“I believe Joseph here will need your good offices towards his settlement in Bradford, wife,” John was saying with a smile. “He thinks to wed your Sarah’s eldest daughter.”
“She is very young,” I said, startled, and I remembered a picture I had not called to mind for many a year—little Sarah leaning against her Uncle Lister’s knee, as she called him, while the Royalists attacked Bradford Church. That was a couple of moments only before Francis’s death. “I hope you will prosper in your wooing,” I said, in politeness bound, but my voice was so cold that the children looked at me curiously.
“The God of Heaven alone shall prosper us,” said Lister, offended.
His utterance was smoother than of old, his manner less uncouth, and his hair less ugly now that it was greying; moreover there was something in his keeping a fondness for young Sarah through all these years and returning rich to a poor girl, which was taking to a woman’s heart; but for all that I could not imagine any woman fancying him. However, it was none of my business, as I told Sarah and her daughter when they came up to The Breck a few days later to ask my advice. They sat on the edge of our chairs, clad in their poor best, and wished to know what Mr. Thorpe and I thought of Mr. Lister’s proposal. I thought John would not wish to be consulted in the matter, for he had turned against Denton since he became so fanatical and mutinous, and when I was obliged to aid Sarah after Denton’s death, though he did not actually forbid me he folded his mouth rather sourly when he caught me at it. So I said merely:
“Joseph Lister is forty and your daughter is just turned twenty—but yet if they like each other that is not against the match.”
I had never taken much notice of young Sarah before, regarding her only as one of our Sarah’s children, but now I looked at her more closely. She was a round yellow-haired solid girl, squat and sturdy like her father and no beauty, quiet and bashful, yet with a certain sly look in her eyes—I thought perhaps she would hold her own with Lister as well as any woman. I would have naught to do with the match, either for or against; but knowing how hard put to it the Dentons were, poor things, since Denton was shot, I was not surprised when Lister had his way, and married the girl within a month or two of his return to Bradford. It was a sign of the times that he was, in a sense, married twice. Under the rule of those hateful Major-Generals it was a law that marriages had to be performed by magistrates only. Lister complied with this, and was married by a justice, but the civil ceremony did not satisfy him, and a fortnight later he had his uncle, an ordained minister, to marry them again. It seemed to me that when such heathenish goings-on were countenanced by any nation, a sad judgment was in store for it, and to do Lister justice, he thought so too. On the occasion of the second marriage, we had a sermon and a wedding breakfast, and John and I perforce were present.
Lister took a house in Bradford, at the near end of Kirk-gate, and set up as a merchant, and John and he did business together. I was sorry for his return and uneasy at his presence, which reminded us of things best forgotten, and at first John seemed the same. But presently Lister’s wife conceived and bore him a son, and Lister was so much excited about his fatherhood that he thought of little else. I went to see Sarah Lister while she was in bed, taking some jellies and broths and the like, and to make pleasant talk between us asked what she meant to call her child.
“David,” said she.
I was startled and not very well pleased.
“After your brother,” added Sarah.
Something in her voice made me believe she was not best pleased either, and I asked her whether the name were her own choice.
“Nay, it is my husband’s,” said Sarah.
“A woman should name her own children,” said I.
“Did you name yours, Mrs. Thorpe?” said Sarah slyly.
I was startled; and looking back, I remembered how I had always wished to name a child Robert, for my father, and yet had never done so; and I laughed, and Sarah Lister laughed too, and after that I always found her very tolerable. For all she was so stolid and lacking words, I thought she derived some quiet amusement from her husband’s pomposity. Their child, David, was dedicated from birth to the Lord’s work and service in the Lord’s ministry. I own I disliked him; he had a flat face like Lister, and towy hair like Sarah, and a very high colour in his cheeks, and to me seemed a rude ungracious child, very homely in speech and always picking his nose. That such a child should bear my David’s name was disagreeable to me, and yet I could not but acknowledge that Lister’s love for my brother had something good and pleasant in it.
