When peace was proclaimed, Walter and Amabel went abroad and visited our old home in France. They found the convent quite deserted, save by an old priest who did duty in the church, and the court-yard and cemetery so overgrown that they could hardly find the place where dear Mother Superior was buried. The community were living and flourishing in the new house at Fleurs, having received several accessions to their numbers. Mother Prudentia was still superior, and received Amabel with great affection, though she mourned greatly over her desertion of the true church. The dear lady sent me some beautiful lace, and a book of His Grace the Archbishop of Cambrai's writings, which are good reading for any one, whether Catholic or Protestant. There is, it seems, little or no persecution for the sake of religion in France at present, though the Jesuits still hold up their heads, and have whatever education there is for the common people wholly in their own hands. But there is great distress among the people, especially among the peasantry, and many ominous mutterings of discontent. If the poor beast of burden does once get loose, I pity his former keepers.
My Lord Carew is an excellent landlord, and has greatly improved the condition both of his estate and the people living upon it. He and Mr. Wesley are as great friends as ever. Mr. Wesley always visits me when he comes into these parts, and approves my management of the children in general, though he thinks I allow them too much play, * and shakes his head over the baby-house and storybooks in the girls' sitting-room. However, he admits nowadays that fiction may have its uses, and has himself edited an edition of Mr. Brooke's "Fool of Quality" under the name of "The life of Henry, Earl of Moreland," and he has also written some notes upon Shakespeare, † as he tells me. He is still hale and hearty, and preaches with all the fire and vigor of his early days, when I heard him in the church-yard of St. Anne's.
* It is well-known that Mr. Wesley forbade play entirely in his own school at Kingswood—a strange mistake to be made by such a sensible, practical man. No wonder the school was not a success.
† Which were unhappily destroyed.
It is most wonderful to see the changes he has worked in these parts, among the tinners, fishermen, and other wild people. He has greatly lessened by his influence, the horrible practise of wrecking, that is, decoying vessels on shore by means of false lights that they may be wrecked and plundered. There are wrecks enough as it is on this dangerous shore. I hope we shall hear of none to-morrow, but it promises a wild night, and there are two or three ships in the offing.
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Word has been brought to me that several bodies have come ashore, and that the fishermen have saved alive two persons who were floating on a spar. One, they tell me, says he is from Newcastle, and has been a prisoner among the Moors for many years. I must go down and see if I can do anything for them. I am so silly, that such a story sets my heart to beating as though Harry had not been dead this many a year. If it should be he! Well, if it were, I am growing an old woman, and very likely he would not know me, or he may be married. How silly I am. As if there were one chance in ten thousand.
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But it was Harry, and we knew each other before a word was spoken. He was shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean as we heard, but was saved by a Moorish vessel after he had floated on some pieces of the vessel for two or three days, and was a slave to the Moors for many a long year. Being thus forced to serve on board a pirate vessel, he had the luck to be taken by an English Indiaman, and carried to Bombay, from whence he had come home at last.
He said he might have returned before, but hearing from some Newcastle man that I was married, he lost all heart or wish to see his native place again. So he staid in India, where he got good employment under the company and made a fair fortune.