A Mother's Courage

by Maggie Hope

  He fingered the soft brown down on his chin pensively; would it ever grow into the full beard so many of his fellow preachers sported? Turning to the small looking glass hanging on the back of the door, Francis gazed into it anxiously, not seeing the high forehead and symmetrical features gazing back at him but only that, in spite of the beard, the youthful roundness of his cheeks was still obvious to anyone. No wonder Miss Saint thought of him as still a boy, he thought ruefully. But that wouldn’t last, oh no – when he came back from London he would be a man of the world, ready to set out on the great adventure of converting the heathen and he would marry her and take her with him. For a man needed a wife, especially a missionary man, he needed a woman’s aid. Unaccountably, Francis blushed, feeling strangely excited. What was he thinking about, today of all days? His mind ought to be on God, he should be giving thanks to his Maker for this chance to serve Him. God would always come first with him, he told himself, and it would be only fair to make that plain to Eleanor before they married.

  Folding his long legs, he sank to his knees, clasped his hands together and resolutely concentrated on prayer. It would be years before he was in a position to marry Eleanor and until then he must keep his thoughts clean and pure. It never occurred to him that Eleanor might not wish to wait all those years for him or even marry him at all.

  Rising to his feet, Francis finished packing his clothes and placed his Bible on the top where it would be easy to get at. He smiled and ran his fingers over it, enjoying the sensuous feel of the calfskin-bound volume, the distinctive scent of new leather. It had been a gift from the chapel at Hetton-le-Hole when he gave his farewell sermon there only last week and it replaced the battered old copy he had had as a Sunday School prize years ago. The leather felt so rich—Abruptly he snapped the bag shut and turned to put on his coat and hat. Perhaps he liked rich things too much?

  As he picked up the bag and ran down the stairs and out into the icy air of the quayside, the slightly guilty feeling was swamped in the gladness that flooded through him. The great adventure was about to start. Well, at least the training for it was. He turned into Castle Chare, which climbed steeply up from the quayside and on to the railway station.

  Chapter Four

  Eleanor glared at her reflection in the looking glass as Mary struggled to mould her heavy hair into the loops and twirls demanded of the fashion of the new decade. ‘Oh, leave it, Mary, you’re never going to get it just so, it’s too heavy. I can’t be bothered with it, just pin it up under my cap. Mother and Fanny will be here any minute and if I’m not downstairs to greet them that will be something else for Grandmother and Mother to complain about.’

  ‘But—’ Mary began and Eleanor glanced impatiently at her reflection, her attention arrested for a moment by the contrast between Mary’s blonde, biddable waves and ringlets topped by a plain starched cap, and her own unruly locks.

  ‘Oh, go on, Mary, I know you have work to do in the kitchen, go and get on with it,’ said Eleanor, slightly snappish. She rose to her feet and moved away from the dressing table, smoothing down her pale blue taffeta gown as she did so. Lord, she looked sallow in blue, she thought; the dress was more suitable for Mary’s colouring than her own. But it was Grandmother’s idea of what a young girl should wear, gleaned from the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which Grandmother had delivered every month. In vain had Eleanor protested that she preferred plain, dark colours or maybe a dark green for evening wear.

  ‘I’m almost twenty-four, Grandmother,’ she had pointed out. ‘Not a young girl any more.’

  ‘No, and you’re fast becoming a bitter old spinster!’

  ‘I don’t wish to be married,’ Eleanor had said patiently, as she had said every time Grandmother had invited a young man to dinner or Mother had written inviting her home to meet a promising man. No doubt that was the reason Mother and Fanny were coming for the weekend; Grandmother probably had a man coming to dinner and they were invited too to make it look like a dinner party.

  Grumpily, Eleanor pulled on her white lace evening gloves, snagging the lace on the rough skin of her fingers. Rough skin caused by the carbolic acid she had bought for Mrs Simpson, a miner’s wife with twelve children and no strength to keep them clean and healthy even though the neighbours did what they could to help. Eleanor had seen the angry red bug bites on the new baby and rolled up her own sleeves and demonstrated to the oldest Simpson child how to make a 1-in-20 solution of the acid and scrub the walls where the bed bugs lurked.

