Take Courage (39 page)

“He's my brother's man from Adel,” I found the wit to tell him quickly.

The Royalist, disappointed, withdrew.

“We'd best keep the cow on the Hall land, I reckon,” said Lister, who was somewhat pale from this encounter, “and if we can break in, put her in their laithe at night.”

“We might borrow their scythe, too,” suggested Sam eagerly.

All this we did, and so through the days that followed we kept the cow and got in the hay, Lister using the scythe and the boys and I gathering and shocking it after him. Sam was jubilant over his trick with the cow, and worked well at the hay and soon forgot better times and was happy in the present business, but Thomas stayed very quiet and mournful, and I knew what ailed him. He had heard his mother and his brother lie, and to his sweet and sensitive soul that was truly dreadful. It is not only that we have lost our substance, that we are half-starved and John is in danger of his life, I thought as I toiled along the field in the summer heat; the children have known fear and injustice and lies in their young time, their spirits are being compressed into ugly moulds, God grant they may not take lasting shape from them.

But meanwhile, all we could do for the children was to strive to keep them fed. We got in the hay and exchanged some of it for some fowls and a goose or two, and then the oats luckily ripened early, and we got them in as well. It was killing work for one in my condition—my body ached continually, my beauty quite went from me, threads of grey came in my hair—but if only we could keep ourselves alive on stuff from our own land, I did not care. For the rents due to us on property John owned in and about Bradford, it was quite impossible to collect them; Lister tried but gave it up, for the whole neighbourhood, save the few Royalist supporters, was beaten to the earth, totally impoverished
by the Royalist sack. But if we could live on our eggs and milk and meal, and if Lister could perhaps weave a little as well, we should not do so badly.

Just as hope began thus to raise its head, however, another blow fell to crush it.

One evening as I turned to go upstairs to bed—for we had laid in a few scanty necessaries for the house with the hay money, and I had a mattress now I called a bed, a thin poor thing but better than the floor—just as I came to the foot of the stairs, Lister planted himself before me.

“The oats and the hay are in now, mistress,” he croaked.

“Yes, God be praised,” said I, sighing.

“So now I can leave you,” went on Lister.

“Leave me!” I cried, aghast. “What mean you, Lister?”

“Mester John said he would not bind me to stay with you after harvest, I could leave you if I so desired, when the oats and hay were in and you were provided for the winter,” said Lister in a tone of angry wailing.

My heart sank. “Why do you wish to leave The Breck?” I asked him quietly. “After so many years of service?”

“You cannot bear the sight of me, Mistress,” wailed Lister. “And I cannot bear to see——”

He left his sentence unfinished, but I knew very well what it was Lister feared to see.

“Well, we will speak of it again in the morning, Lister,” I said.

“The time of my departure is at hand,” muttered Lister.

“We will speak of it in the morning,” I repeated wearily.

But by morning he was gone. He had stolen away in the night without a word.

So then I was indeed alone. My sin has found me out, I thought, and a despair swept over me.

It was about a week after Lister had gone, in the forenoon while I was putting wood on the fire, that I felt the first pangs of my labour with that child which Lister had dreaded to see.

I set water on to boil, then dragged myself upstairs to set what I could in order, for I had made one or two scanty preparations for my lying-in. But for the child I had made no preparations, for in my secret heart I was sure it would not live. After all the anguish, the misery, the toiling and moiling I had gone through during the months I was carrying, I could not but dread lest the fruit of my womb should be deformed or imbecile, and so, God forgive me, I had set my mind on a still-birth. Better for the child that it should die, I thought, rather than live to be a bastard; and better for John, and better for the other children. As I trailed about the room, Thomas came in; he always knew when any about him were suffering, and he had followed me up from the kitchen, and now fixed his brown eyes, very loving and anxious, upon me questioningly. I smiled at him and smoothed his hair, and sent him running for the midwife. When he had gone, I reflected on the love and care and tenderness which had been about me when I was brought to bed with Thomas, and what there was about me now, and my heart failed me, and I paced the room despairingly.

