That she’d gar me rue the day I was born.”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
