Take Courage (53 page)

“But how did he know?” I marvelled.

“You did not tell him then?” said John.

“He asked me once and I lied to him,” I said.

John took a deep breath and seemed to quieten. “Well—so it is,” he said.

“Will this not settle Chris's livelihood, then?” I asked him eagerly.

“Why, yes and no, Penninah,” said John in a dejected tone. “What with Uncle Giles's composition, and this later decimation fine by Lambert, and large sums he lent on the public faith to the Earl of Newcastle never repaid, and mortgages on the land to pay all these, and the low price of wool, there is almost nothing left, almost nothing at all.”

“Poor old man,” said I. “That is the reason he would not take your help in his affairs, John; he was ashamed.”

“Why, doubtless 'twas so,” said John. “But he would have done better to take it. If I must tell you all, Penninah, there is less than nothing; it will cost us much to put all straight in an honourable fashion. Nevertheless, Penninah,” said John steadily: “For thy sake and the boy's it shall be done.”

“John,” said I: “Thou art the best and truest-hearted man in England.”

“Saving only Lord Fairfax,” said John, laughing, though he was moved.

“Nay, I do not except even Lord Fairfax,” said I, shaking my head.

“Well—we must tell the boy now, or he will hear it from common gossip,” said John briskly. He called Chris's name about the house, and out at the windows, and in a moment Chris flew in from some outdoor haunt—he was so light-footed that he seemed often to appear suddenly out of the air.

“Christopher,” said John in a solemn manner: “You were ever old Uncle Giles's favourite here, and now he has left you all his estate. I stand possessed of it for your use and behoof, till you reach manhood. The estate is much encumbered,” went on John: “But with seven or eight years' stern application, we may clear it.”

A look of distaste and dismay shadowed Chris's bright face. “I don't want it,” he muttered.

“Is it the estate you do not want, or the work to clear it?” asked John sternly.

“I don't know,” said Chris honestly. Then he blurted: “I want to go to America.”

I cried out: “No! No!” so violently that they both stood looking at me. “What dost thou want with New England, lad?” I went on quickly. “It is tedious there as here—it is a very sober godly place—there are many ministers there—Lister hath an uncle there. It would not suit you.”

“I do not mean New England,” said Chris impatiently. “I mean Virginia.”

We stared at him.

“You have it all planned, it seems,” said John at length.

Chris swung one foot and looked a trifle sulky. “I have heard talk,” he said: “And read of it. I want to go to Virginia. I want to go, Mother.”

“Why,” said I, trembling with a sudden icy cold which filled me: “If you want to go, Chris—if you want to leave me——”

“I will write to our Sam about it,” broke in John, very loud and harsh.

Chris's face brightened. “Oh, thank you, Father!” he cried. “Thank you!”

“Thank thy mother, lad,” said John gruffly.

There was a great deal of writing going on at that time between Sam and his father, because Sam was to be married that year to his master's daughter, Constance Bagnall, and there seemed to be much lawyer's business, though no real difficulties, to be settled between them. A letter came very soon, it seemed to me—too soon, too soon!—from Sam to say that dispirited needy Cavaliers had sailed continually to the Virginia plantation ever since the King's execution, Virginia, it seemed, being a Royalist kind of place; Sam therefore did not recommend it. John had asked him what chance there was for a young lad out there, and Sam replied that there was plenty. Some lads, he said, went as
redemptioners
, who did not pay their passage out, but bound themselves to work there for a master for four years or more, the money for their purchase (for it was almost that) going to the captain who brought them.

“Chris shall not go like that,” said John.

“I should not mind, Father,” said Chris. “The years would pass.”

“You are content to work four years almost as a slave in Virginia, but will not work seven as a free man to gain a good estate in Yorkshire,” said John bitterly.

The look of distaste and weariness crossed Chris's face again. “It is so narrow here, so tedious,” he muttered.

“He has set his mind to go, Penninah,” said John to me that night: “And I fear it will be little use trying to dissuade him. But I will not urge you,” he went on quickly: “God knows I will not try to part you from him, Penninah.”

