“If i survive these days, I shall wonder how I endured to live through them,” I often thought to myself in the months that followed, and I have, indeed, often wondered whence I drew the strength to endure the sorrows which then heaped themselves upon my head. Perhaps it was from the children’s need of me, perhaps it was from a desire to make reparation to John, perhaps it came from God Himself, who in His infinite mercy did not wish to cast away even so notable a sinner, perhaps it was only from that strong love of life which is implanted so firmly in every human breast. I do not know; but I know that although every hour of every day was one of searing anguish to me, yet I ate and slept and saw to the children’s wants and administered to my household, and kept a face on it all not too revealing of my inner suffering, and so somehow lived.
About noon on the next day following Francis’s death, Ralph came timidly to our door to fetch me to Holroyd Hall.
“You must come, Mrs. Thorpe. There’s nobody but you,” he whined. “Mr. Ferrand said I was to fetch you. Nobody’d do it better nor you.”
“What is it you want of me, Ralph?” I asked. (The very sight of him was torture.)
“To be with Mrs. Ferrand when we bring him home,” whispered Ralph.
In half sentences and obscure phrases, for he could not bring himself to speak clearly, I learned his meaning. It seemed that Mr. Ferrand, having fled to Sir Richard Tempest at Boiling Hall to avoid arrest, was with the Royalist force, and had caused a trumpeter to be sent out to our men in the church to demand his son’s body, which this morning had been delivered to him. He had brought Francis nearly home, but now his courage failed him, and he dared not break the news to his wife alone. It was clear to me that Ralph had reported my mourning over Francis yesterday, that Mr. Ferrand thus knew that I still loved his son and felt he had a right to claim my aid. I shuddered at the task, but I would not refuse any office concerned with Francis, nor was I without a desire to look once more on my love. So I threw on a cloak and followed Ralph.
In the lane I found Mr. Ferrand on horseback beside a cart; he sat very still, but his hands trembled and his sanguine face was pale and drawn. He would not meet my eyes, but glancing aside towards the cart said that Francis lay in it, and that he would give me a few minutes at the Hall to tell his wife before he came.
“I’m much obliged to ye, Penninah,” he concluded huskily.
So I went on and began that fearful task which so often falls to women. The servants at the Hall were all, I found, forewarned, and admitted me quickly and silently, their looks showing their sad understanding. Mrs. Ferrand must have heard the noise of my entry, however, though it was so slight, for she ran out of the parlour. Her face fell when she saw me.
“I thought it was Francis,” she said, pettishly.
It was so long since I had seen her close that I had forgotten her trick of swallowing her r’s till I heard it now again; it made her seem very young and innocent. She was still a pretty woman; her cheek had its former smooth milk and roses, though now it sprang from art rather than nature, and her hair, though not as abundant as of old, was elaborately arranged in many curls about the forehead, and still very golden. The poor woman, knowing that Royalists were in the neighbourhood, hoping for another visit from her son, had dressed herself in her best, a light flowered silk of some kind, so that it was piteous to see her.
“What brings you here, Penninah Thorpe?” she said crossly.
My mind flew back to the day I had come to fetch her to see her dying brother, and she evidently remembered it too, for a shade of fear crossed her face, and she went on: “You brought bad news on your last visit,” with both rebuke and question in her tone.
I took the opportunity thus offered me, and began: “I fear I bring bad news again. There was fighting down by the church yesterday.”
“I know—Giles sent word I was to keep away,” said Mrs. Ferrand.
“Men on both sides were wounded,” I went on hoarsely.
“Well?” said Mrs. Ferrand, frowning.
I paused, moistening my dry lips; and before I could bring out the fatal word, Francis, which would tell her everything, there came the sound of rolling wheels and horses’ hoofs, and the sad little procession appeared in the gateway.
“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Ferrand, her face changing.
“Mrs. Ferrand, Francis is wounded,” I said hurriedly, trying to take her hand.
