"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
Majeste?" 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.