  Thinking of it, Eleanor smiled grimly. It was just as well Grandmother didn’t know about that, she thought. There was enough trouble as it was; Eleanor’s ‘meddling’ with the miners’ families, as Grandmother called her work, was a constant complaint.

  ‘It’s hard enough trying to find a man willing to marry you when you won’t even try to improve your appearance,’ Grandmother lamented often enough and Uncle John would frown at his mother if he was present. ‘But what man wants a wife who risks disease and the Lord knows what else going among the riff-raff? I tell you, Eleanor, it’s not womanly!’ When in fact it was very womanly, and just what the Bible exhorted one to do, thought Eleanor rebelliously, but it was no good saying that to Grandmother Wales.

  Sighing, Eleanor opened her bedroom door. She could hear the murmur of voices and clatter of dishes as Mary and Prue worked in the kitchen, for Prue was thirteen now and was often brought in to help Mary when the Waleses entertained. That meant there was another guest apart from family and Eleanor’s spirits sank as she started down the stairs. It was so humiliating when she was paraded in front of a possible suitor like this; it made her feel like one of the horses the gypsies ran up and down the green during the horse fair.

  It was not as though she hadn’t something better to do – there was the chapel tea and bazaar to organise for Saturday and everyone else made such a muddle of these things. It was in aid of Overseas Missions, and it was very important that it did well. For wasn’t it specifically to help send Francis Tait, who had finished his training at the Wesley College at Richmond Hill and was coming to preside at the tea on Saturday, to the Australian mission field? The familiar pang of envy went through her at the thought, but she was used to the idea that she couldn’t go herself. Oh, why had God made her female?

  Eleanor was frowning blackly as she flung open the door of the parlour, which Grandmother called the drawing room, and strode in, only to come to a sudden halt when she realised there was someone there. A tall, broad figure, dressed totally in black except for a snowy-white clerical collar, rose to his feet and stepped forward.

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t realise—’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Miss Saint.’

  The strange minister’s voice was a firm, assured deep baritone and Eleanor gazed up at him as he came within the circle of the lamplight. And even though she had just been thinking of him it took her a moment to recognise Francis Tait.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘It’s Mr Tait, isn’t it? I’m afraid I didn’t recognise you, it’s so long since I saw you.’

  Fleetingly, the image ran through her mind of the time when he spoke to her in chapel, trying to be oh so grown up, and his voice had wobbled and broken. Well, he was certainly grown up now, she decided, as he took her hand in his and held it for a moment longer than necessary. She looked up into his face, half obscured by the bushy beard that seemed to be almost part of the uniform for Methodist preachers, a beard that was a rich, deep brown, though not so rich and deep as the colour of his eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry you have been left on your own, Mr Tait. If Mary had told me I would have come down sooner.’ Where was Uncle John? Surely he would not have left a minister of the church sitting on his own?

  ‘No, no, I have been perfectly all right,’ said Francis. ‘It’s my fault, my train got in a little early but I have only just arrived, I assure you. Mr Wales was here but he was called away, something to do with the mine, I believe.’

  Eleanor was sudd
enly conscious of her pale blue dress and badly dressed hair; she must really look a sight. ‘Do sit down,’ she mumbled and took a seat on the opposite side of a table covered with an ornate, fringed cover, which managed to hide most of her dress. Not that it mattered, of course it didn’t – why should it matter what any man thought of her appearance?

  ‘I hear from your uncle that you take a keen interest in the mining folk and their welfare,’ said Francis. ‘Besides your work for the chapel, I’ve heard you are also an indefatigable fund-raiser for the missions.’

  Eleanor looked down at her lace-covered hands, twisting them in her lap. So even Uncle John had been coerced into helping to find her a husband, she thought.

  ‘Your reputation is to your credit, Miss Saint,’ said Francis, rather pompously, she thought.

  ‘Not at all,’ she murmured. Heavens, if this was the extent of his conversation it was becoming very boring. She looked up in relief at the sound of the front-door bell. ‘Oh, that will be Mother.’