As it chanced, the midwife was some time in coming, but I did not trouble myself over the delay, for I had made it up in my mind that I should have a very long and painful labour. When at last she came and laid her hands on me, she exclaimed and said the birth was near at hand; but I did not believe her, I did not believe that any such good
fortune would visit me. To please her, however, I lay down, though smiling sardonically.

I lay down totally without hope, my only prayer that my child should be still-born. But the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, and His ways are very wonderful, past the understanding of man. I had a swift and easy labour, and the child when washed was the fairest and handsomest babe I had ever seen; a golden downy head, a smooth pink cheek, a fair white skin and clear grey eyes—a lively lovely boy, in look favouring both my father and Francis. As the saying goes of children, he brought his own love with him; as soon as I saw him my spirit rose and I had a good heart again and suckled him joyously, while Thomas and Sam hardly set eyes on him before they doted on the child, marvelling at his tiny fingers and neatly curling toes, and delighting to wait on him. He was a fine healthy child, sleeping and taking nourishment just as he should; I named him Christopher, and had the godly minister over from Pudsey to christen him.

It was fanciful, no doubt, but from the moment of Christopher's birth I thought things took a better turn for me. The oppression of the Royalists was not now quite so bitter, for the most of the Earl's army had drawn away to York, leaving only garrisons in Bradford and Halifax; Bradford still groaned under the billeting of the soldiers, but there were not so many of them, and their captains made some pretence of paying for what they took, and when they made forced loans, at least they wrote out a paper to say they took the money on the public faith, which gave the lender some hope, if but a slight one, of repayment. We were like insects living in grass crushed by a heavy tread; our light and all our happy ways of life were taken from us, but we still made shift to live. Then one day Isaac Baume came to see me. I hardly knew him at first; he came hobbling stiffly up the lane, leaning heavily on a rough thorn stick and dragging one leg behind him—none of us had a horse left, within many miles. His large face, once so square and red, was white and flabby, his clothes hung loose on his
thinned frame. He panted from his walk, sank down on the mounting-block by the door and struck himself several times on the chest before he could find breath to speak. I offered him the choice of a sup of milk or cold water, which was all I had to offer, and he accepted the water and seemed glad of it, drinking heartily. At length he was sufficiently recovered to broach the business he had come upon, which was to ask whether the Royalists had left any looms at The Breck unbroken. I told him: yes, all three; whereupon his face brightened wonderfully; they were not Yorkshiremen who had sacked his house, he said, and so they cared little for looms and had smashed his up for firewood. He had a few pounds of wool, he went on, because when he hid in the lead-house his apprentice had thrown in a sackful for him to lie on; the rest the Royalists had stolen.

“All the wool we had, hung on the church steeple in the siege,” I told him, and I own I spoke with pride.

“I know that, missis,” said Baume. “That's t'reason I came—I thought I owed it to John Thorpe to——”

He broke off abruptly and seemed unable to resume, chewing his lips in silence so long that at last I asked him impatiently what plan he had in mind.

“There is your brother,” began Baume.

“He is in prison,” I answered with a pang.

“I mean your elder brother, Will, d'you see,” said Baume: “The one who married your husband's sister, and lives over Adel way. How are things going with him, think you?”

I told him the truth, that we had not heard from Will since before the siege.

“Your brother has a stipend, and his wife what she inherited under Thomas Thorpe's will,” said Baume shrewdly. “Doubtless they too have suffered from these thieving Cavaliers, but there was no siege and sack, at Leeds. Could they not thoil the price of a few pounds of yarn, as a loan?”

“Why, perhaps,” I said, hesitating. “But there is none here to weave, and I cannot pay a weaver.”

“I will weave it, on your looms, and we will share the price,” offered Baume gruffly.

“But who will buy?” I asked in doubt.

“The Royalists,” said Baume. “Every fresh man they enlist needs a scarlet coat.”

“I do not wish to clothe the King's men,” said I stiffly.

