Take Courage (61 page)

I sighed a little, feeling not guiltless in this way, myself.

On the last day of our stay the weather turned cold and dreary, and when Lord Fairfax came out—he rose late and dressed very slowly on account of his many ailments—he was wearing a very fine furred cloak. I saw John looking at this very particularly, and Lord Fairfax evidently saw him too, for he said:

“Art looking at my c-c-cloak, Jack?”

“I crave pardon, sir,” said John hastily, as he had doubtless been used to saying to his General. “I looked because the cloth seemed like some of my own cloth, cloth from The Breck.”

“Why, that may very well be,” said Lord Fairfax, smiling, “seeing it was your s-s-son S-S-Sam who sent me this cloak last winter.”

John flushed with pleasure, and I could not forbear telling of how Sam saved his General's boots from the soldiers when The Breck was sacked. Lord Fairfax laughed out at this, heartily, and fell into questioning us about our sons. I told him, perhaps with too great length and mournfulness, about Thomas's marred life.

“Why, Mrs. Thorpe,” said he with great gentleness: “I cannot agree with you. It s-s-seems to me that he has been more active, and his m-m-ministry more f-f-fruitful perhaps, than if he had been a c-c-comfortably settled minister. The
sentiment of this nation,” he went on, “which ever res-pecteth c-c-consistency of c-c-conduct, will surely one day be turned towards this band of honourably det-t-termined men—more especially,” he concluded, “in view of the noble behaviour of some of the ejected m-m-ministers during the P-P-Plague.”

“My brother David was one of those who ministered in the Plague,” I said with pride.

“‘Tis what I should have expected from him,” said Lord Fairfax.

Remembering what John had said of those who had acted as one expected of them, I felt some considerable pride for my brother, but naturally made no comment. Lord Fairfax was silent for a moment, then broke out suddenly, very quick and without a stammer:

“I hope that God will one day clear that cause we undertook, and the integrity of such as faithfully served Him.”

“Nay,” said John, “with all respect, my General, it is partly cleared now, for the King rules with a Parliament.”

“Yes and no,” replied Lord Fairfax thoughtfully. “He obs-s-serves the forms.”

“Why, that is much,” said John.

“You are not so cheerful about the cause when you are at home, John,” said I, surprised.

John wagged his head, somewhat disconcerted. “Well, we have taught those who rule that they have a joint in their necks,” said he.

“Nay, now you are talking like C-C-Cromwell,” said Lord Fairfax, smiling sadly.

They fell to talking of Cromwell, of the Commonwealth and the bitter disappointment of the Protectorate.

“Where did we fail, Jack?” said Lord Fairfax sadly. “Where did we stray from the true path?”

“It was not in the war,” said John very staunchly.

“No, I think it was not much in the war,” mused Lord Fairfax. “It was in the peace.”

“Aye, it was in the peace,” agreed John gruffly. “Oliver should not have had Parliament purged to his own pleasure.”

“And we should not have killed the King,” said Lord Fairfax.

“No,” agreed John. “We should have deposed him bloodlessly.”

“In favour of his eldest son,” went on Lord Fairfax.

John pursed his lips and sighed, and said: “I suppose so.”

Lord Fairfax went on to speak of the Restoration and the disappointments it had brought him, but I saw that he thought the crown should descend from king to prince, as a title went from man to son, and that England was best governed by a King, provided only he were a good one. John seemed to agree, but I was not so sure; Lord Fairfax told me jokingly I had very levelling ideas, and indeed it may have been so. As I grow older, all pretensions of birth and wealth seem to me very strange in the sight of God.

We should have left sooner, not wishing to outstay our welcome, but we were detained by Lord Fairfax so that we might have a glimpse of the Duchess, who was expected in the forenoon of that day. She did not come in the forenoon, however, nor by noon, nor for an hour or two after, and while this seemed natural enough to me, I could see that to Lord Fairfax it was a torment.

“Her husband d-d-delays her,” he muttered.

At last it was clear that we must postpone our departure no longer if we were to reach home that night, we should be very late even as it was. We made our preparations, and the coach was ordered and came round, and Lord Fairfax rolled himself to the great doors to say farewell to us. He stretched out a hand to one of his men, who put into it a very handsome polished stick of some dark wood, banded and topped with silver; and with the help of this he rose, and stood to say farewell to us. I exclaimed and begged him to sit, but he would not, putting it aside with a smile; then he bowed over my hand as if I were a great lady, and kissed it, and said:

“God be with you, Penninah Thorpe, and bless you.”

Then it was time for him to say farewell to John. I went away and sat in the coach, so that they might be alone to it; I even took care not to look in their direction.

It was long enough before John came limping out, very quick and heavy in his step; there were tears on his face and he did not speak to me. The moment before the coach moved was very painful; at last it stirred and rolled away, turning; I looked out and saw Lord Fairfax still standing, waving to us in farewell.

I did not speak to John till several miles had passed. Then I laid my hand on his and said:

“It is a very fair and pleasant place for him to finish his days in.”

“Aye—but he is lonely,” said John gruffly. “In three days we saw none there but servants and his chaplain. When I think of the crowds that used to throng him, making requests——” He broke off and concluded: “But I think he will not have much longer of it now.”

We had passed through Tadcaster, and it was raining, when the coach jolted aside sharply to avoid another coach, a very fine grand affair with arms on the panel, drawn by six horses, with many men about it, which came galloping towards us furiously, with much mud splashing.

“It is Moll, perhaps,” I exclaimed, and I leaned out of the window to see.

I was right; except that it was not so much Moll Fairfax as the Duchess of Buckingham. I caught just a glimpse of her as the coaches passed; she was dressed very fine in dark slate-coloured satin, with pearls round her throat and a crimson scarf; her sallow little face above it was crumpled in torment. I wondered to myself what her look reminded me of, and I remembered—it was my own face at Fairgap, when I used to wait for Francis and he came not. The ways of life are very wonderful, and it is strange to reflect how Lord Fairfax, who so despised his wife's love—it was the only fault I saw in him—should live to see his beloved daughter's love so despised.

The excitement, and the journey, and the eating of rich unaccustomed foods, gave John a severe attack of rheumatism, the pain spreading all about his body. However, the warm summer weather was favourable to his complaint,
and the physician and I between us cured him for that time.

John was right when he said that Lord Fairfax would not have much longer of his solitude to endure, for in the fall of that year that great and good man died.

We had a very kind letter from Moll about it. She had not been with her father at his death, she said—whereat John sighed heavily—but would tell us all she had heard from her cousin and the chaplain who attended his last hours, knowing our love to him. It seemed that his last illness, a fever, was but a short one, and his mind was not distraught by it; on the last morning of his life he called for his Bible and read the forty-second psalm. John, whos e memory was slipping a little, bade me read this psalm to him. It begins very suitably and cheerfully for a dying man—
as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
For this seems to indicate a becoming readiness to lay down this life. But there are other passages in that psalm which have a somewhat sad aptness to Lord Fairfax's later days, as:
mine enemies reproach me; they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
—and, most sad of all:
all Thy waves and billows are gone over me.
However, the Duchess seemed not to see this, and indeed it is true that the psalm ends on a note of faith which rings out like a trumpet. Moll told us with a touching pride of a poem which her husband had written on his father-in-law, a kind of epitaph; she enclosed a copy of the verses. At one time I knew all these verses by heart, for John would often ask me to repeat them, but my memory doth not retain the happenings of my later days as distinctly as those of earlier times, and I cannot now clearly recall them. Parts of some verses I remember, however. One ran thus:

He never knew what envy was nor hate;

His soul was filled with worth and honesty,

And with another thing besides, quite out of date,

Call'd modesty.

And another thus:

…he understood

How much it is a meaner thing

To be unjustly great than honourably good.