It was the sight of Lister, I am sure, which caused poor old Giles Ferrand to fall ill in the autumn of Lister’s return. As it chanced, Chris was the one who brought them face to face. It was Market Day and he was standing by the broken Market Cross, supposed to be assisting John but in truth only looking about and enjoying the bustling scene, and old Giles came up and stood by him. Giles was babbling on about something and nothing, running his fingers through his beard and twirling up his drooping moustache, when Lister passed by, very complacent and smug in a thick new cloak. Chris saw him and greeted him politely, and Lister replied in his harsh grating voice:
“Good morning, Master Christopher.”
Old Giles spun round at the voice, and stared at him, and Lister stared back brazenly. At least, that is how Giles told me the story, but in truth I think Lister’s look was not brazen at all, but simply unrecognising. Poor Mr. Ferrand was a very odd figure at that time; with his shabby old-fashioned clothes and his long beard, and his head bald on top and long hair straggling into his neck, he looked so different from the rich fashionable Cavalier whom Lister would remember as Mr. Ferrand of Holroyd Hall, that I do not believe he recognised him. However that may be—for I never heard Lister allude to the matter—old Giles clutching at the air with one cramped old hand, and uttering a strangled sound in his throat, gazed so wildly at Lister that Chris said anyone who knew him not would think him crazy; and Lister drew himself up with an offended air, muttering something (a text, I expect), and moved on with as stately a step as his awkward gait could compass.
The result of this meeting was that a few days later old Ralph, who was now grown very tottering and mottled, came to our back door to beg me to visit Mr. Ferrand, who had taken to his bed.
It was sad indeed to me to see the change in Holroyd Hall, for though old Giles had come to The Breck often enough, and we had been in his laithe, I had not entered his dwelling-house for nigh on fifteen years. It was cold and damp and dark within, the windows being smeared with dust; all the downstairs rooms save the kitchen were empty of furniture, the corners thick in white cobweb, and long threads of dirt hanging from the ceilings. The coat of arms over the parlour mantel was so dark with dirt it could hardly be discerned. Upstairs, Mr. Ferrand’s room was almost as bare as The Breck after the Royalist sack; the bed was the same fine old carved piece as before, but the chair and table were of some common wood, new and roughly shaped. I was amazed at all this, and at Mr. Ferrand’s scant and dirty bedclothes; and as I bent over him to ask how he did, I remembered Holroyd Hall as it looked in my youth, and the tears stood in my eyes. This vexed Mr. Ferrand.
“None of that, Penninah!” said he testily. “No tears, if you please. Suppose I must die, well, ’tis the common lot; there is no need to be lugubrious about it.”
He was very determined in this sense all through the winter, and I humoured him as well as I could, though my heart ached to see him. Our maids and I between us kept him clean and tidy and well fed, and we combed his fair silky beard, of which he was very proud, and his thin locks, and told him the news of Bradford; and almost every day he would urge us not to be lugubrious, and explain how if he had not got that bang on the head at Marston Moor, he would have lived to a good old age, he would have outlived Oliver Cromwell. (Since he was well past seventy we hardly knew what to say in reply.) There seemed nothing much the matter with him, but the physician we sent said he was just fading away,
he would last only a few months longer. He would not talk of his own affairs, or matters of public interest; I tried him once with Moll Fairfax’s marriage to the Duke of Buckingham, thinking he might be interested in this joining of erstwhile enemies, but his old face so winced and shrank at the name of Fairfax that I never spoke again to him of anything which might recall the Civil War. He liked to talk of foolish unimportant things, the new fashion for periwigs, for instance; and he liked to see the children, Chris and Abraham, though whether he made a distinction between them or not, I could not tell. He lay with his hands folded, gazing at them and smiling, if they chanced to come to the Hall to fetch me; he could not always catch what they said, and made odd comments, misapprehending them; when they set him right politely, in a louder tone, he smiled again and seemed well content. I reproached myself then for not having confessed Chris’s parentage to him, but he was too far gone now for such weighty matters; he was just a poor silly old man, dying not without gallantry, as he had lived.
