Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  While this parley was in progress some of the people dancing in the Turls began to notice the unusual happening at the church, and came running up to us, and now more and more gathered round and swelled the procession. These people were all vexed with the Puritans, who had so long kept them as they thought from their Sunday afternoon recreations, and when they heard what the matter was they began to laugh and triumph, and called out to their companions with coarse gibes to come and see the Puritan being taken to the Starchamber. The soldiers grinned and did not discourage them. So we passed through the Turls amidst a hostile crowd, laughing and shouting and jeering; and then someone threw a piece of turf at Will, and many began to pelt us. And suddenly, through a parting in the crowd, I saw Francis flushed and laughing drunkenly, his arm bent back in the act of throwing.

  In that moment I hated him.

  It seemed as if scales fell from my eyes and I saw him for what he was: light and loose and lecherous and on the side of the oppressor. I could forgive him for being light and loose and lecherous, my heart cried in anguish, I could forgive his wounding of my pride, his little valuing of my love, his neglect and his disrespect and his carelessness; all that, I could accept, and still love him dearly. I acquitted him, too, of ill-treating my brother, for I guessed he had not seen Will’s face or known him, but simply joined in light-heartedly at any sport that was going. But that he should thus light-heartedly and without thinking choose the side of authority just because it was authority, that he should not see that these Puritans, though in some things perhaps mistaken, were decent honest religious folk, doing what they did because they feared God more than man and did not shrink to defy the oppressor, that was intolerable to me. My soul revolted from it. Our natures are other, Francis, I told him silently; you are with the strong and the rich, I am with the humble and needy. There is a gulf between our spirits holding all the wrongs done by all the tyrants to all the poor and those who have no helper; and we can never cross that gulf, it is too wide.

  As I thought thus, and the crowd closed about us and hid Francis, my father suddenly threw up his arms and staggered backwards. I almost fell beneath his weight, but John just in time caught him by the shoulders and lowered him to the ground. His eyes were closed and he was breathing very strangely. I fell on my knees beside him and took his hand. The crowd fell back, and their shouting faded to a kindly murmur, for my father was loved for his gentleness of spirit, even by those who opposed his beliefs, and besides, they were frightened, feeling in some sense responsible for his illness. I do not know what happened then around me, for my whole being was engaged in listening to my father’s gasping breath, which I dreaded to hear cease; but after a long long while, as it seemed, John touched me on the shoulder and I looked up, and there was Lister and the landlord of the Pack Horse Inn with a horse and a rough farm cart. The men opened the back of the cart and lifted in my father; it was difficult to move him, since he was so tall, and after some hanging back the bystanders helped them. The soldiers and Will and Mr. Okell and Mr. Thorpe had gone away. I climbed into the cart and pillowed my father’s head in my lap, and John and Lister walked beside the cart and the innkeeper led the horse, and so we came to our house in Fairgap.

  Sarah and her Denton were waiting for us there with sober faces, and David, they said, had gone to fetch the physician. The men carried my father upstairs and laid him on his bed, and Sarah and I undressed him and put warming-pans to his feet. The physician came, and seemed to understand little of my father’s illness but to take a grave view of it; he shook his head very soberly, and said he must warn me that so much distress and excitement as that afternoon had brought, to one in my father’s condition might well prove fatal. He had brought some physic, and we tried to give it to my father, but he could not drink, and the physic ran out of the corners of his mouth, which to me was somehow extremely affecting. When all was done that could be done and the house was quiet, I prepared to watch by my father’s bed, but bethinking myself of David, I went down to see how the poor lad fared. He was sitting with our Bible open before him, not reading it but staring ahead, his face pale, his blue eyes very wide in his wretchedness, for he loved my father very dearly. To my surprise Lister sat beside him, coaxing him in a low voice to read with him. The apprentice told me that John had gone to see if aught could be done for Will, and had bidden him stay with us, to be at hand to run messages.

