Chapter XXVIII

I HAVE had an adventure which hath bred serious consequences in the household.

The night before last was very dark and sultry, with thick, low hanging clouds, and a feeling of thunder in the air. The sea was calling loudly, and Dobby's Pool roaring in that hollow, boding tone, which always foretells a storm. I had had a headache, and some threatenings of a chill, a visitation to which I am now and then subject, and my mother gave me a dose of her favorite spicy cordial, and sent me early to bed.

Thunder always makes me drowsy, and I was soon asleep. It must have been near midnight when I waked. The waning moon had risen, and shone full into the chamber and on the door of my mother's oratory. To my utter amazement it opened slowly, and a figure issued therefrom, dressed in my mother's garments, and bearing in one hand a dim light, in the other my old convent dress, which it seemed to hold up reproachfully before my eyes, while it uttered in a hollow whisper these words:

"Wretched, apostate child! Will you doom your own soul and your mother's to the flames of hell forever?"

I was scared at first, I confess—but the moment the apparition spoke, my courage returned, or something which served me instead. I sprang from the bed, and snatching the bed staff which stood near, I rushed at the would-be ghost, which retreated the way it had come with all haste, but not before I had dealt it one sound blow, which fell plainly on corporal substance. I followed the thing into the oratory, but it was nowhere to be seen. By this time I was as cool as possible. I knew there was but one place of concealment, namely a small closet which had no outlet, and finding the key in the oratory door, I quietly locked it on the outside, put the key away, and returned to bed.

The start and exertion brought on my shivering fit, and I was just beginning to get over it a little, when I heard a voice I well knew, but humble and quavering enough.

"Mrs. Rosamond—Oh, Mistress Rosamond—" then as I did not answer—"Oh, Mistress Rosamond, do let me out! There is a storm coming on, and I dare not stay here."

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to speak soberly, though I was choked with laughter.

"I am nobody but Prudence—Prudence, your poor bower-woman. Oh, Mistress Rosamond, do let me out, and I will thank you all my days!"

"I do not believe you!" I said. "Prudence would never play such a wicked, malicious trick, and one too so profane and impious. You are some impudent stroller and thief—an Egyptian, too, for aught I know. You shall stay till morning, and see what measure my Lord and my father will deal out to you."

She still pleaded for mercy, and in tones of such real and abject terror, that I began to fear she might die of fright, and rose to release her; but just as I was striking a light, for the clouds had risen once more, and it was very dark, my stepmother entered the room with a candle in her hand.

"Are you ill, Rosamond—and who were you talking with?" said she, looking around, and naturally surprised to see nobody. "I am sure I heard you talking."

"You did, Madam!" I answered. "A ghost appeared to me and I chased it with the bed staff into the closet yonder and locked it up, and now it is scared and wants to get out."

Madam looked as if she thought my wits were wandering, and as well as I could for laughing, I told her the tale. Then suddenly the wickedness and unkindness of the trick flashed on me, and I fell to crying as hard as I had laughed.

Madam soothed and kissed me, and making me lie down, she said she would fetch me some drops from her room—"and then I will call your father, and we will unearth this ghost of ours."

When she was gone, Prudence renewed her pleadings. "Oh, Mistress Rosamond, do let me out. My master will kill me!"

"I can't," said I. "Madam has taken the key—" (as indeed she had, thinking, I dare say, that I should relent). "Whoever you are, you must bake as you have brewed. I fear the bread will not be to your taste."

My father and mother entered even as I spoke, and going at once to the door, my father unlocked and threw it open. There stood Mistress Prudence, arrayed as I had seen her, for in the darkness she had not been able to find her own gown, and looking as foolish and venomous as a fox caught in a poultry yard.

I pass over the scene that followed—my father's stern wrath, which my mother vainly strove to mitigate, and Prue's tears and exclamations that she meant no harm, and it was only a joke, and so on.

"It is a joke that shall cost you dear," said my father, grimly. "You shall spend the night in the prison you have chosen, and in the morning you leave this house forever. But for her sake whose memory you have outraged, the rising sun should see you set in the stocks on the village green as a thief and an impudent witch."

"I am no thief!" sobbed Prudence. "I never took so much as a hair."

"Where got you the clothes you wear—and that rosary by your side—wretch that you are!" interrupted my father, his wrath rising as he recognized my mother's beads and cross, which he had always kept on his own table. "Here, you men and women—" for by this time half the household were gathered at the door—"come in and see this woman, who has dared to dress up in her sainted lady's clothes to scare my daughter. Look at her well! For by this hand you will not see her soon again!"

Many and various were the remarks and comments of pity for me and anger and contempt against Prue, who is no favorite.

"If it had been any common young lady, and so delicate in health as Mistress Rosamond too—it might have scared her to death!" said one.

"I wonder Mrs. Prue didn't see a ghost in good earnest," said another. "I should have expected an evil spirit to come after me if I had played such a trick."

"There is no evil spirit worse than the spirit of lying and cruelty—remember that, maids!" said Madam, solemnly. "Now let all go to bed, say your paternosters, and let the house be quiet."

In the morning Prue was released from her durance and allowed to go free whither she would. So much grace did my mother and I obtain for her, but farther than that my father was adamant. He declared in answer to a hint of mine that she had had a lesson, and might be allowed to remain—that nothing should tempt him to let her stay under the roof another day. And here indeed my step-dame took part against me, and on consideration, I believe they are both right—yet I can't but feel very sorry for Prue. She came to my room to bid me farewell, and I gave her some money. My step-dame did the same, though I believe there was little need of it, for I know she hath saved nearly all her earnings.

"Oh, Mistress Rosamond!" was all she could say at first, for she was really weeping—and then—"'Twas all for your good—to save your precious soul and your mother's."

"Souls are not to be saved by lies, Prue!" says I. "Remember that there is no sin that God hates more than this of lying."

"Nay, 'tis but a venial sin," she answered, excusing herself; "'tis not one of the seven deadly sins!"

"'Tis a sin most expressly forbidden in the word of God," I told her, "as you might have known if you had listened to the commandments which have been read in the church lately."

"Not I!" said she, tartly. "I am for no such new-fangled ways. But oh, Mistress Rosamond, I meant not to harm you—I did not, indeed. 'Twas all for your good, and to scare you into your duty. Oh, Mistress Rosamond, my dear heart, do not you be persuaded into breaking your convent vows! Your mother, your blessed mother, gave you to the Church the very hour you were born, and before. You will pull down destruction on your head, if you draw back—Father Barnabas himself says the same. This new lady is no better than a heretic, and I have it from a sure hand that in London she was well-known as such, and my mistress is just the same. Oh, that ever I should have lived to see the day! But, my dear Mistress Rosamond, for your own soul and body's sake, don't you break your vows and be a castaway!"

"Now you are meddling with matters far too high for you, Prudence!" said I. "As for my vows, there can be none broken where there were none made, and for the rest, beware my Lord's anger! If he should hear that you had but breathed on the fair fame of his wife, it were better you had never been born!"

She winced a little at this, and took refuge in tears and exclamations that ever she had lived to see the day: and so took her leave, meaning, as she says, to go to her sisters at Bristol. Yet I hear she hath not gone, but is staying with some one here in the village, making a great show of devotion, and specially of saying her prayers at my mother's grave. I wish she would go away, I know not why, but I do dread some mischief from her tongue.

What she said about lying has set me to looking up all the passages in Scripture relating to the same. I find plenty of them condemning the sin in the strongest terms, as even that all liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death; and yet it is true, as she said, that the Church counts it but a venial sin. I cannot understand it.