Take Courage (17 page)

It was a bitter winter's day, the sky grey and lowering, the ground iron-hard, snow-showers driving across the hills. The servant who opened to me at the Hall did not know me, and left me standing at the door, and there was a good deal of colloquy within before Mrs. Ferrand at length came out to me. I was shocked to see the ravages time and grief had made on her face; she was pinched and haggard, and the lip-salve and cosmetic ointments she used to conceal it only emphasised the decay of her beauty.

“What do you want here, Penninah Thorpe?” she shrilled, even in her anger swallowing her r's.

She gave me a glance of hatred; it was bitter to her, perhaps, to see me in my young prime, bearing a child,
while her own youth and her own son were far away. I felt this, and answered her gently, telling her of Mr. Thorpe's danger and his desire to see her.

“I must go, I suppose,” she answered pettishly. “I will ask Giles. I will follow.”

I urged her not to delay too long, and left her.

While I was absent, John came back to The Breck. When he found that I had gone out on such a morning on such an errand in my condition, he fell into such a wild anger, and raged so at Mrs. Thorpe and Lister, as they had never seen or heard the like of before. I found them thus when I returned: John with his hands clenched and his head lowered, throwing out bitter words, trembling with fury; Mrs. Thorpe and Lister staring at him aghast, quite pale and frightened.

“I am quite unharmed, John,” I said, throwing off my cloak, which glistened with snow-flakes. “Your aunt is coming shortly.”

But he was not to be soothed; he would have me take off my shoes, and dry myself by the fire, and meanwhile went on covering Lister and his mother with reproaches, so that I was very glad when the entrance of Mr. and Mrs. Ferrand put a stop to it. The greetings between the Thorpes and the Ferrands were cold; then Mrs. Ferrand went up to her brother, and Mr. Ferrand planted himself with his back to the fire, refusing a chair, and stood there swaying on his heels and frowning. John offered him wine, but he refused.

“Is your father truly ill?” he asked.

“He is dying,” replied John.

These were the only words exchanged below-stairs; above, we could hear Mr. Thorpe's voice and his sister's, they were talking very earnestly. Then Mrs. Ferrand came down, her eyes red with weeping, and she took her husband's arm and urged him to the door, and they left thus, without another word spoken.

Mr. Thorpe died that night. The funeral took place on the Monday; the Ferrands attended at Bradford Church
and the graveside, but would not come to the breakfast we offered afterwards at The Breck. Mr. Thorpe had been well liked by those who knew him, and many Bradford people came to the church, but I was surprised to see how much smaller was the gathering than that which attended my father. I was even a little bitter about it in my heart, for it is too late to show a man affection when he is in his grave, and if Bradford clothiers loved my father, they might have shown it by helping him, a little sooner.

When all our guests, even Will and Eliza, had gone, and we were sitting about the hearth together—rather stiff and uncomfortable, between grief and decorum and relief-Lister suddenly poked his head in at the door.

“Mester John,” he cried: “Have you heard what folk are saying in Bradford?”

“What are they saying?” said John heavily.

“A gentleman has refused to pay Ship-money, and there's to be a case at law,” cried Lister triumphantly. “His name's John Hampden—he lives down in Buckinghamshire—he was a member of the last Parliament—he's refused to pay Ship-money and there's to be a trial about it.”

A strange look came over John's face at this, and his dark eyes glowed.

“Crescit sub pondere virtus
,” said David thoughtfully. “Resistance grows beneath oppression.”

“Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us,” shrilled Lister.

John was silent, but he smiled to himself. I guessed what he was thinking, and approved, for indeed he had a right to think it: namely that Hampden was not the only man in England to refuse unlawful taxes, nor Buckinghamshire the first county to show a spirit of resistance to oppression. I was right in my guess, for after a moment John muttered, very quietly, so that I was the only one to hear:

“Cloth and ships are just the same.”

All through my life it has been made clear to me that not only the proper, but the wise conduct is to do what is right and leave the consequence to God, rather than aim at a right result through dubious means. For no action ever produces quite the results we expect, and so we cannot count on the end of any action, but only on the means employed to gain it. How greatly an event differs from our expectations of it has often amazed me, and never more so than in the matter of the effect of the death of her husband on Mrs. Thorpe.