  I went upstairs and sat beside my father. From time to time he moaned a little and moved his head restlessly, and once or twice threw out a few muddled words, when I laid my hand on his forehead to soothe him; but on the whole he lay quiet except for his breath, which came harsh and noisy and uneven. The light died, and Sarah came in with a candle and offered to relieve my watch, but I would not leave my father.

  After long long hours, there was a stir below, footsteps very quiet on the stairs, and then John’s voice whispering: “Penninah.” I went to the doorway to him. In the flickering candlelight he looked hot and dirty and very tired, there were beads of sweat on his forehead and his dress was disordered.

  “I came to tell you, Penninah,” he said in a low voice: “I am going to Guiseley with a message from Mr. Okell to ask the vicar there to write a letter about Will to Lord Fairfax—his benefice is in Lord Fairfax’s gift and he is a friend of his son Ferdinando. Lord Fairfax may be able by influence to moderate the court’s judgment.”

  “What is Will accused of?” I whispered.

  “Preaching at the afternoon exercises instead of catechising, discussing doctrine not contained in the teaching of the Church of England, not reading the Book of Sports—oh, and not wearing his whites,” said John. “But he has done no more than other preachers in the West Riding; plenty round Leeds and Halifax have done the same. If Lord Fairfax intervenes, Mr. Okell thinks Will may be reprimanded without a trial. But I fear he must lose his place. I am to ride to Guiseley now, and then on with the letter to Lord Fairfax.”

  “John,” I said very quietly: “If you still wish me to be your wife, I will wed you as soon as it is right for me to leave my father.”

  John gave me a strange burning look. “But you love Frank,” he said.

  “I can never marry Francis,” I told him, looking beyond him into the darkness. “Our spirits are utterly apart.”

  John took my hands and held them very strongly. “We shall be man and wife, then?” he said.

  “God willing, it shall be so,” I answered.

  He had barely gone when there came the loud rhythmical knocking on the house-door which always betokened Francis. I hurried down the stairs to him, for I did not want him to rush to me with his usual heedlessness and make a disturbance in my father’s chamber. Thunder came in first, crossed to the hearth and lay down heavily. Francis looked shamefaced and less sure of himself than usual, but handsome and vivid, as always.

  “Pen,” he began hurriedly: “I have only this moment heard the news; I am truly sorry about Will and your father.”

  “But you were in the Turls this afternoon, were you not,” I said with a steady look at him.

  He coloured, and swung his hat uneasily. “Pen, I did not know it was Will,” he said. “I have only just heard the news, believe me.”

  “I have some other news for you, Francis,” I said, striving to keep my voice steady. “I am betrothed to John Thorpe, and shall shortly wed him.”

  Francis stared at me, incredulous. Slowly his face fell; his cheek paled, his mouth gaped, till his good looks were all quite vanished.

  “Why, Pen!” he stammered. “Why, Pen! Betrothed to John! But you and I—why, Pen!” He seemed so astounded, so taken aback, so boyish and loving in his hurt, that my heart throbbed, and if he had left speaking there I might have melted to him. But he went on, and all the differences between us and his lack of understanding of them were in his words.

  “On my word of honour, Pen,” he said, “I did not know it was Will. Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you, Francis,” I said.
“But that is not the argument.”

  “Don’t talk as if you were David,” said Francis impatiently.

  “I can only speak as my heart teaches me,” said I. “And you and I do not speak alike, Francis.”

  He stared at me as if he could not believe his ears. I gazed back at him, very sadly but very steadily.

  “But, Pen!” he pleaded. “Pen?”

  Slowly and softly and irrevocably, I shook my head.

  Without a wordFrancis swung on his heel and left the house.

