Take Courage

by Phyllis Bentley

  The Parliament soldiers now therefore lay again all about us, several thousand of them, garrisoned in Leeds and Halifax and Bradford, and Sir Thomas and his officers were in and out of The Breck, as before. A thing that pleased me was that Sir Thomas took a great liking for David. He had a rare collection of manuscripts and coins, he said, which he wished David to see, and the two talked for hours together about poetry and history, both very bright-eyed and fluent with pleasure. Sir Thomas’s stammer, I noticed, was decreasing; his continual commanding of troops and undertaking of important actions was bringing him to his full flowering, and he seemed more personable, and more like a great general, every time I saw him.

  With the Royalists spread again over the centre of the county, there was again a scarcity of food, and I had again great difficulty in providing for all my enforced guests, so that when one day John in the gruff tone he used to me nowadays told me that Lady Fairfax and her little daughter were coming to stay with us, I almost laughed in despair at the impossible task he set me. But I said: “Yes, John,” without a murmur, for at least, I thought, I will do my duty in these matters, I will not fail him about his household even if I have failed him in faith and love. I had not told him that I was with child; I could not decide whether, while telling him, to confess all and thus make his misery certain, or leave him doubtful; and as often as I imagined myself taking either course I felt I had not the courage for it, and left the matter quite alone for the time.

  So when he warned me of Lady Fairfax’s coming I set to work with a will and cleaned the house from top to bottom, and made our largest spare room ready for her occupation, putting all our best furnishings and linen there, and our best pewter candlesticks, and a coverlet I had embroidered myself, the design of which, of daisies and thrushes on branches, I thought my handsomest. And I put a small bed which Sam had hitherto slept in, ready for little Moll; and I asked David to tell us in what respects our dinners and our manners might be amended, at which he smiled and said we should do well enough as we were, provided we offered the best we were capable of.

  While I was busy with preparations I did not give much thought to what kind of a woman Lady Fairfax would prove, but when all was ready I began to experience some anxiety. I had known few women intimately in my life, having lost my mother so early and being provided only with brothers; there were Mrs. Thorpe and Eliza to be sure, but I was certain Lady Fairfax would not resemble them, and there was Mrs. Ferrand, but I knew that Sir Thomas was not over-fond of his wife, and I thought he would have felt an indulgent tenderness for a woman like Mrs. Ferrand. Would she perhaps be cold and stiff and very arrogant? My own pride rose up at the thought.

  At last the set day came. When the time of her arrival was some hours overpast, Sam ran in to say a coach was coming up the lane. John and I hastily gathered at the door to welcome her, with Sir Thomas beside us.

  The steaming horses drew up by the house, and the manservant sprang down and opened the coach-door and let down the step, and John advanced to hand out his guest, looking, poor John, somewhat anxious. Lady Fairfax took his hand and descended, but was barely out of the coach before, with an “O Tom, what roads, I never saw such roads!” she began a rapid fire of breathless complaints about our lane, in which her coach had had some difficulty. Certainly the lane was soft and sticky with the spring weather, but to listen to her you would have thought the mud as deep as a lake and the slope a precipice. Not that her complaints were ill-natured or directed against us at The Breck; she simply ran on and on, exaggerating a little more in every sentence to make it exceed the last. Sir Thomas tried to check the volley, presenting first myself and then John to her, and uttering soothing phrases such as: “You are safe here now. All’s well that ends well,” and the like; but Lady Fairfax saying without looking at us: “I am glad of your acquaintance,” and smiling rapidly, turned again to her husband and went on with her: But Tom, O Tom, the road, the mud, the hub, O Tom!