I lay awake at John's side all that night, still and cold, and poured out my soul to the Lord in silent prayer. It was a night of fearful anguish; my soul and my body seemed almost to part company, to dissolve in its bitterness; for to part from Chris was to me a kind of death. To me he was not merely a child with the other children, whom I loved and kissed and mothered—indeed there were few caresses between us; he was not merely bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; he was half of my life, and to tear him away was to tear half my life from me. So I wrestled in anguish of flesh and spirit, feeling sick unto death. Nay, I even found myself saying, blasphemously as I fear, the words of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me!” To lose Chris is my punishment for my sin in conceiving him, I thought; but then my heart rose up in rebellion, and said: Not so! It is this strange time, not war and not peace, this wretched time when counsel is darkened and men stagger to and fro, which takes Chris from me. But even as I thought thus, the answer to my prayer came to me: If thou keep thy son at home, something ill will befall him. And I knew it to be true, and at long last I said: “Not my will, but Thine, be done,
O Lord.” And I shuddered and the tears poured down my face, and John awoke and took me in his arms and comforted me, grieving over me, yet uttering no word of admonition or reproach, so that by degrees my agony passed, and I was able to speak of Chris's going and how it could best be compassed, as though I were a live woman and not a naked soul in searing torment. This night was my true parting from Chris; and after this I was not young any more.

I began to stitch and knit for Chris, but had not time to complete my preparations, for many things happened suddenly. John called Chris before him and urged him most solemnly to wait for a few years, till he should be a man, before sailing away from us; but the dark look of vexation crossed Chris's face again at this, and indeed he was doing no good at The Breck and might as well be learning the new land's ways while he was young and pliable, and so it was settled he should go as soon as a passage could be found for him. Then Sam wrote of a passage for Chris in a ship which would shortly sail from London, under a captain who was a very good man, a friend of Mr. Bagnall's, who would see Chris well placed; so John commanded him to arrange the matter, and he bought some of Chris's mortgaged land from him so that the boy would have money in his pocket when he reached the strange country, and he began to plan to travel to London himself, to take Chris safe there and visit the gentleman's widow he was steward for and see our Sam married. While this was yet uncertain, suddenly there came a messenger in the Fairfax livery, saying Lady Fairfax and the Duchess of Buckingham were travelling to London, setting out on the morrow. The Duke of Buckingham, it seemed, had been arrested and thrown into the Tower for some fancied plot against the Protectorate, and Lord Fairfax had already set off for London to beg his release from Cromwell, and his wife and daughter were to follow him; and Lord Fairfax had heard from his agent in London of our son's impending marriage and of our younger son's departure, and if we cared we could travel to London, both John and I, with Lady Fairfax—only we must set
off at once and join them at Doncaster. In my young days such a plan would have sent me wild with excitement, so that I understood very well why Chris turned quite pale when he heard it, and his eyes glittered; but now I felt dazed and saw merely all its inconveniences. But John said that he and Chris must take the great chance thus offered, and so I must needs either go with them or part from Chris within an hour; and this last was impossible, and so I put our clothes in a pack and sent Abraham to Coley to stay with the Hodgsons who had a fondness for him, and John hurriedly rode into Bradford and entrusted his affairs to Lister; and we set out, John and Chris on our own horses, and I riding pillion with the servant.

Well! This journey to London hath made me quite notable around Bradford, and even now many of our neighbours will ask to hear its story. But alas, I remember very little of it, for to me it was a nightmare. People and places swam dizzily in and out of it, and changed abruptly, as they do in nightmares; all I remember clearly is that I was never out of suffering, I felt all the time as if I had a fever.

For the most part of the way I travelled in Lady Fairfax's coach, with herself and her daughter. Lady Fairfax had not changed much, either in character or in looks; only her complexion was a trifle browner, her features a trifle sharper, her tongue decidedly more wandering, than of old. She met me with a long tirade on how she was glad to have an hour's stay in Doncaster, since she did not wish Moll to be frightened by thinking there was need to hurry—I smiled to myself as I remembered her ways of old, and translated this into anger at our delaying her and her daughter. She was much vexed, if one were to judge by her talk, with the Duke of Buckingham for wedding Moll, and her husband for consenting, yet John told me it was common talk she herself had made the match. At first there was a kind of stiffness between us, which I could not exert myself properly to remove; Lady Fairfax, it seemed, did not know of Chris's departure, did not know, therefore, why I should be so dumb and dazed. It was the Duchess who discovered my
grief, for she had a grief too, and sorrow is a strong bond. As I rode gazing with unseeing eyes out of the window at the fields and woods as they rolled by—it was summer, and the land was doubtless very lovely, but I saw it not—she laid a hand on my wrist and drew my trouble forth from me by gentle questions. She was a woman grown now, this little Moll whom I had fed and tended, and very highly educated by many tutors, poets and such; but she was very much the same in looks and bearing as when she was a child; small and slight and very dark-complexioned, with dark scanty hair, and somewhat unfinished features, redeemed from plainness only by the look of noble benevolence in her fine dark eyes. She explained my trouble to her mother, whom she seemed to manage very well; Lady Fairfax exclaimed, and looked at me, and then leaned out of the coach window and called to a man of Lord Fairfax's who rode beside, and bade him bring Christopher Thorpe to her. In a moment my Chris appeared, bowing very gracefully but coldly in the saddle. Lady Fairfax spoke a word to him and let him go, then turned to me with all her old kindness in her eyes.

“Why, Penninah Thorpe,” said she, “he is the handsomest lad I have seen these seven years!” Her face changed, and she sighed, then cried out suddenly: “Each of us loves a man who leaves us!”

“Mother!” exclaimed Moll, colouring—for indeed she doted on her husband, who was already not very faithful to her, or so folk said.

From that time Lady Fairfax was her old self to me, and we talked long and intimately of all that happened to us since we parted on the night of the siege. We talked both in the coach, and at nights when we stopped, for she had me in to dine with her. From all she said, the nation's affairs were in a worse way than we thought, with many intriguings and rebellings amongst the Army officers; and she was very bitter that Lord Fairfax should have to ask a favour of Cromwell.

“'Tis the first and last favour, I warrant you,” she said,
tossing her head. “A pretty son-in-law, to necessitate a favour from the Lord Protector.”

“Mother!” exclaimed Moll again, painfully.

At last, four days after we left Little Holroyd, we reached London, and were set out at Lord Fairfax's house in Lincoln's Inn, just as it came dusk. John was in great hopes of seeing his General, but these were disappointed; Lord Fairfax was not in the house at the time, and we heard from the servants that Cromwell had that day refused to release the Duke, and the General, deeply angered, meant to set out again for Yorkshire on the morrow. Lady Fairfax exclaimed when she heard this and chattered contradictory orders, and Moll looked dazed and downcast, and we stood in the midst of the Fairfaxes' baggage, longing to take ourselves from where we were not wanted; and then my heart lifted, for Sam came striding in, very brisk and firm and cheerful. He was a grown man, now, our Sam, not very tall but solid and sturdy, with a very fresh cheek and my father's sandy hair and a lively eye. He seemed very well pleased with himself, as a young man about to marry ought to be; he greeted John and me very warmly, and was delighted with Chris, holding him at arm's length and exclaiming over and over how he had grown.

I was afraid lest we should appear very homely and countrified before these London people, these Bagnalls, and not do Sam credit, but when I hinted this Sam laughed heartily.

“Nay, mother,” he said: “They are afraid of you, lest they should not be grand enough.”

I did not see how this could be, but it seemed it was so, for with John having been so close to Lord Fairfax, and David so high up at Clare and now much respected for his preaching, which he did sometimes in London, the Bagnalls thought of us as belonging to the gentry. It is some fifteen years now since I saw these Bagnalls in Cripplegate, and in truth I do not remember them, even if I ever saw them, very clearly; I remember her as a very quiet large woman and him as a smaller perkier kind of person, I remember
that they had a kind of accent in their voices which sounded strange to our Yorkshire ears, but what complexion they had, or eyes, or how they bore themselves, I do not know, save that they were kind and godly. Sam's Constance I remember well, for I was greatly relieved when I saw her; she was a buxom, jolly, warm-hearted girl, not pretty but comely enough in a fair hearty fashion, and she had that strong steady love for Sam which is the right kind for marriage, for it endures through the many chances and changes of married life. She was an excellent cook, and cleanly about the house as Londoners go—though indeed that is not very far, for I saw some strange ways in merchants' houses in London, both in Cripplegate and with the Bagnalls' friends; they do not wash and scour as we do.