  Sure enough, a moment or two later Mary opened the parlour door and Mrs Saint swept into the room, her youngest daughter Fanny following in her wake. She bent her head in acknowledgement to Francis. ‘Now then, Minister, how are you?’ she said, hardly waiting for his murmured reply before crossing to Eleanor and pecking her on the cheek. ‘You look healthy enough, Eleanor,’ she said, as her daughters greeted each other.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mother,’ said Eleanor, surprised. ‘You know I enjoy good health.’

  ‘But not good enough to visit your mother too often. It is quite three months since you came to see us.’

  ‘I have been busy, Mother,’ said Eleanor. ‘There has been much sickness in the village and I—’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. The pitmen and their black-faced brats have to come before your own mother and sisters.’ Mrs Saint’s voice was hard and bitter. Fanny, who had hardly spoken a word as yet and not moved from her mother’s side, looked quickly at Francis, her brown eyes, so like Eleanor’s with their dark lashes and straight brows, embarrassed.

  ‘Mother, perhaps we should sit down?’ she said and in an attempt to change the subject added, ‘How is Grandmother Wales, Eleanor?’

  Her mother flicked her hand at Fanny as though she were a bothersome fly and Eleanor noticed, not for the first time, how like she was to Grandmother Wales.

  ‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to your sister, Fanny,’ Mrs Saint said peremptorily.

  ‘I don’t wish to contradict you, Mrs Saint, but it’s my opinion that Eleanor does excellent work among the poor. And after all, Jesus said that anyone who did anything for little children did it also for Him.’

  Eleanor shot Francis a grateful glance. The evening had got off to a bad start – what was her mother thinking of, ranting on like that before a guest, a minister at that? And surely it hadn’t been so long since she had visited her? Well, thank goodness her mother seemed to have recollected herself and was sitting down, thus allowing everyone else to do so.

  Uncle John came into the room. He shook Francis’s hand, apologising that he hadn’t been there to greet him when he arrived. ‘The pit, you know, so many problems,’ he said before greeting his sister and niece. ‘Shall we go in?’ he asked, preliminaries over. ‘I took Mother straight into the dining room, Elizabeth,’ he added to his sister. ‘I’m afraid you’ll see a big difference in her since you saw her last, she’s becoming unsteady on her legs.’

  The company trailed through the small hall to the dining room, John with his sister on his arm and Francis bringing up the rear behind Eleanor and Fanny. Eleanor gazed at her grandmother, already seated at the table; indeed she was frail; why had she not noticed just how frail? The old woman was shrinking in on herself somehow.

  There was nothing frail about her temper. ‘How good of you to come to see me, Elizabeth,’ she said to her daughter, her voice heavy with sarcasm. Fanny caught Eleanor’s eye and smiled faintly, for Mrs Wales sounded so much like their mother, even down to the same complaint. But Uncle John, ever the diplomat, quickly steered the conversation into more pleasant channels, questioning Francis about his proposed missionary appointment far away in the Australasian field, involving the women in the conversation.

  Eleanor, seated next to Francis, was very conscious that he was there; occasionally the serge of his black coat brushed against the bare skin of her arm as he reached for his glass of raspberry cordial or leaned sideways a little for Mary to serve the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. The sensation could have been pleasant but Eleanor was also conscious of the unbecoming blue dress and the fact that her hair had escaped its pins and was dangling down on her shoulders. Yet what did that matter? she asked herself; it was not her purpose to net him for a husband, was it?

  The beef was succulent and rare and the pudding light and airy; Francis ate heartily as did the rest of the company with the exception of Eleanor. She normally had a good appetite but this evening it had unaccountably deserted her and she was absentmindedly pushing the food around her plate.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with you, child? Eat your dinner, everyone’s waiting for you.’

  Her grandmother’s voice made Eleanor start and she hastily cut a piece of beef, put it in her mouth and swallowed it, choking a little so that Francis became concerned and offered her a glass of cordial. Lordy, what a fool she was, and all because Francis Tait was asked to dinner and why shouldn’t he be? He was off to far-away places to work among the heathens soon.