  This at least gave me time to look at her, which I did very curiously. I saw a plump solid gentlewoman about the same age as myself, of a brown complexion and rather thick about the ankle, wearing a rich dress of brown watered silk, very handsome but not very becoming. She was not a beauty, and had nothing noble in her countenance, but there was an air of breeding in her features—she had a large straight nose, a full mouth, strong brows and heavy eyelids. Her eyes were a bright and changing brown, like one of her bodice buttons, her teeth large and white; her plump chin would be two in a few years’ time. Her dun-coloured hair, not very abundant and rather coarse in texture, was drawn back plainly from her high round forehead—which gave her somehow a bald appearance—and then fell each side of her face into her neck, in stiff curls. A necklace of large pearls did justice to her throat, which was full and shapely. Her speech, though rather loud and hoarse, showed breeding too, having that easy assurance which seems natural to persons of high station. All this time she was talking, and the frown was gathering on her husband’s forehead; at last he broke in, and said in a tone too stiff to be disregarded:

  “Anne, where is Mary?”

  You never saw such a change in a woman. She gave her husband a timid and deprecating look, said: “She is not very well to-day, Tom,” and at once fell silent.

  And at once I pitied her, for her look told all. She doted on her husband, who could not bring himself to care a rap for her and was constantly irritated by any proof of her inordinate affection, which she as constantly gave him.

  Sir Thomas with a dark look strode to the coach and peering within carefully lifted out a bundle in a shawl, and came to me and laid it in my arms.

  “This is my Moll,” he said.

  I drew back the shawl.

  “Oh, the poor little thing!” I exclaimed involuntarily.

  The child was so slight and thin she scarcely seemed to weigh more than a year-old babe; her arms beneath the shawl were as narrow as drum-sticks, and her poor sallow little face was so pinched and drawn, her brown eyes looked as large as saucers. Her dark hair was rough and lustreless, and the skin down the side of her neck all blotched and scaly; moreover, though I hardly dared to think this, such of her little shift as I could see at her neck was truly somewhat dirty. There was a look of Sir Thomas about her all the same, something sweet and noble, and my heart went out to her. I cuddled her to me and kissed her sad little cheek and said:

  “We’ll soon have you looking better, lovey.”

  Then I remembered that her father and mother were beside me, and looked up, startled at my own indiscretion.

  I found Sir Thomas and Lady Fairfax with their eyes fixed on me in a kind of yearning look, truly very pathetic.

  “She is always ailing,” breathed Lady Fairfax, in quite a different tone from the rattle she had used hitherto. “Isn’t she, Tom?”

  Sir Thomas frowned and was silent.

  I took Lady Fairfax up to the chamber I had prepared for her; as soon as she was out of sight of her husband she grew talkative and inconsequent again, but now I was no longer afraid of her chatter. It seemed to me that this daughter of Lord de Vere and wife of Sir Thomas Fairfax was a woman troubled in her marriage even as I was, though for different reasons, and that we might well have charity each to the other. So I discounted her talk, which was but froth, and by piecing together the objects of which she spoke, rather than what she said of them, I made shift to understand her true meaning. When she said that the chamber was a fine large one, especially since there was no press in it to take up the space, and Tom liked a large room, I knew she meant that she wished for a cupboard for her clothes but to please her husband would gladly manage without one; and when she said she was sure we should do well together, for she heard from Tom that I was very learned and she herself was very fond of learned women, I knew she meant that she despised all learning but wished she was learned for Sir Thomas’s sake, and was a little jealous of me for being so but would gladly acquire the knack of it if I would teach her. A great many bundles were now brough
t in from the coach, and her maid unpacked them; I could not but be interested in her personal gear, her linens and silks, her gloves and jewels, and she showed me them all, explaining their price and purpose with a good deal of shrewdness. She had a dressing case of which she was especially proud, for it had been given to her by Sir Thomas at the time of their wedding; a very tasteful box it was, about the size of John’s writing desk, covered with fine needlework in silk and gimp, in a pattern of white roses amongst their foliage; it had little drawers which pulled in and out, and a mirror, and some cosmetic waters and ointments, and pincushions. I could see that she doted on this almost as much as she did on Sir Thomas, for she constantly pulled it open and busied herself with its contents. She said to me: “I have often heard of your beauty, Mrs. Thorpe,” and before I could reply went on, fidgeting with her ointments: “Sir Thomas likes not cosmetics”—from which I judged that she had sought beauty by artificial means for his sake till he bade her desist, and she would have me know she could be beautiful too but for his prohibition.

