Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  “Eh! Bless him!” cried Mrs. Thorpe, throwing up her hands.

  Thomas staggered and fell into his father’s arms, who swung him up above his head and gently shook him. The child laughed and kicked delightedly.

  “Well, my little son!” said John in a loving tone; and we fell to discussing the child’s age and how he compared, in learning to walk, with other children.

  “He was born the day my indentures terminated,” cried Lister, sticking in his head.

  “Fetch me a drink of ale, Lister,” said John, to get rid of him.

  But it was never easy to get rid of Lister, whose interest in all our doings was insatiable, so when he returned with the ale and seemed inclined to stay, John left private matters and began to tell us of his doings with the ulnagers.

  The carriers had travelled through the first day of the journey without mishap, he said, and they all put up for the night at an inn in Wombwell, near Barnsley. The horses were stabled, and the packs of cloth stacked under cover at the side of the inn yard. He himself had not slept well, his mind being full of many matters, and while he was lying awake he heard sounds below him in the yard; he hurried down, and found Scaife and two other men tearing open the packs and scattering the pieces. He bade them desist, and when they would not, called for help; the carriers came running down and there was much shouting and pushing; the innkeeper and the other guests were roused, and seeing strangers attacking property in the yard, naturally took the carriers’ side and routed the ulnagers. The innkeeper then fetched a lantern and John and the carriers began to sort out the cloths and replace them in the packs, but while they were busy with this, back came Scaife with the Constable of Wombwell, whereupon the innkeeper changed his tune. Scaife made out he was an officer of the Crown, being deputy ulnager, and had John and the carriers arrested, and took all the thirty-three kerseys from the packs into his possession.

  At this a groan came from poor old Mr. Thorpe. I looked at him, and saw that his plump face was quite contorted with anxiety and fear, and his old hands quivering. I directed John’s eyes to his father with a glance, and tried to urge him silently to give the old man reassurance.

  “There is no need to trouble yourself, Father,” said John shortly. “I have recovered all the cloths, and they have gone on to London——”

  “Ah!” sighed Mr. Thorpe. He sank back and shut his eyes, relieved.

  “Except those which were spoiled by being thrown about the innyard,” finished John.

  “Spoiled? Spoiled?” exclaimed Mr. Thorpe in an agony, opening his rheumy eyes again.

  The next day, went on John, he and the carriers had been taken before the magistrates. The carriers by his instructions disclaimed all responsibility for the seals on the cloths, and he himself had lodged a complaint against the ulnagers. There was no official warrant for the extra tax, he said; how were the clothiers to know that it was not a mere private exaction of Scaife’s? The ulnagers had damaged the cloths by throwing them in the dust, and caused the clothiers to miss the next London market, and were now detaining property which was not their own. The magistrates began to look very doubtful at all this, and Scaife’s manner, screaming and gabbling, had lowered his credit; the decision was put off till the next day, and then the next again, John and the carriers being allowed out of prison on John’s bail, and then John shrewdly put in a claim against Scaife for their keep and that of the horses, and Scaife grew frightened; and what with one thing and another the magistrates had released them, horses and men and cloth, and here John was home again.

  “Hast done well, lad,” said Mr. Thorpe. He spoke feebly, for he seemed tired with the long tale. “But don’t begin such a job again.”

  John set his lips. “Father, we shall bring a suit against the ulnagers,” he said in his level steady tones.

  Mr. Thorpe sighed. “Well, I suppose you’ll do as you please,” he said. “But don’t let me hear owt of it; I’m too old.”

  John took him at his word, and never mentioned ulnage to him of his own accord again; but it was impossible for anyone living at The Breck to remain in comfortable ignorance of the matter, for to bring the suit properly before the Court of Exchequer cost time and money and an infinity of trouble. It was John who urged on the other clothiers, and revived their determination when it flagged; he rode hither and thither, and wrote many letters, and received many clothiers at The Breck. Many times he was vexed—with the clothiers, with the rules of the Court, with the lawyer who was drawing up the bill of complaint—and when John was vexed everyone in The Breck knew it. Not that he ever vented his anger unjustly on us, or fell into a temper, or scolded warmly, like Will; when he was vexed John grew merely very quiet and grim. But he was pretty much master at The Breck now, Mr. Thorpe failing so rapidly; and when the master of a house has a brow like a thundercloud—dear John!—there is little sunshine in the sky for the rest of its inhabitants. I was not afraid of him in these moods, but I knew it was no use to notice them or to try to coax him out of them; I just went quietly on in my usual way, and Mrs. Thorpe did the same. But Mr. Thorpe suffered greatly from John’s disappointments; ever a cheerful man and fond of jokes, he could not endure gloom and silence, and when he saw a cloud on John’s forehead, he seemed to think he could dissipate it by asking questions. As John’s answers grew shorter and shorter, the poor old man’s face grew longer and longer, until his distress was quite affecting. He was greatly troubled, too, by the difficulties of getting seals from the ulnagers; the pile of unsold pieces mounted and mounted in the loom-chamber, Scaife refusing John seals unless he paid the extra halfpenny, and John refusing to pay it. I found Mr. Thorpe gazing in on them, one afternoon when John was in Halifax, his lame foot propped up on a piece, shaking his old head heavily.

  “We shall be ruined, Penninah, ruined!” said he. “Your son will have to beg his bread from door to door.”

  “I have been young and now am old,” sang out Lister from the loom: “But never saw I yet the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread.”

  “You are not old, Lister,” said Mr. Thorpe reprovingly. “You are not old, and you have seen it.”

  He shook his head mournfully, and I knew he was thinking of my father’s children.

  “Holy Writ cannot lie,” cried Lister.

  Mr. Thorpe’s face twitched. “Obstinate, pig-headed fellow!” he whispered in my ear. “But he’s a good weaver. But what’s the use of weaving,” he wailed aloud: “If the pieces are to rot unsold? We shall be ruined, Penninah, ruined!”

  I coaxed him back to the hearth, for the day was cold and the place where he stood draughty, and reassured him; but he wept on my shoulder, wiping his eyes with a trembling hand, so that it was pitiful to see him.

  That night I told John that I really feared for his father’s health if the kerseys were not disposed of. John was quite astounded; it seemed he had no notion of his father’s trouble, and he was very sorry for it.

  Next day Mr. Thorpe kept his bed with a cold, his foot pained him greatly and he seemed very low; towards evening he startled me by twice addressing me as Sybil. For a moment I could not think who Sybil could be; then I remembered it was his sister, Mrs. Ferrand. It was Tuesday, Market Day in Leeds, and John was late in returning. When at last he came in, Thomas had long been asleep in his cradle, Mrs. Thorpe was upstairs with her husband, and I was sitting sewing by the fire. John over his supper explained to me with a cheerful look that he had that day arranged to send his cloths to another clothier’s, Isaac Baume, a neighbour of ours in Little Holroyd, to be sealed. This Baume had paid the extra halfpenny for quietness’ sake, but he was on John’s side in the ulnage business, and he had promised to get the seals for the Thorpe cloth without revealing whose it was, so that John’s resistance would not be compromised. It was a trick, said John, and as such distasteful to him, but for his father’s sake he would stomach it for a time.

  Mrs. Thorpe came downstairs as he was speaking.

  “It will not be for long,�
� concluded John. “The Exchequer suit will surely come on soon.”

  “However soon it comes,” said Mrs. Thorpe: “It will be too late for your father.”

  John stared.

  “What do you mean, Mother?” he said.

  “What I say,” replied Mrs. Thorpe stolidly.

  “Don’t talk in riddles, Mother,” said John. “Is my father very ill?”

  “He won’t last the week,” said Mrs. Thorpe briefly.

  She had ever a horrid prescience of misfortune. Mr. Thorpe was already in a fever; the gout in his foot, as the physician now called it, had struck in, and in the next few days he slipped down the last slope rapidly. By the following morning he already seemed far away from us; it was impossible to tell whether he even understood the explanation about the cloth seals which John eagerly gave him, for he only murmured: “Aye. Well,” and moved his head restlessly. I urged John to send for Mrs. Ferrand, and he promised to do so; but Mrs. Thorpe constantly postponed the message, saying it was too soon. At last on Friday morning I could bear it no longer, for Mr. Thorpe’s eyes seemed to me to wander continually over us in search of someone who was not there; John was out, so I went into the loom-chamber and bade Lister send one of the boys over to Holroyd Hall. But Lister scowled and rolled his eyes, and amid a shower of Scripture texts informed me he took orders only from Mester John; so I took a cloak from behind the door and went to Holroyd Hall myself by the lane.

  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.”

  3

  WE SHOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY IF …

  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.