  I stood there for a moment, gazing after Francis, while Thunder with a protesting murmur rose and padded heavily after him, then I thought I heard a muttering sound above-stairs, and ran back to my father. He was half raised in bed, with his eyes wide open, and as I came in he pointed at the door and muttered thickly some words that I took for a question as to who was below. I told him: “It was Francis, Father.” It seemed to me that he received this with a troubled look, so I bent over him and took his hand and said: “Father, I have promised to wed John.” He nodded to show he understood, pressed my fingers and smiled at me, but his look did not clear; still clinging to my hand he lay back, and gazed very earnestly at the candle as though considering. Then all of a sudden he murmured quietly:

  “For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. Amen.”

  His voice was low but very clear; closing his eyes, he sighed once, and was gone.

  John and I were married by licence the day after we buried my father.

  III

  Division

  1

  I LIVE A SOBER AND GODLY LIFE

  I had set my hand to the plough of a sober and godly life in my marriage to John, and I would not let myself falter in my course or fail in my duty as a wife, though at first I laboured under many difficulties. On the day of our marriage itself, as we came along Kirkgate after the wedding, man and wife, my hand resting on John’s arm, our friends and family following after, a woman stepped out from the side of the street and stood in our path. I did not recognise her, and made to pass, but she snatched at my sleeve, and thinking she wished to offer us felicitations on our marriage, I halted.

  “Well, you have got your way, Penninah Clarkson, and my son is gone!” she cried out shrilly.

  Then I saw that it was Mrs. Ferrand, though her pretty face was all haggard and her golden hair bedraggled.

  “Francis has gone to the Low Countries to fight!” screamed Mrs. Ferrand, throwing her words in my face. (Her lisp somehow made them all the more affecting.) “He would not stay to dance at your wedding. You have got your way!”

  “Frank’s comings and goings are no concern of my wife’s, Aunt Sybil,” said John steadily.

  “Come away, Sybil,” said Mr. Ferrand, coming up behind her and taking her arm. “As John says, it is no concern of theirs whether or no we have lost our son.”

  His voice was so bitter that I almost fainted under its reproach and the public disgrace, and would have sunk to the ground but for John’s arm to which I clung heavily; then it came to me how cruel and how unjust it was that the Ferrands should blame me for what had happened, and a flame of anger sprang up in my heart. I raised my head up proudly and walked very steadily along at John’s side.

  But it was not a propitious beginning to our married life, nor one which could be acceptable to Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe or to John. When we reached The Breck, I expected some enquiry from my new relatives about Francis, and indeed Mrs. Thorpe’s face was full of question; but, owing I think to a sign from John, the Ferrands’ name was not mentioned by anyone. This was a decent forbearance on their part, but I wished it otherwise, and that night when John and I were alone together at last, I prepared to open my heart about Francis, to my husband; for I desired there should be nothing but what was clear and open between us. To begin the subject, which was not easy for me, I asked him if he blamed me, as the Ferrands did, for Francis’s departure.

  “I blame you for nothing, Penninah,” said John.

  “I wish to explain to you,” I began.

  “Some other time,” he said. “Not now. Not now.”

  “But, John,” I protested: “I must clear myself to you in this matter.”

  “There is no need,” said John.

  His voice was vexed; he frowned and turned aside; bewildered and heartsore, I desisted.

  It was not the last time John was to perplex me, for I found—as perhaps many of those newly wedded find—that in spite of all the many years I had known him, I had married a stranger. There were sombre depths and strange fires in John’s nature which I had not understood. Nor did I ever altogether understand him, even in our best years of love or in our old age together; I came to love him strongly and know him well, but there was always a shadowed recess in his nature into which I never penetrated, though I believe he would gladly have had me come there. He had never many words; he never praised my beauty or told me that he loved me; he had no quickness or expressiveness in action, which indeed he disliked as ostentatious; he was taciturn and stubborn, his strength lay in steadiness and persistence. It was not a nature which made the first steps in married life easy for me.

