use to deny. Pauline knew she had seen something on that All Saints’ Eve. Was it true that it was a lover of hers, and that she had seen him killed in a duel on her account? Who would have imagined it in cette demoiselle si sage! Would she not say who it was!
But though truth forced more than one affirmative to be pumped out of Anne, she clung to that last shred of concealment, and kept her own counsel as to the time, place, and persons of the duel, and thus she so far offended Pauline as to prevent that damsel from having any scruples in regarding her as an obnoxious and perilous rival, with a dark secret in her life. Certainly Miss Dunord did earnestly assure her that to adopt her Church, invoke the Saints, and have Masses for the dead was the only way to lay such ghosts; but Anne remained obdurate, and thus was isolated, for there were very few Protestants in the fugitive Court, and those were of too high a degree to consort with her. Perhaps that undefined doubt of her discretion was against her; perhaps too her education and knowledge of languages became less useful to the Queen when surrounded by French, for she was no longer called upon to act as reader; and the little Prince, during his residence in the convent, had time to forget her and lose his preference for her. She was not discharged, but except for taking her turn as a nursery-maid when the Prince was at St. Germain, she was a mere supernumerary, nor was there any salary forthcoming. The small amount of money she had with her had dwindled away, and when she applied to Lady Strickland, who was kinder to her than any one else, she was told that the Queen was far too much distressed for money wherewith to aid the King to be able to pay any one, and that they must all wait till the King had his own again. Her clothes were wearing out, and scarcely in condition for attendance on the Prince when he was shown in state to the King of France. Worse than all, she seemed entirely cut off from home. She had written several times to her uncle when opportunity seemed to offer, but had never heard from him, and she did not know whether her letters could reach him, or if he were even aware of what had become of her. People came with passports from England to join the exiled Court, but no one returned thither, or she would even have offered herself as a waiting-maid to have a chance of going back. Lady Strickland would have forwarded her, but no means or opportunity offered, and there was nothing for it but to look to the time that everybody declared to be approaching when the King was to be reinstated, and they would all go home in triumph.
Meanwhile Anne Woodford felt herself a supernumerary, treated with civility, and no more, as she ate her meals with a very feminine Court, for almost all the gentlemen were in Ireland with the King. She had a room in the entresol to herself, in Pauline’s absence, and here she could in turn sit and dream, or mend and furbish up her clothes—a serious matter now—or read the least scrap of printed matter in her way, for books were scarcer than even at Whitehall; and though her ‘mail’ had safely been forwarded by Mr. Labadie, some jealous censor had abstracted her Bible and Prayer-book. Probably there was no English service anywhere in France at that time, unless among the merchants at Bordeaux—certainly neither English nor Reformed was within her reach—and she had to spend her Sundays in recalling all she could, and going over it, feeling thankful to the mother who had made her store Psalms, Gospels, and Collects in her memory week by week.
She was so far forgotten that active attempts to convert her had been dropped, except by Pauline. Perhaps it was thought that isolation would be effectual, but in fact the sight of popular Romanism not kept in check by Protestant surroundings shocked her, and made her far more averse to change than when she saw it at its best at Whitehall. In fine, the end of her ambition had been neglect and poverty, and the real service that she had rendered was unacknowledged, and marred by that momentary alarm. No wonder she felt sore.
She had never once been to Paris, and seldom beyond the gardens, which happily were free in the absence of the Queen, and always had secluded corners apart from the noble terraces, safe from the intrusion of idle gallants. Anne had found a sort of bower of her own, shaded by honeysuckles and wild roses, where she could sit looking over the slopes and the windings of the Seine and indulge her musings and longings.
The lonely life brought before her all the anxieties that had been stifled for the time by the agitations of the escape. Again and again she lived over the scene in the ruins. Again and again she recalled those two strange appearances, and shivering at the thought of the anniversary that was approaching in another month, still felt sometimes that, alive or dead, Peregrine’s would be a home face, and framed to herself imaginary scenes in which she addressed him, and demanded whether he could not rest in his unhallowed grave. What would Bishop Ken say? Sometimes even she recollected the strange theory which had made him crave execution from the late King, seven years, yes, a little more than seven years ago, and marvel whether at that critical epoch he had indeed between life and death been snatched away to his native land of faëry. Imagination might well run riot in the solitary, unoccupied condition to which she was reduced; and she also brooded much over the fragments of doubtful news which reached her.