And so, that summer, I went from the childbed of Lister’s wife to the deathbed of old Giles Ferrand. Such contrasts are familiar in every woman’s life, it being the especial business of women to cherish their kinsfolk through the dark hours of birth and death; and while these contrasts are full of sadness, they are also full of hope. Life renews itself; the old die, but the children are born, and with them the hope of a better world; and while for my part I thought a child of Lister’s a poor substitute for old Uncle Giles, who was I to question the workings of Providence? I passed, then, from the birth of David Lister to the death of Giles Ferrand, both taking place in early summer.
John was vexed to hear that he was appointed his uncle’s executor by his will, poor Giles having no other near kin left to him. (This explained old Giles’s saying when John offered to sell his fleeces, we agreed.) He returned from a consultation with Giles’s lawyer with a very dark hot angry look on his face; he took me by the arm and hurried me upstairs, and shut our doors and turned to me and said, speaking very rapidly:
“Uncle Giles has left all his estate to Chris—I am to stand possessed of it now for his use and behoof—in the end it comes all to Chris.”
“What!” I cried. “Why”
“You know very well why, Penninah,” said John in a deep angry tone.
“But how did he know?” I marvelled.
“You did not tell him then?” said John.
“He asked me once and I lied to him,” I said.
John took a deep breath and seemed to quieten. “Well—so it is,” he said.
“Will this not settle Chris’s livelihood, then?” I asked him eagerly.
“Why, yes and no, Penninah,” said John in a dejected tone. “What with Uncle Giles’s composition, and this later decimation fine by Lambert, and large sums he lent on the public faith to the Earl of Newcastle never repaid, and mortgages on the land to pay all these, and the low price of wool, there is almost nothing left, almost nothing at all.”
“Poor old man,” said I. “That is the reason he would not take your help in his affairs, John; he was ashamed.”
“Why, doubtless ’twas so,” said John. “But he would have done better to take it. If I must tell you all, Penninah, there is less than nothing; it will cost us much to put all straight in an honourable fashion. Nevertheless, Penninah,” said John steadily: “For thy sake and the boy’s it shall be done.”
“John,” said I: “Thou art the best and truest-hearted man in England.”
“Saving only Lord Fairfax,” said John, laughing, though he was moved.
“Nay, I do not except even Lord Fairfax,” said I, shaking my head.
“Well—we must tell the boy now, or he will hear it from common gossip,” said John briskly. He called Chris’s name about the house, and out at the windows, and in a moment Chris flew in from some outdoor haunt—he was so light-footed that he seemed often to appear suddenly out of the air.
“Christopher,” said John in a solemn manner: “You were ever old Uncle Giles’s favourite here, and now he has left you all his estate. I stand possessed of it for your use and behoof, till you reach manhood. The estate is much encumbered,” went on John: “But with seven or eight years’ stern application, we may clear it.”
A look of distaste and dismay shadowed Chris’s bright face. “I don’t want it,” he muttered.
“Is it the estate you do not want, or the work to clear it?” asked John sternly.
“I don’t know,” said Chris honestly. Then he blurted: “I want to go to America.”
I cried out: “No! No!” so violently that they both stood looking at me. “What dost thou want with New England, lad?” I went on quickly. “It is tedious there as here—it is a very sober godly place—there are many ministers there—Lister hath an uncle there. It would not suit you.”
“I do not mean New England,” said Chris impatiently. “I mean Virginia.”
We stared at him.
“You have it all planned, it seems,” said John at length.
Chris swung one foot and looked a trifle sulky. “I have heard talk,” he said: “And read of it. I want to go to Virginia. I want to go, Mother.”
“Why,” said I, trembling with a sudden icy cold which filled me: “If you want to go, Chris—if you want to leave me——”
“I will write to our Sam about it,” broke in John, very loud and harsh.
Chris’s face brightened. “Oh, thank you, Father!” he cried. “Thank you!”
“Thank thy mother, lad,” said John gruffly.
There was a great deal of writing going on at that time between Sam and his father, because Sam was to be married that year to his master’s daughter, Constance Bagnall, and there seemed to be much lawyer’s business, though no real difficulties, to be settled between them. A letter came very soon, it seemed to me—too soon, too soon!—from Sam to say that dispirited needy Cavaliers had sailed continually to the Virginia plantation ever since the King’s execution, Virginia, it seemed, being a Royalist kind of place; Sam therefore did not recommend it. John had asked him what chance there was for a young lad out there, and Sam replied that there was plenty. Some lads, he said, went as redemptioners, who did not pay their passage out, but bound themselves to work there for a master for four years or more, the money for their purchase (for it was almost that) going to the captain who brought them.