“Why not?” said Baume. “If they pay an honest price? Take t'money from the Earl of Newcastle wi' one hand, and pass it on to Black Tom wi' t'other. We'll sell t'cloth to merchants in the white—let them dye it scarlet if they've a mind. What do you say, Mrs. Thorpe?”

“I will write to my brother,” I said, for indeed my heart leaped at the prospect of money coming to The Breck again to buy food and clothes and comfort for the children: “If you will pay for the letter to go by the carrier—and,” I added on an impulse, “if you will teach my Sam your trade.”

“He's young yet, missis,” grumbled Baume.

“He's well grown for his age, and very shrewd,” I countered. “Sam!” I called, for he was in the laithe. “Here, Sam!”

Sam came trotting up, steadily and without fuss, like his father.

“Dost want to be a weaver, lad?” shouted Isaac Baume.

“Yes,” said Sam shortly.

He made no further observations, but stood looking at Baume as if awaiting orders to begin.

“He knows his mind, any road,” said Baume, smiling—I think perhaps for the first time since the siege. “Well—write the letter, Mrs. Thorpe, if it please you; I know you have some skill with the pen.”

It was so long since I had heard of Will, and so much had happened in the meantime, that he seemed a stranger to me, and I had quite a difficulty in writing in sisterly fashion. I felt, too, some guilt that I had not told him of John's flight and David's imprisonment, but then, neither had he told us any of his news, I reflected.

Either my plain statement of our case, or Will's family duty, or both, had their effect, however; for a few days
after my letter went, Will came up to the door of The Breck on a stout grey nag, with Eliza riding pillion. Eliza looked so neat and smart, in a good strong brown cloak and high-crowned hat, that I hesitated to go out to her, for we were almost in rags. And when I did go out, the meeting was painful; Eliza was fussy and consequential, and seemed to think she had conferred an unheard-of favour in riding as far as her brother's house, while Will wore a very solemn glum frown and had a way of poking his head forward, which with his pursed lips made him appear very pompous.

Eliza exclaimed in horror at the empty interior of The Breck; she kept asking for articles of furniture or tableware which had been there in her childhood, and though I explained many times to her that the house had been sacked, she seemed to regard their absence as somehow my fault, as if I had secretly sold them. Will, too, began a long tale of their troubles at Adel which I could scarce listen to patiently, since their greatest distress concerned an officer billeted on them and the rudeness of Dr. Hitch, who was making difficulties with Will about the new services. It seemed that Parliament had made a solemn league and covenant with the Scots, and established Presbyterianism in England, and forbidden the use of the Prayer-Book, and commanded in its place another form of services, called the Directory. I had heard nothing of all this, for I had no money for diurnals and no time for gossip, and to hear them talking of it, when my children were starving and ragged and the Parliament's forces beaten and John in hiding, amazed me; I could hardly credit it. I seemed to have forgotten the right words to use in such discussions. But as the minutes passed, I began to see that all this talk, though true enough, was in reality a mere pretence to hide their distress and uneasiness; I saw Will glance at me sideways very compassionately, and Eliza's lip quivered as she looked at her brother's children. Then it came out that Eliza's rents, like John's, in these troubled times could not be collected, and Dr. Hitch would not change from the Prayer-Book and was threatening to discharge Will, who was scrupulous to keep
to the Directory, and had not paid him for months, so that Will and Eliza were living on their savings—the horse they had come on was hired and the hire was a great matter to them, which was why they had not come before; their state only seemed good compared with ours.

“Nevertheless, Penninah,” said Will gravely: “You shall have the loan.”

I now looked at them more carefully, and saw that Eliza's swarthy face was pinched and chilled, and her dark hair threaded with grey, like mine; while Will's brown too was plentifully sprinkled with grey, and his poking head and pursed lips were really marks of long-continued perplexity. I showed them Christopher, not without an inward tremor but it had to be done; Will, poking his head forward and nodding very portentously, said he was like our father, while Eliza asked if John had heard of the birth of the child. I told her I knew not where John was. I daresay my voice expressed some of the trouble I felt, for Eliza laid her hand on my arm, and said: