Love and Money (9 page)

“Don't be so forward, child! A gentleman does not wish a silly girl for ever hanging about him,” she pronounced.

Isabella shrank away into a corner. Poor lonely little waif, thought Thomas with a sigh as he mounted and rode off about his land, perhaps I have done wrong after all to take thee from thy mother. That evening as they sat at supper he noticed how pale was Isabella's cheek, how she hung her head over her trencher to conceal that she ate almost nothing, and took many a sip of water as if to clear a throat choked with tears. His heart ached for the child, yet when, the meal over, she had been sent off to bed and he sat alone with his mother, he dared not speak of Isabella lest Mistress Bellomont's jealousy be stimulated. She plucked her needle in and out of her embroidery frame with a more nervous and hurried movement than usual, he thought, and it was thus all the more noticeable when she suddenly paused, needle in mid-air, and seemed to listen.

“Do you hear something strange, mother?” enquired Thomas politely.

His mother glared at him, then suddenly sprang up and crossed to the door on tiptoe and opened it softly. Now Thomas heard the sound too: it was the sound of weeping. Thomas snatched up a candle and both the Bellomonts ran to the little chamber allotted to Isabella; Mistress Bellomont was sitting on the bed with Isabella in her arms by the time Thomas held the candle up to them.

“My little lamb!” said Mistress Bellomont, rocking Isa
bella in her arms and kissing her. “Weep not, my little dove! Now, now, now! She lacks her mother, Thomas,“ she told her son in a scolding tone. ”There, there, my sweeting! Put that candle down, Thomas, and go away— close the door behind you.”

Thus did Mistress Bellomont's heart melt towards Isabella, and from that time onwards, slowly but surely the child became a part of the Mesburgh family. A month after she arrived she laughed for the first time—she had a very sweet merry laugh—and soon afterwards Mistress Bellomont began to laugh with her, which to Thomas's remembrance she had not done since long before his father died. The kitchenmaid Sarah, the cat Tabby, Thomas's hound Trouncer, and the groom Martin, already loved Isabella fondly, and presently even old Martha occasionally cackled at her pranks. For she was a high-spirited child, as appeared when her shy fears wore off; she would climb trees and jump walls, pelt Martin with snowballs, roll on the grass with Trouncer, gallop bareback on any horse she could coax to carry her. She could already read when she came—her stepfather had taught her carefully to read in the newly Englished Bible; under Mistress Bellomont's fostering care she soon learned to dance in a proper fashion and to pronounce her words in a less Yorkshire tone. Thomas was often called on, too, to admire the progress she made with her needle—he did this solemnly, though in truth her skill in the art of sewing was small; her stitches were uneven in size and lay askew, and occasional tiny drops of blood by the seam revealed the sufferings of her fingers. To see her fiery little head bent so studiously over some embroidery task moved Thomas strangely.

For all her wildness, however, Isabella had a tender heart. Amongst the children of the Bellomonts' acquaintances about the neighbourhood she was a favourite; bold and daring as any boy of them all, with the little ones younger than herself she was kind and protective, suffering none to hurt them. She once struck a boy much bigger than herself, so hard that he ran howling to his mother. Thomas, summoned
to rebuke her, noticed that the other children, though frightened, were on her side. Whether the slapped boy had jeered at Isabella's birth or offered to hurt a younger child, Thomas did not venture to enquire. Her scarlet cheeks and blazing eyes reminded him so much of Sir Richard's explosive wrath that he had an irrational conviction it was the former. Her little hand was burning hot and trembled in his as he led her away, but she held her head high and trod proudly.

Sir Richard, informed the day after her arrival at Mesburgh of the whereabouts of his daughter, had sent his approval, together with a promise of gold for her upkeep. This gold, which came not illiberally but irregularly—when Sir Richard has been lucky at cards, thought his nephew grimly—Thomas put away carefully for a jointure for the child, buying from time to time a little land or a cottage in her name. His mother at first treated him to scenes about this matter two or three times a year, contending violently, sometimes that Isabella was an intolerable expense to the house, sometimes that the child herself needed some new clothes—her shoes were worn through with dancing about for she was never still, lamented Mistress Bellomont, or her cloak was really a disgrace, not fit to go to church in. In these cases the shoes or the cloak were always forthcoming, Mistress Bellomont gradually perceived, at the expense of some item of Tom's own comfort.

“But why not use Sir Richard's gold, Tom?” she complained.

“Because I do not choose, mother,” replied Thomas.

“Well,” said his mother, sighing: “Each man to his mind, as they say.”

“Even so, mother,” said Thomas mildly.

But as the years passed on Mistress Bellomont came to take all this for granted; she would tell Thomas of some small suitable piece of property marked by gossip for sale, or embark on a mass of complicated stitchery to fit out Isabella for some joyful occasion at a neighbour's, with as much zeal and eagerness as if Isabella were her own daughter.

Then, all of a sudden as it appeared to Thomas, Isabella was a grown girl and the kindest and best of nurses to Mistress Bellomont and to Martha, one or the other of whom seemed always to be ailing. They were fretful, they were petulant, they took maddeningly difficult fancies about their food and drink, they got up when they should have been in bed and lay abed out of sheer wilfulness when it was most inconvenient. Through all this Isabella, now slender, quiet and graceful—when did she lose her childish bounce? Thomas could not remember—and more beautiful every year, moved without ever losing her head or her temper. She soothed, she shook up pillows, she rubbed backs, she warmed drinks; she attended to every want of the two old women with loving care. Thomas meeting her as she came out of Mistress Bellomont's sickroom one day thought she looked pale and tired; he urged her to walk out and take the air and made a kind of stumbling apology for all the nurse's work she had to perform for his mother. Isabella raised her lovely eyes to his and remarked simply:

“It is a pleasure to attend upon her.”

Thomas coloured and mumbled himself out of her presence.

Then came a morning when poor old Martha did not rise; she lay huddled in her bed, pitifully small and still; death had taken her in the night. Mistress Bellomont was greatly distressed by this loss, for indeed, as Thomas reflected, it deprived her of all companionship of her own generation at Mesburgh. Martha had been her serving-woman since her maiden days in her father's house.

“What shall I do without Martha, Thomas?” she wailed, her eyes wide in the helpless perplexity of the old. “How shall I fare?”

“You have Isabella, mother,” said Thomas.

“Yes, yes! Dear Isabella,” said Mistress Bellomont, taking one of Isabella's hands between her own and fondling
it. “But Isabella is young. She will be marrying soon and leaving Mesburgh.”

“Marrying?” exclaimed Thomas.

“Have you not noticed how the young men gather round her, Thomas?” said Mistress Bellomont impatiently. “She will marry as well as any girl in the county, I dare swear.”

“I shall not leave you as long as you need me,” said Isabella.

“You are a good girl, Isabella,” said Mistress Bellomont. “But you will run off fast enough when the man you favour waves for you.”

This exchange left Thomas feeling very low.

In the event, however, Isabella's resolution to stay with Mistress Bellomont was not put to the test, for the poor old lady died within a month of Martha. Although Sarah was by this time an experienced and competent serving-woman, Mistress Bellomont believed her to be still a giddy young girl, and now that Martha was no longer there to superintend the house service, Misterss Bellomont fussed and worried and engaged on tasks far too great for her. She fumbled amongst the linen, dragging out sheets and then turning too faint to put them back, or began cooking some dish and then omitted a necessary ingredient, so that it was all to do again; much extra work and some trouble fell on Isabella and Sarah. At last one day when Isabella was upstairs tidying Mistress Bellomont's bedchamber from which she had just risen, the old lady came out of the back door and began to scold Sarah for not laying out the washing properly. By Thomas's orders everyone humoured his mother's fancies as far as they were able, and Sarah moved hither and thither spreading out the shirts and napkins, while Mistress Bellomont limped after her, sometimes shaking her stick angrily in the air. It was a cold raw February day with an east wind blowing, but Sarah toiling about the linen was warm enough, and it did not strike her that Mistress Bellomont was without a cloak. Isabella having finished upstairs saw them from the staircase window and came suddenly running with a cloak and coaxed the old lady indoors, but it was too late;
Mistress Bellomont fell ill of a fever that night and died within the week. At the last moment when she was on the point of death Isabella, who watched at the bedside with Thomas, bent over and kissed her; Isabella's clear fresh cheek against his mother's wrinkled waxen face was very moving to Thomas.

Presently, when the remains of poor Mistress Bellomont had been interred with all due ceremony and the guests had left, Thomas and Isabella sat down together in the handsome mourning which Thomas had provided. The rich black heightened Isabella's beauty, so that Thomas, gazing at her, did not wonder that she had suitors. To her copper-warm hair and deep dark blue eyes and dazzling fair complexion she now added a delicious young shape, a charming merry smile and all those graces of manner which his mother had laboured so hard to teach her. Moreover, Thomas knew for certain—for in sickrooms and at death-beds the true nature cannot be concealed—that she was as good as she was lovely: warm-hearted, loving, true. She had a quick mind too, and the sweetest laugh Thomas had ever heard. Thomas gazed at her gloomily.

“Well, now, Isabella,” he said in a solemn tone befitting the occasion. “We must decide what is to be done about you.”

Isabella hung her lovely head.

“Have you a fancy for any of these young sprigs who dance attendance on you? If so, tell me plainly, and I will try to get you your wish. You are not without a jointure, Isabella.”

“I have no quarterings to offer to a husband,” murmured Isabella, hanging her head still lower.

“Pooh!” said Thomas staunchly: “A bend sinister now and then does no harm in a coat of arms.”

“Do you think so indeed?” said Isabella, raising her eyes to his.

She seemed so earnest in the matter that Thomas guessed she had in mind some young man of a noble family, to whom her birth might well be a serious stumbling-block. His heart ached at the thought.

“Tell me, my dear,” he said in his kindest tone, dreading a disappointment for her: “Do not be afraid—tell me the name of this young man who is lucky enough to have won your favour.”

“It is you, Thomas,” said Isabella quietly.

“Me!” exclaimed Thomas, blushing to the roots of his hair. He sprang up and began to pace the room in agitation, utterly confused. “Now listen, Isabella. You know I have always loved you—do not you think to marry me out of gratitude, for I could not endure it.”

“And do not you, Thomas Bellomont, think to marry me out of remorse, for I could not endure that,” said Isabella, springing up in her turn and confronting him, her great blue eyes ablaze.

“Remorse?”

“Yes, remorse. Do you think I do not know you, Thomas? You think it your fault that Sir Richard robbed the coach, your fault therefore that Mistress Brownwood descended upon his life, your fault that my mother and I were thrown out upon the world. So you have taken me into your house and clothed and fed me, from remorse. Your sense of honour is so delicate, Thomas, your integrity so great,” cried Isabella, panting: “You are so good, so generous, so noble, there is nobody like you in the world. But do not marry me from remorse, for it would break my heart!”

“But, Isabella,” began Thomas, haltingly but with a deep healing satisfaction at knowing himself understood: “My dearest—you know that I have always loved you.”

“How am I supposed to know it?” cried Isabella.

“I have always loved you,” repeated Thomas stupidly.

But here, overwhelmed by her young beauty, so near to him, without conscious intention and certainly without any skill he put his arms clumsily around her. The moment she was in his embrace the world seemed to burst into light; the burden rolled from his shoulders, the doors of his spirit were unsealed; he was a man like other men, holding his love who loved him. His arms closed about her strongly and he kissed her.

“My darling,” he said fondly: “My sweet, my little love. I have loved you so long, Isabella—I am fifteen years older than you, Isabella,” he added in sudden alarm.

“I love you—I have always loved you, Thomas,” murmured Isabella.

“Nay, that is not true,” said Thomas smiling and laying a tender hand on her glowing hair: “The first time you saw me you wept because you were asked to kiss me. But I loved you then. That at least I can offer you—an undivided affection. I am not much in other respects, I know, but I have never loved any woman but you.”

“Thomas, you have one fault,” said Isabella, burying her face against his shoulder. “Only one—in all other respects,” she said, laughing with great contentment: “You are perfect. But you have one great fault.”

“Tell me what it is,” said Thomas, searching uneasily in his mind what this might be: “And I will strive to mend it.”