  All this time poor little Moll sat quiet and still as a frightened mouse, bundled on her cot, her thin legs dangling. I made an excuse and went downstairs and fetched up Thomas’s christening mug full of our own milk, warm and rich, not an hour from the cow, and gave it to her with a piece of oatcake thickly spread with our own butter. How the child ate and drank! It did one good to see her. I made up my mind I would give her a decoction of herbs that very night before she slept, to clear her skin of that scaly itching.

  And so poor little Moll became a great comfort to me. Often in the next few months I said to myself: I am a miserable sinner, yet is my life not totally wicked, for I have restored Mary Fairfax to life and strength—though, poor child, considering the destiny life has given her, I am not sure whether it was a boon to her to save her life or no. But yes, I am sure; and she, who dotes on her husband as her mother did on hers, though with so much less reason, would be sure too, and not wish it otherwise.

  It was a sight to see how that child grew while with us! John, who marked her progress with great pleasure, said to me it was just as it had been with David after our marriage. The air at The Breck was very healthful, and Thomas and Sam played long hours outside with Moll, very gently and carefully—Sam because she was his general’s daughter, and Thomas from natural graciousness. I soon cleared her blood of the imperfections which caused the skin roughness, and I fed her on milk and butter and chicken of our own producing. She could surely have had all that I gave her in her own home in Wharfedale, where the air, being farther from the towns, was even sweeter, but I thought I saw that Lady Fairfax was an unskilful though well-meaning mother, her eyes being always bent upon her husband. And then they lived a somewhat roving life, Lady Fairfax disliking to be parted from Sir Thomas. With us, Moll’s little face grew plump, and her arms and legs fattened, and her eyes brightened, and soon she laughed and shouted about The Breck, and like our own boys was always hungry. She was of a brown complexion, and never gained the clear rosiness of our two lads, but health gave her dark cheek a kind of rich glow which had its own beauty. She seemed so mopish when lesson-hours deprived her of our boys’ company, and hung over the table watching them at work so eagerly, that David began to teach her to read and draw pothooks. She learned fast, for she had a well-found mind, like her father. The joy Sir Thomas felt in her improvement was so great it made me want to weep and laugh together; when he took her on his knee of an evening, and stroked her short brown hair—now, I am glad to say, much glossier than on her arrival—their two faces, so much alike in shape and expression, sent out such beams of happiness that the whole house basked in them. Moll, though a good, warm-hearted, obedient child, was a trifle reserved, not very prodigal of those tokens of affection often given by children; but she loved her father dearly and loved to show it.

  One consequence of her betterment in health was that the Fairfaxes continually postponed their departure; they came—Lady Fairfax and Moll, I mean—at first for a week, then stayed two, then four, and then their departure ceased to be mentioned. If I had known the length of their stay before they came, it would have seemed a hateful imposition to me; but coming upon me gradually, I found it rather more than tolerable. Lady Fairfax, though above me in station, and, to speak truly, beneath me in mind, was after all a woman; a woman young like myself, a wife like myself, like myself the mother of children; she had known unhappiness, and suffered at the hands of one she loved. There were therefore many things we had in common. We were discreet, as wives should be; we did not open our hearts to each other on the subject of our marriages ; yet without calling John and Tom by name, there were many things we could say, on the subject of husbands in general, which it eased us to say, and many times when an expressive look between us made the difference between a smile and a sore heart over some slight family jarring. I never thought of Lady Fairfax and myself as being friends, at the time, but now I think we were so. I never spoke to her of Francis, nor she to me of the time when Sir Thomas almost withdrew from their marriage contract, though perhaps, as I had heard her secret through my husband, she had heard mine through hers; but in lesser matters we were confidential; she showed me the secrets of the cosmetics in her case and said that Lord Fairfax was very tiresome to Sir Thomas about money, while I told her my sadness about David.

  In one matter I was most deeply and truly grateful to her. She had not been long with us before her woman’s eye perceived my condition, and one day she made a slight reference to it in the men’s presence. It was a natural reference and not at all ill-bred, for she merely reproached me for lifting a heavy crock of milk; but it was enough. I saw John start and colour. If he had taken notice of it to me, I might have confessed all to him, but he did not—doubtless he waited for me as I for him—and so the matter remained unopened between us. But at least he knew; my mind was eased of the burden of his ignorance.

  It was about this time that Sarah, paying one of her many begging visits to The Breck, broke into a loud lament in the kitchen, reproaching Sir Thomas for leaving her Denton a prisoner in the hands of the Royalists.

  Apprehensive that her wails might reach Sir Thomas’s ears as he sat at meat I closed the door between, then began to hush her down.

  “Be reasonable, Sarah. How can Sir Thomas free your husband?” I asked severely.

  “He can take Royalist prisoners and exchange them,” wailed Sarah. “It isn’t only me, Mrs. Thorpe; all the women in Bradford follow him about the town begging him to exchange their men. He can go and take Wakefield and make prisoners there—it’s a perfect den of dragons.”

  “You mean dragoons,” I said.

  “It’s all the same,” wailed Sarah mournfully. “Let him go and take a dragon and exchange him for my Denton, instead of sitting easy on his backside here. The work of the Lord must not be done negligently.”

  “Hush, hush, Sarah!” I cried, though I could not help laughing at the mixture of her text and her homely speech.

  If I had been on friendly terms with John I should doubtless have mentioned this matter to him, but as I was not, it seemed too small, and I spoke of it to no one. So I was surprised when, a day or two before Whitsuntide, Sir Thomas, who had been sitting very silent and brooding at the dinner-table, so that none of us dare speak to him, suddenly turned to me and said with a smile:

  “Tell Mrs. Denton from me that I hope she may soon have her dragon.”

  I was confused; I laughed a little but knew not quite what to say, for the others were watching in silence, not understanding, and it seemed a long tale to tell in such high company. Sir Thomas went on in a quiet offhand way:

  “I hope to take Wakefield next M-M-Monday morning.”

  I could see that this was news to all his officers except John, for all but John began to put eager questions to him. Sir Thomas answered them jestingly, so that they did not altogether understand him; when they pressed him he became impatient, as if he expected them to know the answers beforehand. It wa
s his habit, as we had learned by now, to be taciturn, reserved and melancholy, almost morose, at times; then suddenly he would emerge from the shadow, all life and assurance, full of wit and energy. So it was now; the next few days were a continued bustle, with Sir Thomas sparkling and active and very happy, his stammer quite in abeyance. Lady Fairfax’s humour, however, did not match his; she had been subdued while he was melancholy, but now that he was cheerful she grew apprehensive. She confided to me that these dark moods always preluded some great decision in Sir Thomas, some daring action on the field of battle. He was so very cheerful now that she judged the Wakefield expedition must be particularly hazardous.

  “And he’s so reckless with his person, Penninah,” she mourned, shaking her head so that one of her pearl ear-rings fell to the ground: “Utterly reckless. He fights in an ecstasy. Why stir up the Royalists, in any case? Why not let sleeping dogs lie? They were not harming us.”

  “Sarah would not agree with you,” I said, laughing. “She wants her dragon.”

  Lady Fairfax smiled, but somewhat ruefully.

  She spent the days before Whitsunday begging Sir Thomas to take her with him to Wakefield, which he naturally refused. I saw that her importunity became tiresome to him, and ventured delicately to suggest to her that Sir Thomas would be happier on the battlefield if he knew his wife and daughter safe; whereupon she cried out in a high fretting tone: