"She's turned her right and round about,
And thrice she blew on a grass-green horn,
And she sware by the moon and the stars above
That she'd gar me rue the day I was born."
Old Ballad of Alison Cross.
Dr. Woodford's parish was Portchester, where stood the fine old
royal castle at present ungarrisoned, and partly dismantled in the
recent troubles, on a chalk peninsula, a spur from Portsdown,
projecting above the alluvial flats, and even into the harbour,
whose waves at high tide laved the walls. The church and churchyard
were within the ample circuit of the fortifications, about two
furlongs distant from the main building, where rose the mighty
Norman keep, above the inner court, with a gate tower at this date,
only inhabited by an old soldier as porter with his family. A
massive square tower at each angle of the huge wall likewise defied
decay.
It was on Midsummer eve, that nearly about sundown, Dr. Woodford was
summoned by the severe illness of the gatekeeper's old father, and
his sister-in-law went with him to attempt what her skill could
accomplish for the old man's relief.
They were detained there till the sun had long set, though the air,
saturated with his redness, was full of soft twilight, while the
moon, scarcely past the full, was just high enough to silver the
quiet sea, and throw the shadow of the battlements and towers on the
sward whitened with dew.
After the close atmosphere of the sickroom the freshness was
welcome, and Mrs. Woodford, once a friend of Katherine Phillips,
'the Matchless Orinda,' had an eye and a soul to appreciate the
beauty, and she even murmured the lines of Il Penseroso as she leant
on the arm of her brother-in-law, who, in his turn, thought of
Homer.
Suddenly, as they stood in the shadow, they were aware of a small,
slight, fantastic figure in the midst of the grass-grown court,
where there was a large green mushroom circle or fairy ring. On the
borders of this ring it paused with an air of disappointment. Then
entering it stood still, took off the hat, whose lopsided appearance
had given so strange an outline, and bowed four times in opposite
directions, when, as the face was turned towards the spectators,
invisible in the dark shadow, the lady recognised Peregrine
Oakshott. She pressed the Doctor's arm, and they both stood still
watching the boy bathing his hand in the dew, and washing his face
with it, then kneeling on one knee, and clasping his hands, as he
cried aloud in a piteous chant--
"Fairy mother, fairy mother! Oh, come, come and take me home! My
very life is sore to me. They all hate me! My brothers and the
servants, every one of them. And my father and tutor say I am
possessed with an evil spirit, and I am beaten daily, and more than
daily. I can never, never get a good word from living soul! This
is the second seven years, and Midsummer night! Oh, bring the other
back again! I'm weary, I'm weary! Good elves, good elves, take me
home. Fairy mother! Come, come, come!" Shutting his eyes he
seemed to be in a state of intense expectation. Tears filled Mrs.
Woodford's eyes. The Doctor moved forward, but no sooner did the
boy become conscious of human presence than he started up, and fled
wildly towards a postern door, but no sooner had he disappeared in
the shadow than there was a cry and a fall.
"Poor child!" exclaimed Dr. Woodford, "he has fallen down the steps
to the vault. It is a dangerous pitfall."
They both hurried to the place, and found the boy lying on the steps
leading down to the vault, but motionless, and when they succeeded
in lifting him up, he was quite unconscious, having evidently struck
his head against the mouth of the vault.
"We must carry him home between us," said Mrs. Woodford. "That will
be better than rousing Miles Gateward, and making a coil."
Dr. Woodford, however, took the entire weight, which he declared to
be very slight. "No one would think the poor child fourteen years
old," he observed, "yet did he not speak of a second seven?"
"True," said Mrs. Woodford, "he was born after the Great Fire of
London, which, as I have good cause to know, was in the year '66."
There was still little sign of revival about the boy when he had
been carried into the Parsonage, undressed and laid in the Doctor's
own bed, only a few moans when he was handled, and on his thin,
sharp features there was a piteous look of sadness entirely unlike
his ordinary expression of malignant fun, and which went to the kind
hearts of the Doctor and Mrs. Woodford. After exhausting their own
remedies, as soon as the early daylight was available Dr. Woodford
called up a couple of servants, and sent one into Portsmouth for a
surgeon, and another to Oakwood to the parents.
The doctor was the first to arrive, though not till the morning was
well advanced. He found that three ribs were broken against the
edge of the stone step, and the head severely injured, and having
had sufficient experience in the navy to be a reasonably safe
practitioner, he did nothing worse than bleed the patient, and
declared that absolute rest was the only hope of recovery.
He was being regaled with cold roast pig and ale when Major Oakshott
rode up to the door. Four horses were dragging the great lumbering
coach over Portsdown hill, but he had gone on before, to thank Dr.
and Mrs. Woodford for their care of his unfortunate son, and to make
preparations for his transport home under the care of his wife's own
woman, who was coming in the coach in the stead of the invalid lady.
"Nay, sir. Master Brent here has a word to say to that matter,"
replied the Doctor.