  It was at that moment the idea was born: why shouldn’t she get Francis to marry her, then she would go with him on his adventures? She would be away from the restrictions imposed on her by English convention and surely among the natives she would find sufficient scope for developing her medical and nursing skills? Eleanor turned a brilliant smile on Francis and began to eat her meal with a new appetite.

  ‘I believe I am quite hungry suddenly,’ she said.

  Francis was encouraged, to say the least. He put up a quick hand to brush back the lock of hair that persisted in waving across his forehead and smiled quickly back at her. Sitting up straighter, he resumed his conversation with Uncle John but his mind was on the girl at his side.

  Oh yes, he had been right. God was drawing him to Eleanor; it was meant to be. She was just exactly the help-meet he needed in his new life; he had known it all along. A good girl, a life-long Methodist as he was himself, and strong and healthy too, which was important in the mission field. The superintendent would approve his choice, he was sure of it. He cast a swift glance at her as she laid her knife and fork side by side on her plate and sat back in her chair, touching her lips with her napkin.

  A fine-looking girl, he thought happily. Such lustrous brown hair, such a white skin touched so delicately with rose. And her air of vitality—

  ‘When exactly do you expect to go, Mr Tait?’

  Mrs Wales’s question broke into his musing and he looked up, a little embarrassed that he had let his thoughts wander off the conversation. Eleanor’s mother and grandmother exchanged knowing glances.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t an exact date yet, Mrs Wales,’ he said. ‘All will be arranged shortly.’

  He was expected to take a wife, he had been told that plainly.

  ‘Have you a lady in mind?’ the superintendent had asked and Francis had replied that he had, even though his courtship was all in his mind so far. But now it would begin in earnest. As the meal came to an end and the company looked to him to give thanks, he rose to his feet and bent his head.

  ‘Thank You, Father, for the food You have given us in Your bountiful mercy this evening. And we thank You for Your eternal goodness to us, Your servants, and especially for the gift of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.’

  The company adjourned to the parlour, only now Francis held Eleanor’s arm with a touch so light she could easily move away if she disliked it. Eleanor, however, did not. Francis looked down at her, noticing the blue gown for the first time and hoping she was not fond o
f pale taffetas; the proper dress of a minister’s wife was black serge with perhaps a small touch of white at the neck. What was it John Wesley had said on the subject? Something about a woman needing no other adornment than the goodness of her soul shining in her eyes. A tactful word to Eleanor on the subject perhaps? Well, all in good time. Oh yes, he thought, the courting would start now. A pleasurable feeling of anticipation ran through him.

  ‘Mr Tait, miss,’ said Prue.

  It was the following morning and Eleanor was just finishing breakfast. She was on her own in the dining room, for Uncle John had long since left to present his report to the mining agent and Grandmother Wales always breakfasted in bed nowadays.

  Eleanor put down her cup and rose to her feet. ‘Thank you, Prue. Will you ask him to wait in the parlour? I’m coming directly.’

  Prue went out without a word or a curtsey and Eleanor pulled a wry face. She was trying to teach the girl so she would get a good job in another household as Grandmother had made it plain there was no room for her in the viewer’s house. But it was uphill work, for Prue was too independent a spirit to make a good servant.

  Glancing at her reflection in the ornate looking glass that hung over the fireplace, Eleanor tucked her hair more securely under the plain white cap she had faithfully copied from one worn by Florence Nightingale in a picture taken on her return from the Crimea. In it she was wearing a plain black dress with narrower skirts than was the fashion, as a crinoline hampered her movements when she was working among the sick. And today Eleanor was visiting Mrs Brown, a woman who was lying-in after the birth of her thirteenth child, and both mother and baby were sickly. Well then, she thought, Francis might not be struck by her beauty but he would see what a capable woman she was and how eminently suitable as a missionary’s wife.

  Francis had had time to be settled in the parlour, she judged, and with a last glance in the looking glass, she went out and through the small hall to the parlour. This was a very important meeting and casting her eyes upwards as she laid her hand on the door knob Eleanor sent up a quick prayer: ‘Please, God, let me do everything right, let Francis think I am the wife for him.’ Excitement lent a sparkle to her eyes as she went in and Francis responded to it immediately, going forward and taking her hand confidently.