  It was not easy, in any case, for a young girl brought up as I was to become a wife. Being motherless, and having always lived very quietly and modestly, I knew little of men’s desires or my own nature, and it was not until I lay in John’s arms that I knew what I had lost in losing Francis. With the help of God, to whom I cried in the dark hour of this discovery, I put the thought aside; but to say the truth, during the first days of my marriage I was frightened by the strength of John’s passion for me. Yet though I feared it, I respected him for a feeling so powerful and real and stable. Presently I began to feel for him, as I believe many women feel for men who love them, a kind of compassion, a loving pity; I felt sorry that a man so strong should seek with such a burning intensity something which to me meant so little, and I took his rough dark head on my breast with a wish to cherish and protect him, as if he were a child. All these emotions, so violent and contradictory, were very perplexing and troubling to one who had, like myself, always been proud and grave and self-controlled. Then, too, I did not for some few months conceive, and though John said nothing to me on the matter, I knew he was disappointed, for Mrs. Thorpe made it a great trouble to me. She did not hesitate to make me out a barren woman, though I was barely twenty; and when poor little Martha died, Mrs. Thorpe hinted that her early fading came from some delicacy she had inherited from the Clarksons, though truly it was due to the failing of Eliza’s milk because of her grief over Will’s summons to Starchamber.

  In truth most of the troubles in my life at The Breck sprang from Mrs. Thorpe. She was vexed with me because of my early refusal of John—at the time I found this harsh and unreasonable, but since I have had sons of my own I understand it perfectly. She was vexed with me because she did not know the bottom of the history between myself and Francis. She was vexed with me because Mr. Thorpe showed more fondness for me than for his own daughter—though she herself often spoke sharply enough to Eliza when she displayed some weakness or pettiness of character. Mrs. Thorpe was vexed with me, too, for another reason, of which I learned for the first time on the day after my marriage.

  There was some scruple about opening and reading my father’s will, because Mr. Thorpe was the only one of the executors named who could be present, Will being away and Mr. Ferrand refusing to take up the charge. But this being got over, the will was read that afternoon at The Breck, and explained by the Thorpes’ lawyer to us, that is to the Thorpes and Eliza and myself and David, whom the Thorpes had brought to live at The Breck for the present. I was astounded by the will’s contents; so many closes of land, and houses, seemed to be my father’s property, that he must surely have been a rich man, with no need to trouble himself over business. I thought to myself: “There will be no hindrance to David’s going to Cambridge,” and rejoiced, and smiled across at him. But I noticed that the Thorpes’ faces all remained very still an
d gloomy, and the lawyer’s next words explained the reason, for he began:

  “The mortgages——”

  The Thorpes all sighed and shifted their position, and kept their eyes from me as the lawyer went on talking. It seemed everything my father owned had long since been mortgaged to Mr. Thorpe. His trade as a clothier had been going the wrong way, and he had been borrowing, even before I knew the Thorpes—which explained to me both why he had not taken Joseph Lister as an apprentice and why he had been distressed about Will’s wanting to marry Eliza. And, the cloth trade having suffered so much of late, his estate had never recovered, but sunk continually deeper and deeper into debt. Oh, I understood so many things now; the quietness and emptiness of our loom chamber, my father’s trouble over his accounts the time John first came to cast them for him, his eagerness that I should marry John, his hesitation over David’s going to the University. I understood it all; and my heart ached as I thought of my poor father bearing this distress alone through his last troubled years, not sharing it with anyone.

  “My father has nothing to leave his children, then?” I asked the lawyer quietly.

  “Less than nothing,” blurted the lawyer. He explained that the value of all the property was far below that of the mortgages.

  Then indeed I bowed my head and suffered, to think that my father’s good name was marred, and David murmured: “Oh, Pen!” in a tone of anguish, and the Thorpes were all very still, and said nothing.

  “You have lost by my father, and I have no jointure to bring you,” I said to them at last.

  “Mr. Clarkson’s life was doubtless more acceptable to the Lord than gold,” said Mrs. Thorpe, but not as if she altogether believed it.

  “He was too soft for trade,” said Mr. Thorpe in a tone of apology.

  “No jointure was necessary,” muttered John gruffly.