Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  “David and I knew nothing of this indebtedness, and we are deeply grateful to you and sorry for it,” I forced out, my cheeks burning with shame.

  “There is no cause for you to distress yourself, Penninah,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “You are our daughter now, and Will is our son. And David shall not lose by it.”

  Her tone was cold, save when she spoke of David, and I felt our dependence very bitterly. Indeed, what with this grief of my father’s bankruptcy, John’s sombre passion, Mrs. Thorpe always hinting to me about my childlessness, Will in a London prison, Eliza poor thing at home at The Breck, weeping over Will and Martha and complaining because David took up room at the table, and David’s future so uncertain—I forbade myself all thoughts of Francis—during the first months of my married life the storms of adversity seemed to beat upon me very heavily.

  There were smaller matters too which yet added their share of grief. Sarah, saying her task with the Clarksons was now performed and she could enter into her rest, married her faithful Denton, and went to live in a small noisome house at the back of Church Bank. I smiled a little wryly to hear her call the state of matrimony “rest,” and thought she might soon learn to regard it differently; for I judged, if the quiet-seeming John were not easy, Denton might indeed be difficult, as a husband. He was a short swarthy man with large ears and a high colour, somewhat bow-legged and tremendously opinionated; he had a strong singing voice, and fancied himself a good deal in prayer and praise—no, I did not think he would prove a restful partner. But whether Sarah had found rest or no she had certainly left my service. I had often suffered from her prim ways and sharp tongue, but now that she was gone I understood how good and trusty a friend she had been to me, and missed her greatly.

  Tabby, too, gave us a deal of trouble. Mrs. Thorpe disliked cats, which she thought newfangled, but for the sake of David, who loved Tabby dearly, she was content to put up with her and give her a home at The Breck. But the ungrateful Tabby, old as she was, would not remain at The Breck; she wandered away constantly down towards Bradford, and was several times returned to us, thin and scared, her glossy coat all dull and matted, by reproachful Fairgap neighbours. The amount of trouble this caused at The Breck was quite out of proportion to Tabby’s size, for Mrs. Thorpe was vexed at the slight to her hospitality. She said: “She doesn’t know when she’s well off,” in a tone so meaning that it identified the cat with her mistress, and I felt guilty of Tabby’s misdeeds as if they were ingratitude on my part. Then one evening as we sat at table there was a knock at the door, and a liveried servant of Mr. Ferrand’s stood there with Tabby in his arms, smirking slyly and asking if the cat belonged to The Breck; she had been found at Holroyd Hall, lying beside Thunder. His tone as he said this, and Mrs. Thorpe’s look at me, were hard to bear, and the air seemed thick with jealousy and suspicion. But David ran happily to take the cat, and John said quietly:

  “Have you any news of my cousin?”

  The man said, aye, they had news; Master Francis had sent a letter, very ill writ Mr. Ferrand had said peevishly, telling how he was in a leaguer, that is a siege, explained the fellow importantly, before some outlandish city in the Low Countries. He had asked for money, which made Mr. Ferrand roar angrily, and seemed to be enjoying himself in camp. Ralph was with him as a body-servant. John nodded to show his interest, and gave the man a coin, at which his father frowned. Next week the same man brought Tabby back again with the same story, adding that Mr. Ferrand had sworn an oath to shoot the cat if she came on his land again. But, said the man, we need not trouble ourselves, he thought, for Thunder was to be shot, so there would be nothing to attract Tabby to Holroyd Hall. Thunder had fretted himself sick over the loss of Master Francis, he went on, though we were all silent and asked no questions; the dog lay on Master Frank’s bed all day and would not eat or stir, and it started Mrs. Ferrand off weeping again, every time she saw him. At this there was another heavy silence and pursed lips and a sour look from Mrs. Thorpe, and my spirit fell so low that I reproached Tabby in my heart for causing so much sorrow to her mistress.