"Truly, sir, I have," said the surgeon; "in his present state it is
as much as your son's life is worth to move him."
"Be that as it may seem to man, he is in the hand of Heaven, and he
ought to be at home, whether for life or death."
"For death it will assuredly be, sir, if he be jolted and shaken
along the Portsdown roads--yea, I question whether you would get him
to Oakwood alive," said Brent, with naval roughness.
"Indeed, sir," added Mrs. Woodford, "Mrs. Oakshott may be assured of
my giving him as tender care as though he were mine own son."
"I am beholden to you, madam," said the Major; "I know your
kindliness of heart; but in good sooth, the unhappy and rebellious
lad merits chastisement rather than pity, since what should he be
doing at this distance from home, where he was shut up for his
misdemeanours, save fleeing like the Prodigal of the parable, or
else planning another of his malicious pranks, as I greatly fear, on
you or your daughter, madam. If so, he hath fallen into the pit
that he made for others."
The impulse was to tell what had occurred, but the surgeon's
presence, and the dread of making all worse for the poor boy checked
both the hosts, and Mrs. Woodford only declared that since the day
of the apology he had never molested her or her little girl.
"Still," said the Major, "it is not possible to leave him in a
stranger's house, where at any moment the evil spirit that is in him
may break forth."
"Come and see him, and judge," said Dr. Woodford.
When the father beheld the deathly face and motionless form, stern
as he was, he was greatly shocked. His heavy tread caused a moan,
and when he said "What, Perry, how now?" there was a painful
shrinking and twitching, which the surgeon greeted as evidence of
returning animation, but which made him almost drag the Major out of
the room for fear of immediate consequences.
Major Oakshott, and still more the servant, who had arrived in the
coach and come upstairs, could not but be convinced that removal was
not to be thought of. The maid was, moreover, too necessary to her
mistress to be left to undertake the nursing, much to her master's
regret, but to the joy of Mrs. Woodford, who felt certain that by
far the best chance for the poor boy was in his entire separation
from all associations with the home where he had evidently suffered
so much.
There was, perhaps, nothing except the pageship at Court that could
have gone more against Major Oakshott's principles than to leave his
son in the house of a prelatical minister, but alternative there was
none, and he could only express how much he was beholden to the Dr.
and Mrs. Woodford.
All their desire was that he would remain at a distance, for during
the long and weary watch they had to keep over the half-conscious
lad, the sound of a voice or even a horse's tread from Oakwood
occasioned moans and restlessness. The Major rode over, or sent his
sons, or a servant daily to inquire during the first fortnight,
except on the Sundays, and on each of these the patient made a step
towards improvement.
At first he lay in a dull, death-like stupor, only groaning if
disturbed, but by and by there was a babbling murmur of words, and
soon the sound of his brother's loud voice at the door, demanding
from the saddle how it went to-day with Peregrine, caused a shriek
of terror and such a fit of trembling that Mrs. Woodford had to go
out and make a personal request that Oliver would never again speak
under the window. To her great relief, when the balance between
life and death had decidedly turned, the inquiries became less
frequent, and could often be forestalled by sending messengers to
Oakwood.
The boy usually lay still all day in the darkened room, only showing
pain at light or noise, but at night he often talked and rambled a
good deal. Sometimes it was Greek or Latin, sometimes whole
chapters of Scripture, either denunciating portions or genealogies
from the First Book of Chronicles, the polysyllabic names pouring
from his mouth whenever he was particularly oppressed or suffering,
so that when Mrs. Woodford had with some difficulty made out what
they were, she concluded that they had been set as tasks of penance.
At other times Peregrine talked as if he absolutely believed himself
in fairyland, accepting a strawberry or cherry as elfin food,
promising a tester in Anne's shoe when she helped to change his
pillow, or conversing in the style of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, on
intended pranks. Often he fancied himself the lubber fiend resting
at the fire his hairy strength, and watching for cock-crow as the
signal for flinging out-of-doors. It was wonderful how in the grim
and strict Puritanical household he could have imbibed so much fairy
lore, but he must have eagerly assimilated and recollected whatever
he heard, holding them as tidings from his true kith and kin; and,
indeed, when he was running on thus, Mrs. Woodford sometimes felt a
certain awe and chill, as of the preternatural, and could hardly
believe that he belonged to ordinary human nature. Either she or
the Doctor always took the night-watch after the talking mood set
in, for they could not judge of the effect it might have on any of
the servants. Indeed they sometimes doubted whether this were not
the beginning of permanent insanity, as the delusion seemed to
strengthen with symptoms of recovery.
"Then," said Dr. Woodford, "Heaven help the poor lad!"
For sad indeed was the lot in those days of even the most harmless
lunatic.
"Yet," said the lady, "I scarcely think anything can be worse than
what he undergoes at home. When I hear the terror and misery of his
voice, I doubt whether we did him any true kindness by hindering his
father from killing him outright by the shaking of his old coach."
"Nay, sister, we strove to do our duty, though it may be we have
taken on ourselves a further charge."