“My boy, my boy! What have they done to thee?” cried Mrs. Ferrand. She broke from me and ran towards the lane, stumbling over her flowery skirts. With a mother’s fatal prescience she made straight for the cart, and before her husband could stop her, climbed on the hub of the wheel, drew back the scarlet coat and gazed on the dead face of her son. She gave a strange loud cry, threw up her hands and fell senseless to the ground.
Mr. Ferrand and I carried her into the house, and when we could not revive her by water or air or cordial, sent Ralph hurrying for the physician. But neither could he restore her with his medicaments; it was a stroke of God, he said, against which he was powerless. Even as we watched, her face was suddenly distorted by a spasm, a breath puffed between her lips and she was gone.
Scarcely had he made sure that life was out of her before the physician left us hurriedly, for he had the dozen or so men wounded yesterday on his hands, Mr. Atkinson among them being like to die of a bullet in the stomach, he said.
When he had gone Mr. Ferrand and I stared at each other in a daze; the event was so swift we could not truly seem to catch up with it in our minds. Not a couple of hours had passed since Ralph had come to fetch me, and Mrs. Ferrand was then quick with life, smoothing her dress with her pretty hands and swallowing her r’s. I made to leave Mr. Ferrand alone with her to grieve, but he stretched out his hand to me and said my name so piteously that I stayed with him. After his first burst of grief, when he knelt beside her with his hand over his eyes and sobbed very pitifully, he rose and drew my arm within his and clasped his hand in mine, and we paced up and down the room together; and when the woman came from the village to lay out the two bodies, we passed into the parlour and paced up and down again there. Mr. Ferrand, in a weak high voice unlike his own, babbled many loving histories about the wife and son he had lost so suddenly and tragically—how he had first met Sybil, how he had loved and courted her, how Francis was born, a big lusty baby, and what a gradely, daring, handsome lad he had always been.
“And now those damned Roundheads have taken them both from me,” he said, weeping: “My curse on them! My curse!”
To this I made no reply; but to myself I thought it was the King and Laud and Strafford who had killed Mrs. Ferrand and Francis.
“My heart is broken, Penninah,” said Mr. Ferrand between every story. “My heart is broken!”
I thought: “And so is mine,” but I said no word, only clasping his hand more strongly in my own.
The short winter’s day began to fade, dusk crept up to the windows, the panelled walls sank into shadow, yet still we paced and still Mr. Ferrand eased his sore heart by lamentation. When I could no longer see the painted arms above the mantelshelf—a cruel mockery now to Mr. Ferrand, with no son left to bear them—I felt that I must return to the care of my own household. I took a sad farewell of Mr. Ferrand, and left him in spite of his pleadings.
Not that I was eager to return to The Breck. It was not a comfortable place for me at that time. I did not find it easy that day to look at Sam’s shrewd little face and hear his eager story of how he had sent “reinforcements” from Little Holroyd to his father yesterday, for those reinforcements had included Lister, and Lister had killed Francis. Nor did I wish to meet my husband whom I had wronged, while at the thought of Lister such a rage shook me that I feared I should not be able to control my tongue, perhaps even my nails, if I set eyes on him. John was still absent about the defence in Bradford when I reached The Breck, and Lister mercifully did not present himself at all that day, but the shadow of their return hung over me. Moreover, the maids, in hourly expectation of a second Royalist attack and slaughter, shrieked at every movement in the house, and at the mildest rebuke became hysterical.
When I had coaxed the children to bed, and put the maids to work sorting some goose-feathers, I wrapped myself in my cloak and set the house-door open and stood there looking down towards Bradford. It was very cold; the wind soughed and wailed about the house; I felt so desolate and wretched that I longed for any kind of support and comfort, and since for so many years my great stay and strength had been my husband, I longed for John, his staunch steady mind, his strong arm. I thought of confessing all my sin to him and asking his pardon, and had he come to me then perhaps I should have done so, and saved us both much wretchedness. But it was not to be. Even as I stood there gazing, a confused noise was borne up to me on the wind from Bradford, as of men shouting; my heart quickened its beat, for I feared it was a return of the Royalists. But it seemed a strange hour to begin an attack, and the noise had a cheerful sound, not bloodthirsty, so I calmed myself and tried to think it had another cause; and sure enough not long after there was the sound of a single horse’s hoofs hurrying up the lane, and a horseman turned in to The Breck, and when he drew near it was Isaac Baume, and he waved his hand above his head and shouted breathlessly:
“Black Tom!”
