Part 29 (2/2)
”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 pa.s.senger,” 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.
”a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.sed 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. n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+p 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ma.s.sive fortifications, boats came off to bring the Queen and her attendants on sh.o.r.e, 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 appet.i.tes, she could taste nothing, and being conducted by a compa.s.sionate 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.
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