Something was said of all loyal clergy being expelled and persecuted, and this of course suggested those sufferings of the clergy during the Commonwealth, of which she had often heard, making her very anxious about her uncle, and earnestly long for wings to fly to him. The Archfields too! Had Charles returned, and did that secret press upon him as it did upon her? Did Lucy think herself utterly forgotten and cast aside, receiving no word or message from her friend? “Perhaps,” thought Anne, “they fancy me sailing about at Court in silks and satins, jewels and curls, and forgetting them all, as I remember Lucy said I should when she first heard that I was going to Whitehall. Nay, and I even took pleasure in the picture of myself so decked out, though I never, never meant to forget her. Foolish, worse than foolish, that I was! And to think that I might now be safe and happy with good Lady Russell, near my uncle and all of them. I could almost laugh to think how my fine notions of making my fortune have ended in sitting here, neglected, forgotten, banished, almost in rags! I suppose it was all self-seeking, and that I must take it meekly as no more than I deserve. But oh, how different! how different is this captivity! ‘Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away, and be at rest.’ Swallow, swallow! you are sweeping through the air. Would that my spirit could fly like you! if only for one glimpse to tell me what they are doing. Ah! there’s some one coming down this unfrequented walk, where I thought myself safe. A young gentleman! I must rise and go as quietly as I can before he sees me. Nay,” as the action following the impulse, she was gathering up her work, “’tis an old abbé with him! no fear! Abbé? Nay, ’tis liker to an English clergyman! Can a banished one have strayed hither? The younger man is in mourning. Could it be? No graver, older, more manly—Oh!”
“Anne! Anne! We have found you!”
“Mr. Archfield! You!”
And as Charles Archfield, in true English fashion, kissed her cheek, Anne fairly choked with tears of joy, and she ever after remembered that moment as the most joyful of her life, though the joy was almost agony.
“This is Mistress Anne Woodford, sir,” said Charles, the next moment. “Allow me, madam, to present Mr. Fellowes, of Magdalen College.”
Anne held out her hand, and courtesied in response to the bow and wave of the shovel hat.
“How did you know that I was here?” she said.
“Doctor Woodford thought it likely, and begged us to come and see whether we could do anything for you,” said Charles; “and you may believe that we were only too happy to do so. A lady to whom we had letters, who is half English, the Vicomtesse de Bellaise, was so good as to go to the convent at Poissy and discover for us from some of the suite where you were.”
“My uncle—my dear uncle—is he well?”
“Quite well, when last we heard,” said Charles. “That was at Florence, nearly a month ago.”
“And all at Fareham, are they well?”
“All just as usual,” said Charles, “at the last hearing, which was at the same time. I hoped to have met letters at Paris, but no doubt the war prevents the mails from running.”
“Ah! I have never had a single letter,” said Anne. “Did my uncle know anything of me? Has he never had one of mine?”
“Up to the time when he wrote, last March, that is to say, he had received nothing. He had gone to London to make inquiries—”
“Ah! my dear good uncle!”
“And had ascertained that you had been chosen to accompany the Queen and Prince in their escape from Whitehall. You have played the heroine, Miss Anne.”
“Oh! if you knew—”
“And,” said Mr. Fellowes, “both he and Sir Philip Archfield requested us, if we could make our way home through Paris, to come and offer our services to Mistress Woodford, in case she should wish to send intelligence to England, or if she should wish to make use of our escort to return home.”
“Oh sir! oh sir! how can I thank you enough! You cannot guess the happiness you have brought me,” cried Anne with clasped hands, tears welling up again.
“You will come with us then,” cried Charles. “I am sure you ought. They have not used you well, Anne; how pale and thin you have grown.”
“That is only pining! I am quite well, only home-sick,” she said with a smile. “I am sure the Queen will let me go. I am nothing but a burthen now. She has plenty of her own people, and they do not like a Protestant about the Prince.”
“There is Madame de Bellaise,” said Mr. Fellowes, “advancing along the walk with Lady Powys. Let me present you to her.”
“You have succeeded, I see,” a kind voice said, as Anne found herself making her courtesy to a tall and stately old lady, with a mass of hair of the peculiar silvered tint of flaxen mixed with white.
