A Reputed Changeling

It was Peregrine Oakshott with his brother Robert, and she could hardly tell how in a few seconds she had been squeezed through the crowd, and stood in the inn-yard, in a comparatively free space, for a groat was a prohibitory charge to the vulgar.

“Peregrine!  Master Oakshott!”  They heard an exclamation of pleasure, at which Peregrine shrugged his shoulders and looked expressively at Anne, before turning to receive the salutations of an elderly gentleman and a tall young woman, very plainly but handsomely clad in mourning deeper than his own.  She was of a tall, gaunt, angular figure, and a face that never could have been handsome, and now bore evident traces of smallpox in redness and pits.

Dr. Woodford knew the guardian Mr. Browning, and his ward Mistress Martha and Mistress Anne Jacobina were presented to one another.  The former gave a good-humoured smile, as if perfectly unconscious of her own want of beauty, and declared she had hoped to meet all the rest here, especially Mistress Anne Woodford, of whom she had heard so much.  There was just a little patronage about the tone which repelled the proud spirit that was in Anne, and in spite of the ordinary dread and repulsion she felt for Peregrine, she was naughty enough to have the feeling of a successful beauty when Peregrine most manifestly turned away from the heiress in her silk and velvet to do the honours of the exhibition to the parson’s niece.

The elephant was fastened by the leg to a post, which perhaps he could have pulled up, had he thought it worth his while, but he was well contented to wave his trunk about and extend its clever finger to receive contributions of cakes and apples, and he was too well amused to resort to any strong measures.  The tiger, to Anne’s relief, proved to be only a stuffed specimen.  Peregrine, who had seen a good many foreign animals in Holland, where the Dutch captains were in the habit of bringing curiosities home for the delectation of their families in their Lusthausen, was a very amusing companion, having much to tell about bird and beast, while Robert stood staring with open mouth.  The long-legged secretary and the beautiful doves were, however, only stuffed, but Anne was much entertained at second hand with the relation of the numerous objects, which on the word of a Leyden merchant had been known to disappear in the former bird’s capacious crop, and with stories of the graceful dancing of the cobra, though she was not sorry that the present specimen was only visible in a bottle of arrack, where his spectacled hood was scarcely apparent.  Presently a well known shrill young voice was heard.  “Yes, yes, I know I shall swoon at that terrible tiger!  Oh, don’t!  I can’t come any farther.”

“Why, you would come, madam,” said Charles.

“Yes, yes! but—oh, there’s a two-tailed monster!  I know it is the tiger!  It is moving!  I shall die if you take me any farther.”

“Plague upon your folly, madam!  It is only the elephant,” said a gruffer, rude voice.

“Oh, it is dreadful!  ’Tis like a mountain!  I can’t!  Oh no, I can’t!”

“Come, madam, you have brought us thus far, you must come on, and not make fools of us all,” said Charles’s voice.  “There’s nothing to hurt you.”

Anne, understanding the distress and perplexity, here turned back to the passage into the court, and began persuasively to explain to little Mrs. Archfield that the tiger was dead, and only a skin, and that the elephant was the mildest of beasts, till she coaxed forward that small personage, who had of course never really intended to turn back, supported and guarded as she was by her husband, and likewise by a tall, glittering figure in big boots and a handsome scarlet uniform and white feather who claimed her attention as he strode into the court.  “Ha!  Mistress Anne and the Doctor on my life.  What, don’t you know me?”

“Master Sedley Archfield!” said the Doctor; “welcome home, sir!  ’Tis a meeting of old acquaintance.  You and this gentleman are both so much altered that it is no wonder if you do not recognise one another at once.”

“No fear of Mr. Perry Oakshott not being recognised,” said Sedley Archfield, holding out his hand, but with a certain sneer in his rough voice that brought Peregrine’s eyebrows together.  “Kenspeckle enough, as the fools of Whigs say in Scotland.”

“Are you long from Scotland, sir?” asked Dr. Woodford, by way of preventing personalities.

“Oh ay, sir; these six months and more.  There’s not much more sport to be had since the fools of Cameronians have been pretty well got under, and ’tis no loss to be at Hounslow.”

“And oh, what a fright!” exclaimed Mrs. Archfield, catching sight of the heiress.  “Keep her away!  She makes me ill.”

They were glad to divert her attention to feeding the elephant, and she was coquetting a little about making up her mind to approach even the defunct tiger, while she insisted on having the number of his victims counted over to her.  Anne asked for Lucy, to whom she wanted to show the pigeons, but was answered that, “my lady wanted Lucy at home over some matter of jellies and blancmanges.”

Charles shrugged his shoulders a little and Sedley grumbled to Anne.  “The little vixen sets her heart on cates that she won’t lay a finger to make, and poor Lucy is like to be no better than a cook-maid, while they won’t cross her, for fear of her tantrums.”

At that instant piercing screams, shriek upon shriek, rang through the court, and turning hastily round, Anne beheld a little monkey perched on Mrs. Archfield’s head, having apparently leapt thither from the pole to which it was chained.

The keeper was not in sight, being in fact employed over a sale of some commodities within.  There was a general springing to the rescue.  Charles tried to take the creature off, Sedley tugged at the chain fastened to a belt round its body, but the monkey held tight by the curls on the lady’s forehead with its hands, and crossed its legs round her neck, clasping the hands so that the effect of the attempts of her husband and his cousin was only to throttle her, so that she could no longer scream and was almost in a fit, when on Peregrine holding out a nut and speaking coaxingly in Dutch, the monkey unloosed its hold, and with another bound was on his arm.  He stood caressing and feeding it, talking to it in the same tongue, while it made little squeaks and chatterings, evidently delighted, though its mournful old man’s visage still had the same piteous expression.  There was something most grotesque and almost weird in the sight of Peregrine’s queer figure toying with its odd hands which seemed to be in black gloves, and the strange language he talked to it added to the uncanny effect.  Even the Doctor felt it as he stood watching, and would have muttered ‘Birds of a feather,’ but that the words were spoken more gruffly and plainly by Sedley Archfield, who said something about the Devil and his dam, which the good Doctor did not choose to hear, and only said to Peregrine, “You know how to deal with the jackanapes.”

“I have seen some at Leyden, sir.  This is a pretty little beast.”

Pretty!  There was a recoil in horror, for the creature looked to the crowd demoniacal.  Something the same was the sensation of Charles, who, assisted by Anne and Martha, had been rather carrying than leading his wife into the inn parlour, where she immediately had a fit of hysterics—vapours, as they called it—bringing all the women of the inn about her, while Martha and Anne soothed her as best they could, and he was reduced to helplessly leaning out at the bay window.

When the sobs and cries subsided, under cold water and essences without and strong waters within, and the little lady in Martha’s strong arms, between the matronly coaxing of the fat hostess and the kind soothings of the two young ladies, had been restored to something of equanimity, Mistress Martha laid her down and said with the utmost good humour and placidity to the young husband, “Now I’ll go, sir.  She is better now, but the sight of my face might set her off again.”

“Oh, do not say so, madam.  We are infinitely obliged.  Let her thank you.”

But Martha shook her hand and laughed, turning to leave the room, so that he was fain to give her his arm and escort her back to her guardian.

Then ensued a scream.  “Where’s he going?  Mr. Archfield, don’t leave me.”

“He is only taking Mistress Browning back to her guardian,” said Anne.

“Eh? oh, how can he?  A hideous fright!” she cried.

To say the truth, she was rather pleased to have had such a dreadful adventure, and to have made such a commotion, though she protested that she must go home directly, and could never bear the sight of those dreadful monsters again, or she should die on the spot.

“But,” said she, when the coach was at the door, and Anne had restored her dress to its dainty gaiety, “I must thank Master Peregrine for taking off that horrible jackanapes.”

“Small thanks to him,” said Charles crossly.  “I wager it was all his doing out of mere spite.”

“He is too good a beau ever to spite me,” said Mrs. Alice, her head a little on one side.

“Then to show off what he could do with the beast—Satan’s imp, like himself.”

“No, no, Mr. Archfield,” pleaded Anne, “that was impossible; I saw him myself.  He was with that sailor-looking man measuring the height of the secretary bird.”

“I believe you are always looking after him,” grumbled Charles.  “I can’t guess what all the women see in him to be always gazing after him.”

“Because he is so charmingly ugly,” laughed the young wife, tripping out in utter forgetfulness that she was to die if she went near the beasts again.  She met Peregrine half way across the yard with outstretched hands, exclaiming—

“O Mr. Oakshott! it was so good in you to take away that nasty beast.”

“I am glad, madam, to have been of use,” said Peregrine, bowing and smiling, a smile that might explain something of his fascination.  “The poor brute was only drawn, as all of our kind are.  He wanted to see so sweet a lady nearer.  He is quite harmless.  Will you stroke him?  See, there he sits, gazing after you.  Will you give him a cake and make friends?”

“No, no, madam, it cannot be; it is too much,” grumbled Charles; and though Alice had backed at first, perhaps for the pleasure of teasing him, or for that of being the centre of observation, actually, with all manner of pretty airs and graces, she let herself be led forward, lay a timid hand on the monkey’s head, and put a cake in its black fingers, while all the time Peregrine held it fast and talked Dutch to it; and Charles Archfield hardly contained his rage, though Anne endeavoured to argue the impossibility of Peregrine’s having incited the attack; and Sedley blustered that they ought to interfere and make the fellow know the reason why.  However, Charles had sense enough to know that though he might exhale his vexation in grumbling, he had no valid cause for quarrelling with young Oakshott, so he contented himself with black looks and grudging thanks, as he was obliged to let Peregrine hand his wife into her carriage amid her nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

They would have taken Dr. Woodford and his niece home in the coach, but Anne had an errand in the town, and preferred to return by boat.  She wanted some oranges and Turkey figs to allay her mother’s constant thirst, and Peregrine begged permission to accompany them, saying that he knew where to find the best and cheapest.  Accordingly he took them to a tiny cellar, in an alley by the boat camber, where the Portugal oranges certainly looked riper and were cheaper than any that Anne had found before; but there seemed to be an odd sort of understanding between Peregrine and the withered old weather-beaten sailor who sold them, such as rather puzzled the Doctor.

“I hope these are not contraband,” he said to Peregrine, when the oranges had been packed in the basket of the servant who followed them.

Peregrine shrugged his shoulders.

“Living is hard, sir.  Ask no questions.”

The Doctor looked tempted to turn back with the fruit, but such doubts were viewed as ultra scruples, and would hardly have been entertained even by a magistrate such as Sir Philip Archfield.

It was not a time for questions, and Peregrine remained with them till they embarked at the point, asking to be commended to Mrs. Woodford, and hoping soon to come and see both her and poor Hans, he left them.