  A few days later, when the cat was returned once again from Fairgap, Mr. Thorpe proposed cheerfully to drown her. At this David looked so horrorstruck, and spoke up so strongly in condemnation of a murder so foul, that the Thorpes were made uncomfortable at their own table, and even amid my many griefs, I was hard put to it not to smile. I glanced across at John, but there was no answering smile on my husband’s face. It was like John that he took pains to see Tabby properly housed and fed, even once bringing her on horseback himself from Bradford Market Cross, Tabby miaulling and scratching all the way, and opposed her drowning, but could not find a laugh for the business. We Clarksons, my father and David and I, had always been a cheerful household, full of pleasant jokes, and I missed our ready laughter.

  I missed, too, the noise and bustle of the Bradford streets. Not that it was quiet at The Breck, for there were always the shuttles clacking in the looms upstairs, men carrying wool or yarn about the yard or busy in the fields with the hay and oats, Scaife the ulnager coming to seal the cloths, pack-horses taking pieces to and fro; but I never saw another woman to speak to except Mrs. Thorpe and Eliza, save on Sundays, so that I felt lonely and apart. I missed my reading to my father, too, for the Thorpes did not willingly spend money on pamphlets or diurnals. All this made my life seem empty of everything save Mrs. Thorpe and John and trouble.

  Indeed as I look back on those months now, I know not how I ever lived through them, and I could not have done so without the grace and loving-kindness of God, Whose hand was stretched out over me. Many were the nights when my sleep went from me and I was much troubled by wicked worldly thoughts, and I slipped from bed and knelt and prayed very earnestly that God would give me strength to keep the vows I had made to my husband. I rose refreshed and comforted, sure that the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the greatest outside it, and that John was of the elect who care for what is right above their own interest, and Francis otherwise. I took John’s hand in mine as he slept, and felt a strong respect and affection for him. But then as I lay awake, I thought of my father, and Will, and little Martha, and David, and my spirits drooped again. I would not wish my worst enemy, not even this tyrannical second Charles himself, such storms of tribulation as I passed through in the first year after my marriage.

  But slowly and steadily and laboriously, and as I see now just by each of us living on and striving each day to do what we thought right, with God’s help we weathered through these tribulations. I came to understand Mrs. Thorpe better, and be able to live less uneasily with her, though we were never truly near to one another. She was a woman who believed in justice rather than mercy, in duty rather than affection. At first this chilled my heart, but gradually I came to see its virtues. Mrs. Thorpe did not love me, nor strive to make me happy, but she did her duty by her son’s wife with all possible strictness, and rendered justice to my work about the house and my care of my husband. The more I saw of the Thorpes’ life, and their strict accounting of every penny, the more I respected their generosity and forbearance towards my father, and I strove to repay them in willing work and submissiveness. (They had dismissed their serving maid when David and I went to live at The Breck, and Mrs. Thorpe and I shared the work of the house between us.) If there were times when I felt that the Clarksons were the Thorpes’ charity pensioners and I could not bear it, I locked the feeling in my heart and did not let it show, though the effort blanched my cheek and choked my throat; and as time went on, the habit of not being mistress in the house, at first very difficult for me after my long years in command at my father’s, grew easier to me. Tabby, though somewhat disdainfully, settled down at Sarah’s, a relief ridiculously out of proportion to the occurrence. John began to talk to me, very briefly at first, of his affairs, his yarn and cloth and marketing, and finding me interested, spoke more extensively; we slipped into a relation calmer and more everyday.

  And then a great happiness ca
me to all of us. To our everlasting gratitude, Lord Fairfax had written to friends on the Starchamber council about Will, and because he was a great man and Will, after all, not a very great transgressor, these friends, pretending there was some inaccuracy in the accusation, managed at long last to get it quashed, and Will was sent off home again from London without a trial. Our joy and relief when John heard this by letter from Lord Fairfax’s London agent was very great; all our tongues seemed loosed as if from a long silence, and we chattered readily. Soon Will himself turned up at Little Holroyd; to our surprise he looked not greatly harmed, being even a little stouter than before, though a few grey hairs flecked the brown about his temples. The meeting between him and Eliza, their little Martha being gone, was affecting; but Will was so taken up with arguing about his offence and the technical illegalities of his arrest, and Starchamber and the King’s prerogative and habeas corpus and so on, that he soon recovered from his grief, remembering it only sometimes, suddenly, when tears filled his eyes. He was warmer in debate than ever, and had a way of slowly putting his head on one side which meant he was about to bring out something he thought devastating. Sometimes, when I remembered how his arrest had caused my father’s death, I felt almost angry to see him there, hale and well and eating heartily, but then I reflected that my father was at rest now, safe with the Lord and no longer vexed about owing the Thorpes money, and I took comfort, and reproved myself for not being more grateful for my brother’s safety. Mr. Okell dared not allow Will to be under-minister again in Bradford, but Lord Fairfax found him a place out at Adel, near Leeds, so he was not far from us. Dr. Hitch, who was rector at Adel, held several other benefices and scarcely ever visited the place, so Will as under-minister had plenty of opportunity for work and ministry, and he and Eliza lived in Adel very happily.

  My next pleasure was David’s advance in health and strength. At first after our father’s death David was much stricken with grief; he ate and slept badly, and was apt to sit moping in corners except when he was reading, and to show an excessive fondness for me which somewhat irritated my husband. But now time, and the pleasure of Will’s return, had cheered him; the air at The Breck was sweet and open, Mrs. Thorpe kept a good if homely table and delighted to urge him in eating, for she loved the boy though she would not admit it, and David no longer had the distress of my father’s increasing illness, which for the last few years had borne heavily on his tender heart. Moreover, I believe it was a deep relief to David that I was married to John and not to Francis, of whom he had ever, as I saw now, been jealous. (In this he showed a keen instinct, for I loved David more than John, but less than Francis.) Lister, too, was ever David’s friend, and the two passed happy hours together, Lister talking to David about weaving, and David instructing Lister in the scriptures and the classics. So David began to lose the pale frail look he had worn of late, and to grow, not plump, for he was always slender, but firm and rosy. He shot up in height, too, and became soon a tall dreamy lad with a scholar’s stoop; his hair darkened a little from its childhood flaxen but still was a fair light colour, his eyes had their old clear blue, and his smile was gentle. In school he excelled more notably than ever; Mr. Wilcocke rode all the way up to Little Holroyd one evening to tell Mr. Thorpe, with great emphasis, that it would be a disgrace to Bradford if David were kept back from Cambridge.

  “Nobody is thinking of keeping David back from Cambridge,” said John drily.

  At this Mr. Thorpe coughed a little, and looked rather dubiously across at his son, but John took no notice.

  “In that case,” said Mr. Wilcocke, delighted: “I think David should be entered soon for some college.”

  This was agreed to, by John and his mother rather than by Mr. Thorpe, who however offered no articulate objection; the college chosen was the one Mr. Wilcocke had attended, Clare Hall by name.

  Mr. Thorpe was inclined to be peevish about this when Mr. Wilcocke had gone.

  “It will be very costly,” he said. “And you will have your own children to provide for, son.”

  John shrugged his shoulders.

  “David will win a sizarship, or whatever they are called,” he said. “And if he goes to Cambridge now, we shall have learned the way there by the time my son is of age to go.”

  Mrs. Thorpe nodded her head slowly; Mr. Thorpe looked impressed but disconcerted. “You mean to make a scholar of my grandson?” he said in a doubtful tone. “Or a gentleman?”

  “Aye,” said John. “Unless Penninah has any objection.”

  I smiled and shook my head. For this was the latest and the greatest of my joys: I was with child. There are many true sayings in the Psalms of David, but this I think is truest of them all for a woman: Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children. The Psalmist surely had great wisdom, and much understanding of the human heart. Hearken, O daughter, and consider, incline thine ear, he says: forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house. For instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children. ... It was deeply true for me. All else faded beside my coming child. I did not, it is true, forget my beloved father, but when I thought of him, I forgot the sadness of his latter years, and thought only what a joy it would be to him to have a grandchild. Fairgap became now of less interest to me than Little Holroyd, for The Breck was to be the home of my child. My own people, Will and David and the joy of my youth Francis, stepped back and became mere remote bystanders of my life, for John was the father of my child.

  No man could have been kinder than John, while I was bearing his children. There was a true greatness of heart in him, and he did not find my condition tiresome or laughable, as I have since heard many husbands do, but worthy of honour and respect. He would not let me carry heavy weights or in any way exert myself unduly, and treated my sickness and faintness with a grave decency for which I was very grateful. Mrs. Thorpe too, when she saw that I was glad of the child, softened towards me; she spared me in the house and gave me the best of the milk to drink, and though she professed to find the embroidery I put on the baby’s caps and dresses excessive and ostentatious, she let me see that she respected my skill with the needle, and saw to it that I had fine materials for my work. Not to be outdone, Mr. Thorpe went down to Bradford one day—which nowadays was rare with him because of his sciatica—and came back very bright and chuckling and full of a secret which he wished us to discover, namely that he had ordered a very fine cradle for his grandchild. The cradle when it came was most handsome, with John’s initials and mine intertwined in the carving, and the date at the foot, but the man who brought it brought also a piece of bad news; namely the first imposition of the tax of ship-money by the King. This was quite unlawful, there being no Parliament sitting to authorise it; moreover, this tax had never been imposed on inland towns before, but only on seaports for the provision of navy vessels to protect their shipping. So this tax had neither law nor tradition, nor anything but the King’s will, to justify it. I remember I was kneeling beside the cradle when I heard the news; I looked up, startled, and saw John’s face black with anger, and Mr. Thorpe’s worried and distressed; and for a moment my heart sank and I felt I was bringing my child into a sorely troubled world. But then I thought: “Well, he will want to play his part,” and so comforted myself.

  My child was born in May, on the very day when Lister’s ten-years apprenticeship was concluded, a thing he often took pleasure in reminding me of in after years. I was long in labour, and my delivery was difficult, but I was no afraid. I felt that to bear my child was what I most wanted in life, and I would not shrink from pain if that were necessary to child-bearing. John suffered greatly; he appeared often at my door, white and silent, and passed on without a word when he saw the physician and midwife still busy about me. But at length in the evening my firstborn, my eldest son, came forth safely, and then, as it says in Holy Writ, I remembered no more my anguish, for joy that a man was born into the world.

  We named him Thomas, after Mr. Thorpe; I would gladly have called him after my own father but d
id not cross John in the matter, feeling confident I should have other children. There was a short delay before he was baptized. Archbishop Laud, among other strict new regulations which he was forcing upon us, had enjoined that a woman should be churched after childbirth, the first time she left her house. John was determined that no Thorpe should yield to the Archbishop’s tyranny, and so he wished me to leave the house on some brief visit, before the day of my churching and the child’s baptism. I was very willing to humour him in this matter, so, though Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe were a little dissatisfied, I went down one day to see Sarah Denton and her baby, and returned home to Little Holroyd, without going near the church. A few days later we all rode down to Bradford and went through the two services. Will christened Thomas, he and David being the babe’s godfathers, and we had a fine christening party at The Breck afterwards. Mr. and Mrs. Ferrand had been invited, as was proper. They did not come, but sent a silver christening mug for little Thomas which rather disconcerted the Thorpes, it was so handsome. I thought this kind of them and like them, but I had a scruple against Thomas using the mug; I put it away, and thought John seemed pleased.

  Thomas was a gentle and good child, dark like the Thorpes but with our family’s clear skin, and a very sweet expression. David from the first loved him dearly, marvelling, as indeed I did myself, over the perfection of his fingers and toes, the soft rosiness of his cheek, the sweetness of his breath. He took my breast well, and thrived on it; and to nurse him on the hearth—his little feet kicking in the warmth, his large dark eyes very bright and thoughtful, John coming in and watching with a soft proud look on his face—gave me a deep content in my new life.

  2

  CLOTH AND SHIPS ARE JUST THE SAME

  Even if there had been no private grudge between the two families, I doubt whether the Ferrands would have come to The Breck at that time, for rumours were beginning to be very stirring, and men’s tempers to mount intolerably, over these two matters of politics and religion, and it was well known which side The Breck took in them. Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe were, I believe, a little tired of the dissension, and daunted by what had happened to Will, for after all they were getting on in years and Mr. Thorpe was ailing; but John grew more and more determined.