“What, Sir Thomas Fairfax!” I exclaimed. “Has he reached Bradford?”
“Aye!” shouted Baume joyfully. “Black Tom on his white horse! He hasn’t failed us! He’s passed through the Royalist lines with three hundred men! They won’t take Bradford now! Your husband bade me tell you,” he went on more soberly, “to expect himself and Sir Thomas here for supper.”
So I perforce bestirred myself and made the necessary preparations, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry that I should thus lack opportunity at present for any deep talk with John.
It was late before Sir Thomas reached The Breck. He looked tired but eager, and I guessed by the brightness of his eyes and the smile on his lips that he had performed a considerable feat of arms in reaching Bradford. This animation made him more handsome than before, or perhaps I had forgotten a little his noble carriage and dark distinguished face.
“I was in too great haste to bring M-M-Moll with me this time, Mrs. Thorpe,” he jested pleasantly.
I smiled in reply but said nothing, for I could not bring my mind to thoughts of any troubles but my own, and it was indifferent to me whether little Moll came to The Breck or no. In truth I was so numbed and dazed with tribulation I could not feel anything as I should. John’s eyes did not meet mine, when I told him, as decency obliged, of Mrs. Ferrand’s death; he made no chance for private talk with me, he sat up late writing letters for Sir Thomas, and when I woke in the night he was not beside me. I should have wept and trembled at what this might mean, but I could not; I just went dully on about my household duties.
Next morning while we sat at table, Sam as usual forgetting to eat in order to look at Sir Thomas, Ralph appeared, and holding his hat to his breast and his head down in a humble penitent manner, craved of Sir Thomas a safe-conduct for his master to bury his wife and son in Bradford.
“Surely, surely,” conceded Sir Thomas impatiently, as if vexed that his humanity should be so much doubted.
While the safe-conduct was being prepared John asked Ralph the day and hour of the burial, and was told that, on account of the likelihood of further fighting, it was to take place that very day, at noon.
“Tell your master that I will go to the burial with him,” said John shortly, and turning to Sir Thomas, he explained, in a cold hard tone: “The dead are my aunt and cousin; I must see them decently buried.”
“Well, I must be in Bradford myself all day,” observed Sir Thomas thoughtfully. “We must get siege works instantly started.”
“But you will return to The Breck to sleep?” said John.
Sir Thomas smiled. “I will return, Jack,” he said, his voice very friendly.
So again The Breck was filled with buff coats and helmets and horses, and breast plates and muskets and pikes, and soldiers and messengers going and coming. John was never a minute unoccupied, either writing letters or riding about Bradford and learning siege-craft with Sir Thomas. It came Christmas, and Sir Thomas was still with us; and some days the Royalists would approach within a mile or two and there was a skirmish between the forces, and some days Sir Thomas sat at home in The Breck, conferring with the gentlemen who were his captains and colonels. I could not but admire John’s carriage during all this business, which after all was strange to him. In privacy, when the company was gone, it was Jack and Tom with the two men, and there was a very close friendship between them; but when others were there John never presumed on this private understanding, he called his friend “Sir,” and carried himself very quietly and discreetly, never pushing himself forward. John had by this time returned to all his customary ways about the house, except that he treated me as if I were not his wife, but some not-much-liked housekeeper. Lister too had returned to the house; I knew this by hearing his voice, which made me shudder, in the loom-chamber, but I did not see him. Whether he refrained deliberately from my presence, or was kept thence by the much business of figuring and writing for Sir Thomas which John heaped on him, I do not know, but I was glad of it.