“I am sincerely glad,” said Lady Powys, “that Miss Woodford has met her friends.”
“Also,” said Madame de Bellaise, “Lady Powys is good enough to say that if mademoiselle will honour me with a visit, she gives permission for her to return with me to Paris.”
This was still greater joy, except for that one recollection, formidable in the midst of her joy, of her dress. Did Madame de Bellaise divine something? for she said, “These times remind me of my youth, when we poor cavalier families well knew what sore straits were. If mademoiselle will bring what is most needful, the rest can be sent afterwards.”
Making her excuses for the moment, Anne with light and gladsome foot sped along the stately alley, up the stairs to her chamber, round which she looked much as if it had been a prison cell, fell on her knees in a gush of intense thankfulness, and made her rapid preparations, her hands trembling with joy, and a fear that she might wake to find all again a dream. She felt as if this deliverance were a token of forgiveness for her past wilfulness, and as if hope were opened to her once more. Lady Powys met her as she came down, and spoke very kindly, thanking her for her services, and hoping that she would enjoy the visit she was about to make.
“Does your ladyship think Her Majesty will require me any longer?” asked Anne timidly.
“If you wish to return to the country held by the Prince of Orange,” said the Countess coldly, “you must apply for dismissal to Her Majesty herself.”
Anne perceived from the looks of her friends that it was no time for discussing her loyalty, and all taking leave, she was soon seated beside Madame de Bellaise, while the coach and four rolled down the magnificent avenue, and scene after scene disappeared, beautiful and stately indeed, but which she was as glad to leave behind her as if they had been the fetters and bars of a dungeon, and she almost wondered at the words of admiration of her companions.
Madame de Bellaise sat back, and begged the others to speak English, saying that it was her mother tongue, and she loved the sound of it, but really trying to efface herself, while the eager conversation between the two young people went on about their homes.
Charles had not been there more recently than Anne, and his letters were at least two months old, but the intelligence in them was as water to her thirsty soul. All was well, she heard, including the little heir of Archfield, though the young father coloured a little, and shuffled over the answers to the inquiries with a rather sad smile. Charles was, however, greatly improved. He had left behind him the loutish, unformed boy, and had become a handsome, courteous, well-mannered gentleman. The very sight of him handing Madame de Bellaise in and out of her coach was a wonder in itself when Anne recollected how he had been wont to hide himself in the shrubbery to prevent being called upon for such services, and how uncouthly in the last extremity he would perform them.
Madame de Bellaise was inhabiting her son’s great Hôtel de Nidemerle. He was absent in garrison, and she was presiding over the family of grandchildren, their mother being in bad health. So much Anne heard before she was conducted to a pleasant little bedroom, far more home-like and comfortable than in any of the palaces she had inhabited. It opened into another, whence merry young voices were heard.
“That is the apartment of my sister’s youngest daughter,” said Madame de Bellaise, “Noémi Darpent. I borrowed her for a little while to teach her French and dancing, but now that we are gone to war, they want to have her back again, and it will be well that she should avail herself of the same escort as yourself. All will then be selon les convenances, which had been a difficulty to me,” she added with a laugh.
Then opening the door of communication she said; “Here, Noémi, we have found your countrywoman, and I put her under your care. Ah! you two chattering little pies, I knew the voices were yours. This is my granddaughter, Marguerite de Nidemerle, and my niece—à la mode de Bretagne—Cécile d’Aubépine, all bestowing their chatter on their cousin.”
Noémi Darpent was a tall, fair, grave-faced maiden, some years over twenty, and so thoroughly English that it warmed Anne’s heart to look at her, and the other two were bright little Frenchwomen—Marguerite a pretty blonde, Cécile pale, dark, and sallow, but full of life. Both were at the age at which girls were usually in convents, but as Anne learnt, Madame de Bellaise was too English at heart to give up the training of her grandchildren, and she had an English governess for them, daughter to a Romanist cavalier ruined by sequestration.
She was evidently the absolute head of the family. Her daughter-in-law was a delicate little creature, who scarcely seemed able to bear the noise of the family at the long supper-table, when all talked with shrill French voices, from the two youths and their abbé tutor down to the little four-year-old Lolotte in her high chair. But to Anne, after the tedious formality of the second table at the palace, stiff without refinement, this free family life was perfectly delightful and refreshing, though as yet she was too much cramped, as it were, by long stiffness, silence, and treatment as an inferior to join, except by the intelligent dancing of her brown eyes, and replies when directly addressed.
After Mrs. Labadie’s homeliness, Pauline’s exclusive narrowness, Jane’s petty frivolity, Hester’s vulgar worldliness, and the general want of cultivation in all who treated her on an equality, it was like returning to rational society; and she could not but observe that Mr. Archfield altogether held his own in conversation with the rest, whether in French or English. Little more than a year ago he would hardly have opened his mouth, and would have worn the true bumpkin look of contemptuous sheepishness. Now he laughed and made others laugh as readily and politely as—Ah! With whom was she comparing him? Did the thought of poor Peregrine dwell on his mind as it did upon hers? But perhaps things were not so terrible to a man as to a woman, and he had not seen those apparitions! Indeed, when not animated, she detected a certain thoughtful melancholy on his brow which certainly had not belonged to former times.
Mr. Fellowes early made known to Anne that her uncle had asked him to be her banker, and the first care of her kind hostess was to assist her in supplying the deficiencies of her wardrobe, so that she was able to go abroad without shrinking at her own shabby appearance.
The next thing was to take her to Poissy to request her dismissal from the Queen, without which it would be hardly decorous to depart, though in point of fact, in the present state of affairs, as Noémi said, there was nothing to prevent it.
“No,” said Mr. Fellowes; “but for that reason Miss Woodford would feel bound to show double courtesy to the discrowned Queen.”
“And she has often been very kind to me—I love her much,” said Anne.
“Noémi is a little Whig,” said Madame de Bellaise. “I shall not take her with us, because I know her father would not like it, but to me it is only like the days of my youth to visit an exiled queen. Will these gentlemen think fit to be of the party?”
“Thank you, madam, not I,” said the Magdalen man. “I am very sorry for the poor lady, but my college has suffered too much at her husband’s hands for me to be very anxious to pay her my respects; and if my young friend will take my advice, neither will he. It might be bringing his father into trouble.”
To this Charles agreed, so M. L’Abbé undertook to show them the pictures at the Louvre, and Anne and Madame de Bellaise were the only occupants of the carriage that conveyed them to the great old convent of Poissy, the girl enjoying by the way the comfort of the kindness of a motherly woman, though even to her there could be no confiding of the terrible secret that underlay all her thoughts. Madame de Bellaise, however, said how glad she was to secure this companionship for her niece. Noémi had been more attached than her family realised to Claude Merrycourt, a neighbour who had had the folly, contrary to her prudent father’s advice, to rush into Monmouth’s rebellion, and it had only been by the poor girl’s agony when he suffered under the summary barbarities of Kirke that her mother had known how much her heart was with him. The depression of spirits and loss of health that ensued had been so alarming that when Madame de Bellaise, after some months, paid a long visit to her sister in England, Mrs. Darpent had consented to send the girl to make acquaintance with her French relations, and try the effect of change of scene. She had gone, indifferent, passive, and broken-hearted, but her aunt had watched over her tenderly, and she had gradually revived, not indeed into a joyous girl, but into a calm and fairly cheerful woman.
When she had left home, France and England were only too closely connected, but now they were at daggers drawn, and probably would be so for many years, and the Revolution had come so suddenly that Madame de Bellaise had not been able to make arrangements for her niece’s return home, and Noémi was anxiously waiting for an opportunity of rejoining her parents.
The present plan was this. Madame de Bellaise’s son, the Marquis de Nidemerle, was Governor of Douai, where his son, the young Baron de Ribaumont, with his cousin, the Chevalier d’Aubépine, were to join him with their tutor, the Abbé Leblanc. The war on the Flemish frontier was not just then in an active state, and there were often friendly relations between the commandants of neighbouring garrisons, so that it might be possible to pass a party on to the Spanish territory with a flag of truce, and then the way would be easy. This passing, however, would be impossible for Noémi alone, since etiquette would not permit of her thus travelling with the two young gentlemen, nor could she have proceeded after reaching Douai, so that the arrival of the two Englishmen and the company of Miss Woodford was a great boon. Madame de Bellaise had already despatched a courier to ask her son whether he could undertake the transit across the frontier, and hoped to apply for passports as soon as his answer was received. She told Anne her niece’s history to prevent painful allusions on the journey.