I had never thought Mrs. Thorpe a very loving wife. She was superior in mind and spirit to her husband, and knew it very well; she had for Mr. Thorpe the kindness of habit, but not much respect and no great passion. He on his part relied much on her strength and judgment, but fretted a little under her domination. Theirs was a marriage made by parents; they had rubbed along well enough with a decent affection on both sides, but were not intimate in spirit. All Mrs. Thorpe's love was given to John, and for him indeed she had the passion of a tigress. She would cheerfully have seen John's father, his wife, his sister, his apprentices and indeed all Bradford burned at the stake to save him from an ache in the little finger. To do her justice, for the same end she would have suffered at the stake herself.

She was not, therefore, greatly distressed when Mr. Thorpe lay dying; indeed at times I thought her manner barely decent, she seemed as if she looked forward to the end of a long bondage and could scarcely restrain her joy. Neither would John, I thought, regret his father overmuch;
and I felt sorry for the cheerful little man, who had always been kind to my family and me. I had, too, a selfish feeling of which I was ashamed, that in losing Mr. Thorpe I lost a friend, and that in future I should be alone, as it were, against an alliance of Mrs. Thorpe and John. I was ashamed of this but could not help it, and I seemed to see a spark of triumph in Mrs. Thorpe's eye, as if she thought it too.

But the event proved totally otherwise. Mrs. Thorpe being wearied with night-watching—for she had nursed her husband well, doing her duty soberly and carefully as always hitherto—rested a day or two in bed after his death. It was pleasant for us younger people to be together without any of the older generation, and by the time Mrs. Thorpe came down to us again, her presence was felt even by John to be a slight constraint. Then, too, it gradually became clear that Mrs. Thorpe herself was changed. She seemed bemused and dazed, uncertain of what she intended and unequal to the effort of decision. I was most careful to leave all the management of the house to her, as before, but she confused her orders, and once or twice things were forgotten and John was vexed. Then she burst out in a loud wail:

“It is Penninah's work to see to that!”

At first John, though he said nothing, seemed inclined to blame me, but when this had happened several times he avoided his mother's eye and pursed his lips, and at length said sharply:

“If it is Penninah's work, leave it to her and do not meddle with it.”

After this, quietly and as occasion offered I took the management of the house upon myself. Mrs. Thorpe seemed hardly to notice, certainly not to care; I was amazed at the change in her. Perhaps it was because she had always been the centre of Mr. Thorpe's life and now found herself the centre of nobody's life, and so missed her husband more than she expected; or perhaps, as I sometimes pityingly surmised, some spring had broken in her heart when John had shouted at her for letting me go to Holroyd Hall in a
snowstorm. But however it was, she fell into a kind of dejection, and sat for hours by the hearth, grumbling to anyone who passed through the house that we neglected her. Her only pleasure seemed to be in eating and drinking, and when I discovered this, I very gladly brought her dainties to the fireside, which pleased her but vexed my husband, who had a great liking for decency and order.

When the spring came, and the sky grew bright and the air mild, Mrs. Thorpe revived somewhat in spirit; and her next fancy was to go to Adel, to Will and Eliza, for a few weeks' visit. She made out that Eliza was still delicate after a miscarriage she had, and needed her mother. It was true that Eliza had suffered a miscarriage, over which she and Will were greatly disappointed, but it had happened in the previous year, and Mrs. Thorpe had not shown much trouble at the time. John was vexed that his mother should want to go just now, for he wished her to be with me during my approaching lying-in, since there was no other woman living in the house; and I did not know what to say to him about it, for I guessed it was precisely for this reason that Mrs. Thorpe wished to leave us. She dreaded the bustle and work and responsibility of a birth and a newborn child, and no longer had the will to force herself to do her duty. Will and Eliza showed but a temperate enthusiasm for the plan, but she was insistent, and eventually John took her over to Adel when he was going to Leeds one Market Day. He said he would hire a little maid for the housework, and arrange that Sarah Denton should come and stay at The Breck while I was in bed, bringing her little daughter, who was about of an age with our Thomas, with her. The maid came; she was willing enough, and the arrangement would have worked well enough save that I was very easily tired just then because of my condition. John grieved so when he saw me overdone that I felt constrained to conceal it from him, and I began to long very greatly for the birth to be over. Then, just the week before it was due, news came by the carrier from Adel that Mrs. Thorpe was ill and calling for her son.