Both these hit off the noble nature of Lord Fairfax with such singular aptness that I marvel how a wicked dissolute rake like the Duke of Buckingham could have written them. But perhaps it is the highest kind of tribute to Lord Fairfax, that his goodness showed clear even to such a man as the Duke of Buckingham.

The Duchess told us, too, of the great funeral which was given her father, his tenants, and the people of the countryside, walking many miles to show their respect to him. John was grieved, I could see, not to be present at this funeral, but indeed he was not fit for it. Lord Fairfax was buried by the side of his wife, said Moll, in the choir on the south side of Bilbrough Church, Bilbrough being a small place about halfway between Nun Appleton and Marston Moor. He was to have a very handsome tomb, wrote Moll, but with only a plain inscription concerning himself, such as he would have wished.

John snorted at this. “Doubtless the King would not be pleased if the inscription told of the General's prowess with the Parliament's forces,” said he sardonically.

At the foot of the grave, however, went on Moll, there was to be engraved that beautiful text from Proverbs:
The memory of the just is blessed.

“It is true of him,” said John soberly when I read this to him: “It is utterly true.
The memory of the just is blessed.
Aye. It is a very proper text for the grave of Thomas Fairfax.”

He mused on it often, and always with great content, in his remaining days of life.

After lord fairfax's death my John began to fail.

By the turn of the year he seemed so ill and worn that I sent word to Thomas it was his duty to give up his ministry for a while, and come home to stay with his father. The Conventicle Acts were still enforced, but the Five-Mile Act, I thought, had fallen a little in abeyance; in any case the risk must be taken; I did not want John to die feeling lonely, for it was plain he had grieved over this very much in the case of Lord Fairfax. Joseph Lister was most good and kind in sitting by his old master and keeping him company, but he talked too much of his own two sons, David and his newborn babe—not yet baptised, there being some debate between Lister and Sarah over the name—and confused John with his many stories of them, and how they were both to be ministers if the Lord would accept them. John was apt to confuse them with his own children, and be perplexed over them; and I wished him to have his own kin about him.

Thomas, then as always firm in the execution of his duty, came home directly and stayed with us without any grumbling, attending very cheerfully and assiduously upon his father. I was truly thankful for his coming, and that for more than one reason; I was somewhat over-toiled with night-watching, and with lifting John, who was always a heavy man, and with grief too, and in all these matters Thomas was a great stay and support to me. Thomas was indeed always a good son, very thoughtful and understanding. He was very urgent with me then to have a woman in from Little Holroyd to share my labours. Naturally I would not do so, but it was very sweet to be urged thus anxiously. Thomas pressed me:

“You must care for your own health, Mother,” he said.

“Why, son,” said I: “What is health for except to use it? Your father needs me—it is me he needs; we have lived all our life together; no-one else will do.”

And indeed it was so; during the long weary nights, when John's strength left him and his mind wandered, he would speak of one thing and another from the past, which no-one living could have understood except myself, unless perhaps it were Joseph Lister. He would speak of his father and mother, of the looms they had in those days, of his Uncle Giles and of Francis; he would speak of me—not as I was then, his wife of many years at his bedside, but as a girl and even a child; once he murmured, which indeed almost forced from me the tears I was firm not to shed since they distressed him: “Thou hast a very gentle heart, Penninah.” All the passages of his life he lived through; our marriage, and the birth of our children, and his meeting with Sir Thomas Fairfax, and his battles. Sometimes he would almost spring from his bed in his fever, waving his arm which he thought had a sword at the end of it; once a look of such fearful horror crossed his face that I trembled, wondering what memory it could be that so oppressed him. Then he would stir and wake, and be himself again, and know me; and then he would talk wearily, over and over, of the ruin of the good old cause, and all his life's effort wasted in it.

“But it is not ruined, John,” I protested, over and over again. “Didst thou not say so thyself to Lord Fairfax, at Nun Appleton?”