Take Courage
Page 49
I cast my mind back, striving to remember the time he meant, and I recalled how, a day or so after I had yielded to Francis, John had come home and gone again swiftly down to Bradford. I recalled, too, that he had seemed to be long between leaving the house and riding down the lane. Nor was I in any doubt as to what Lister had told him.
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,” wailed Lister. “I should have left it in the Lord’s hands; I should not have told him.”
“Tell me, Lister,” said I suddenly: “When you killed Francis Ferrand, did you know him?”
“I do not know!” wailed Lister, wringing his hands. “I do not know whether I knew him or not! I believe I knew him not, save as an enemy of the Lord; but I always hated him, so perhaps I took that chance to kill him. I do not know! Can you not see that I do not know? It is a continual torment to me. I have never borne arms or lifted my hand against any man since that day, Mistress, lest I should diminish the cause of God by an unworthy instrument.”
He looked at me with so much anguish contorting his plain freckled face that I perceived he spoke the truth, and that the doubt of his own intention in killing Francis had indeed been a lifelong torment to him. So, having fetched a deep breath and sighed, I said:
“Lister, I forgive thee freely, as my husband hath forgiven me. But do not speak of this openly to him,” I added hastily, “for he could not bear it; or to any other person. Let it be a bond between me and thee.”
“It shall be so,” said Lister firmly. “God do so to me, and more also, if ever I break this bond and bring suffering on the innocent. I will name my young son Accepted, to signify my hope that my repentance is accepted of God.”
At this I could not but smile a little, but I said nothing; I took him by the hand and we went back to the house and into John’s room, together.
When Lister saw John lying so deep in his pillows, so pale and panting, he was very greatly moved, and said in a low sobbing tone:
“If there has been aught wrong between us, Mester, forgive me.”
“There is naught to forgive,” whispered John, looking steadily at him. “Thou hast been a good and faithful servant.”
Then Lister broke into tears and ran from us.
I sat down beside John, and said to him sadly:
“I am truly sorry, John, that thou canst not say the same to me.”
“Nay, but I do say it, Penninah!” said John, raising himself and speaking strongly. “I do say it. Thou hast been a good and faithful wife to me, the wife of my heart.”
Then I bent down to him, and speaking very softly in his ear words for him alone, I told him what like of a husband he had been to me. And so we kissed, and for this life parted; for he fell into a drowse shortly after, and was never truly himself again in this world.
On the following day, it being Whitsunday, very early in the morning he died. He had a good passing, sober, honest and godly, as he would have wished; for he died a man who had always been true to himself; with his work done; in his own house, which had been honoured by acceptance in the service of his cause; with his wife at his side, and his eldest son at the foot of his bed to pray for him. Meruisti; thou hast deserved well, my husband. It is such as thee who bear the burdens.
Penninah Remembers
And so I sit here, in the latter part of my age, at the door of my son’s house—which he has built new, very fine and fair—and think on all these things, while my grandchildren play about my knee. And this I say: Take courage. I have known trials so bitter that my whole course seemed darkened. But I have known joys too; putting one with another, I have found life too good to miss; I am glad to have been born. Again: I have lived in times so troubled that I cannot think this nation has ever seen the like, or will ever see the like again. But the land has not perished; the sun shines, the rain falls, the sheep still feed on the Pennine hills; women still conceive and bring forth and give their children suck; and while man lives, the hope of righteousness will not die. The strife is sore while it lasts; yes, it is very sharp and bitter, and wearying to the spirit, for it seems as if it will never come to any end; but if we keep a good heart and cease not to care for justice and truth, some say the storm will pass, and the nations rejoice in the sweet air of peace.
ALL THE CHARACTERS in this novel are real people, revived from the pages of Yorkshire history to enact again their significant drama of love and strife, human strength and human weakness. If I have sometimes deepened the lines, and supplied the gaps, of this story of England’s Civil War, from my own invention, that is the novelist’s privilege: to create a symbolic unity from scattered hints and dispersed incidents.
PHYLLIS BENTLEY
Halifax
March, 1938–October, 1939
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © Phyllis Bentley, 1940
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ISBN: 9781448204328
eISBN: 9781448203734
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