“Chris shall not go like that,” said John.
“I should not mind, Father,” said Chris. “The years would pass.”
“You are content to work four years almost as a slave in Virginia, but will not work seven as a free man to gain a good estate in Yorkshire,” said John bitterly.
The look of distaste and weariness crossed Chris’s face again. “It is so narrow here, so tedious,” he muttered.
“He has set his mind to go, Penninah,” said John to me that night: “And I fear it will be little use trying to dissuade him. But I will not urge you,” he went on quickly: “God knows I will not try to part you from him, Penninah.”
I lay awake at John’s side all that night, still and cold, and poured out my soul to the Lord in silent prayer. It was a night of fearful anguish; my soul and my body seemed almost to part company, to dissolve in its bitterness; for to part from Chris was to me a kind of death. To me he was not merely a child with the other children, whom I loved and kissed and mothered—indeed there were few caresses between us; he was not merely bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; he was half of my life, and to tear him away was to tear half my life from me. So I wrestled in anguish of flesh and spirit, feeling sick unto death. Nay, I even found myself saying, blasphemously as I fear, the words of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me!” To lose Chris is my punishment for my sin in conceiving him, I thought; but then my heart rose up in rebellion, and said: Not so! It is this strange time, not war and not peace, this wretched time when counsel is darkened and men stagger to and fro, which takes Chris from me. But eve
n as I thought thus, the answer to my prayer came to me: If thou keep thy son at home, something ill will befall him. And I knew it to be true, and at long last I said: “Not my will, but Thine, be done, O Lord.” And I shuddered and the tears poured down my face, and John awoke and took me in his arms and comforted me, grieving over me, yet uttering no word of admonition or reproach, so that by degrees my agony passed, and I was able to speak of Chris’s going and how it could best be compassed, as though I were a live woman and not a naked soul in searing torment. This night was my true parting from Chris; and after this I was not young any more.
I began to stitch and knit for Chris, but had not time to complete my preparations, for many things happened suddenly. John called Chris before him and urged him most solemnly to wait for a few years, till he should be a man, before sailing away from us; but the dark look of vexation crossed Chris’s face again at this, and indeed he was doing no good at The Breck and might as well be learning the new land’s ways while he was young and pliable, and so it was settled he should go as soon as a passage could be found for him. Then Sam wrote of a passage for Chris in a ship which would shortly sail from London, under a captain who was a very good man, a friend of Mr. Bagnall’s, who would see Chris well placed; so John commanded him to arrange the matter, and he bought some of Chris’s mortgaged land from him so that the boy would have money in his pocket when he reached the strange country, and he began to plan to travel to London himself, to take Chris safe there and visit the gentleman’s widow he was steward for and see our Sam married. While this was yet uncertain, suddenly there came a messenger in the Fairfax livery, saying Lady Fairfax and the Duchess of Buckingham were travelling to London, setting out on the morrow. The Duke of Buckingham, it seemed, had been arrested and thrown into the Tower for some fancied plot against the Protectorate, and Lord Fairfax had already set off for London to beg his release from Cromwell, and his wife and daughter were to follow him; and Lord Fairfax had heard from his agent in London of our son’s impending marriage and of our younger son’s departure, and if we cared we could travel to London, both John and I, with Lady Fairfax—only we must set off at once and join them at Doncaster. In my young days such a plan would have sent me wild with excitement, so that I understood very well why Chris turned quite pale when he heard it, and his eyes glittered; but now I felt dazed and saw merely all its inconveniences. But John said that he and Chris must take the great chance thus offered, and so I must needs either go with them or part from Chris within an hour; and this last was impossible, and so I put our clothes in a pack and sent Abraham to Coley to stay with the Hodgsons who had a fondness for him, and John hurriedly rode into Bradford and entrusted his affairs to Lister; and we set out, John and Chris on our own horses, and I riding pillion with the servant.
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