Poor John was quite distracted. He paced the house-room with his hands clasped behind him under his doublet, occasionally cocking an angry eye at the letter from Will, which lay on the table. I urged him to go to Adel immediately; the road lay up Church Bank, and he could call at Sarah Denton's on his way and send her to me.

“I hate to leave you now, Penninah,” said he gruffly.

“We are young and have all our lives before us; Mrs. Thorpe is old and has little time left,” I said. And I continued to urge him, for I thought it his plain duty to go; since I had a son of my own, I understood better how Mrs. Thorpe felt to her son. Though I own I was frightened at the notion of his departure, because from some signs within me I believed my pains would soon begin.

At last, though very unwillingly, he left me; and sure enough he had hardly turned the corner into the lane when I felt the onset of my labour. I sent David off in a hurry for the midwife, but my pains came on so rapidly that I feared the child would be born before she arrived. I made what preparations I could and went to bed; I was obliged to keep a calm demeanour to soothe the maid, who wept, and Lister, who was in a desperate taking—he flapped about the room like a bird of ill omen, waving his arms and calling on the Lord, the sweat standing in beads on his face as he wailed that Mester John would never forgive him. I could not but smile at his fluster, though somewhat wryly; certainly I echoed his fervent “Praise the Lord!” on the arrival of the midwife.

And so my second son, Samuel, was born. Feeling low in spirit at the time, owing to John's absence and the general commotion, I inclined to weep over him because he had such a poor welcome into the world; but I need not have distressed myself. Sam was not of the soft kind, who depend on other people's welcome; he had a robust and stolid spirit, and was not easily disconcerted. It has ever been deeply interesting to me to see the traits of the fathers reappear, mingled and differently proportioned, in the children, and my own two eldest children as they grew furnished prime
examples. Thomas had his father's dark hair and eyes and a Thorpe name, but a courteous gracious manner, a fluent speech, and a generous disposition, like my father. Sam resembled the Clarksons, Will and David and my father, in body, being lanky as a child, with grey eyes and sandy hair; he had John's habit of reserve but not his gravity, being given to sudden unexpected jokes, like those of his Grandfather Thorpe, though the wit in them was of a keener quality, and he had his Grandfather Thorpe's shrewdness also about money and cloth. As a baby he was homely and cheerful, not beautiful like our little Thomas but very healthy and fresh-looking.

I needed the comfort his shrewd little face and upstanding tuft of hair gave me, at the time of his birth, for his father was absent from home no less than three weeks, and I could see from the troubled faces of those about me that there was news from Adel which they dared not tell. At last one day I called in Lister and took a very high tone with him, threatening to weep myself sick if he did not at once tell me what he knew. I did not need to counterfeit tears, being sorely troubled; and Lister, writhing his knotty fingers and pulling at his carroty hair, cried out hurriedly that there was no bad news of the master or the Reverend and Mrs. Clarkson, but Mrs. Thorpe was dead of the plague.

“The plague?” I whispered, terrified.

“Aye,” said Lister gloomily. “It seems it is bad in Leeds this year.”

I was still gaping at him in horror, leaning up on one elbow and breathing heavily, when the door opened and John came in. I cried out and stretched out my arms to him, and he came swiftly and fell on his knees beside the bed. As he put his arms round me tears suddenly flowed from his eyes down his cheeks; it moved me greatly to see a man, and one so strong and taciturn as John, thus weeping. Lister with his usual lack of manners stood grinning at us while I took John's head on my breast and stroked his hair and showed him his second son, but I forgave Lister that time, for I knew his discourtesy sprang only from his love
for John, and when he muttered: “O praise the Lord with me!” I accepted his admonition and gave thanks to God silently for His great goodness. Soon David coming home from school burst into the room, smiling all over his gentle face at John's return; and Sarah came and gazed at us from the doorway, her arms akimbo; and we were all very happy together.