'I could not get much more from Bessie, who presently begged me to leave her alone; so I stole down-stairs and joined the rest of the household, who were every one of them assembled in the kitchen listening to Job Tallis's account of his own exploits, and of the utter ruin which had overtaken the Duke's forces, in spite of the valour of his army in general, and of the men of Taunton in particular. Nor was his the only evidence we had of the fight. Fugitives kept coming into the town, one after another, all that afternoon, and they all told the same story. Only, of the Duke nothing certain was known, except that he had not fallen upon the field of battle. Ah! well. We heard quite soon enough. From that day began a time when every morning brought us in bad news,—dreadful stories of the sufferings of the wounded men, or of the cruelties practised on their prisoners by the victorious soldiers.
'People were not so particular then as they are now about keeping children away from all that is shocking or horrible; and I remember standing, open-mouthed, listening to stories repeated by the servants, the elder girls, ay, and by Madame St. Aubert herself,—stories of such atrocities as it would make you ill to think about, and which I would not relate to you for the world. To be sure, it would not have been of much use keeping us in ignorance of what was going on, for in a few days' time Taunton itself was the scene of some of the worst horrors,—horrors so appalling that even the Duke of Monmouth's fate, when we came to hear of it, only gave us a momentary shock of pity and regret. You have read all about it in your books of history: you know that the Duke of Monmouth was "convicted of high treason, and executed on Tower Hill, in the thirty-seventh year of his age;" and that "those concerned in his rebellion were tried and sentenced by Judge Jeffreys, noted for severity in the execution of his office;" but you just think of it as something which takes up half a page of Mangnall's Questions, which must be learnt and said in a given time. You do not realize—how should you?—what it was to live in the midst of these things as I did—to have the events which make up the history of the time happening outside your very door—to be obliged even to take a part in them yourself. But I must go on with my story more regularly, or I shall never be able to make you understand the order in which everything took place.
'After hearing all the particulars which could be gleaned of the fight at Sedgemoor, of course we were wild to know something about the leaders of the thousand men who lay dead on the field of battle. Bessie, especially, was so eager about it, that she would run out into the street to question every fresh arrival from Bridgewater—whether it were a group of worn-out runaways, or a body of King James's soldiers in pursuit of the same. She got her news at last, and came in, crying, to tell us how Lord Grey had been captured on the border of the New Forest, disguised as a peasant; and how the Duke had been found soon after, hidden under some fern and brambles, famished with hunger, and so altered that he could hardly be recognised.
'"And who told you all this?" inquired Madame St. Aubert, who had been much shut up in her own room of late with Mrs. Fortescue, and was not aware of Bessie's little expeditions in search of information.
'"It was one of Colonel Kirke's officers, Madame," said Bessie, who knew she had been doing what was entirely contrary to all known rules; but who trusted to the "bouleversement" of Madame's ideas, and to the general disorder which prevailed in the school just then, to save herself from the scolding which she knew she richly deserved.
'"And pray, Mademoiselle Bessie, what business had you to be talking to Colonel Kirke's officers?" demanded Madame in her most freezing tone.
'"I would not have done it at any other time, indeed, Madame, but I was so anxious to hear some news of our poor Duke. The gentleman was very civil, and answered all my questions; but I did not like him much, though he asked me where I lived, and said he should do himself the honour of——"
'But Bessie was not allowed to finish her sentence, for Madame St. Aubert advanced a step or two, gave her a sound box on the ear, and then, to our great surprise, sank back in a chair and went into hysterics. Her "bouleversement" of ideas had taken a different turn from what we expected. Not that the box on the ear astonished us so very much. Madame had been known to bestow the like before, under circumstances of great provocation,—but that she should go into hysterics afterwards, this was remarkable indeed; and we stood looking at her in awe-struck silence till she recovered enough to speak. I suppose the knowledge that so many pairs of eyes were upon her, helped to restore her composure. At any rate, it was not long before she rose from her seat with great dignity (Madame always was particularly dignified after losing her temper), and requested Bessie to follow her out of the room. "As for you, young ladies," she said, turning round upon us as she reached the door, "let me beg that there may be no more of this unseemly curiosity about what does not concern you. You will hear quite enough about the Duke, without babbling about his affairs to everybody. Do you hear? From this day forth I forbid his name to be mentioned in my house, under pain of my severe displeasure." With these words Madame sailed out of the room, and remained invisible for the rest of the day.
'She left, however, a very rebellious set of pupils behind her. It was not so easy to stop all interest in our hero as it had been to arouse our enthusiasm for him. Many were the murmurs we indulged in, and the hard names we called Madame St. Aubert for being "so mean-spirited as to desert the Duke in the hour of his misfortune."
'This phrase was Bessie's, and we all admired it extremely. She came back from her private interview in a state of wrathful indignation, in which we all shared. "Madame St. Aubert," she said, "was a coward; and, now that the Duke of Monmouth's cause was lost, wanted to turn against him like the rest of the world, and to deny that she had ever befriended him. As if the Government would dream of meddling with her for what she had done! The Government had other things to think of. Don't you think so, Henrietta?" she concluded with a sudden change of voice, as if Madame St. Aubert had succeeded in frightening her a little in spite of her high tone.