One of Sir Thomas’s officers gave me money to provide his entertainment, but I was so hard put to it to feed the guests who were always coming and going that often the children and I went very short, and in my heart I blamed John for not seeming to notice it. The Royalists, being spread over the middle part of the county, quite prevented any corn or wool coming to the West Riding—though in truth wool would have been of little use, for there was no one to buy cloth and we did not make any. The meal in the ark lessened so rapidly that I grew afraid, and one evening took occasion to show it to John, speaking with eyes averted and in a dry tone of business, such as we nowadays habitually practised to each other. To my surprise John’s eye brightened, and bidding me hold the lid of the ark open, he went aside and urgently called Sir Thomas. With that quiet smile which so often visited his finely moulded lips, half melancholy, half gracious, wholly loving, Sir Thomas stepped into the kitchen and looked into our meal ark, so seriously and so long that I could not help smiling. John said nothing, but gazed earnestly into his face.
“Well, I take your meaning, Jack,” said Sir Thomas after a time. “It is a strong reinforcement of your daily argument.” He paused and seemed to consider, frowning heavily; and there was a long silence. Then suddenly Sir Thomas added with decision: “I will write to my father.”
John’s face cleared wonderfully, and with no further word to me made haste to take pen and ink, and he put a fair sheet of paper on the table and sat himself down before it, and then looked expectantly at Sir Thomas, who laid one of his fine slender hands on John’s shoulder for a moment, and then began to move soberly about the room, his hands behind his back, dictating.
“For the Right Honourable My Honoured Father, the Lord Fairfax, General of the Forces in the North,” he began. “These. May it p-p-please your lordship.”
He looked at John to see if he was ready for the next sentence, and John, after a hurried scratching, nodded, and Sir Thomas went on: “These parts grow very imp-p-patient of our delay in beating the enemy out of Leeds and Wakefield, for by them all trade and provisions are stopped, so that the p-p-people in these clothing towns are not able to subsist, and, indeed, so p-p——”
Here his stammer got the better of him; John, with a scrupulous delicacy I would not have guessed of him, fore-bore to nod, though I could see his pen had kept pace with the slow considering speech, till the word exploded from Sir Thomas’s lips.
“—pressing are their wants,” got out Sir Thomas at last, “that some have told me—that’s you, Jack,” he said, breaking off with a smile—”some have told me, if I would not stir with them, they must rise of necessity themselves.”
“It is true,” muttered John gruffly, as he wrote.
“Being only commanded by you to defend these p-parts, I would not raise the country to assault the enemy without your lordship’s consent,” went on Sir Thomas with emphasis: “But if your lordship please to give me p-p-power to join with the readiness of the p-p-people, I doubt not b-but, by God’s assistance, to give your lordship a good account of what we do.”
“Amen,” said John.
“Humbly desiring your blessing, your lordship’s most obedient son,” concluded Sir Thomas rapidly. “Best take a copy, Jack, and I will write now to Bingley and Mirfield, to summon them to come in.”
I slipped away unnoticed. I could not forbear a slight pride in John, that he should be engaged in such high affairs of state, and offering advice which Sir Thomas Fairfax accepted; and I quitted him of carelessness about our supplies. I felt too a gladness that some headway should be made against those tyrannical Royalists; yet I grieved that there should be further fighting.
Lord Fairfax was not long in sending his permission, and a sufficient force was soon collected, for the West Riding was in truth in pressing need, as John had said, and ready to dare anything to drive the oppressors away from their doorstep. So men poured into Bradford on Sir Thomas’s summons: gentry and yeomen and simple weavers. Moreover, the West Riding loved Sir Thomas, for his loyalty to the clothing towns and for his own person, and they gave him readily much love and loyalty. “The Rider of the White Horse,” they called him affectionately at this time in Bradford. I hated to hear it, for this title meant to me Francis on Snowball, the first Sunday I ever met him; and I doubt not my face grew sullen whenever I heard it, and vexed my husband.
On a cold Monday morning, a fortnight after the writing of the letter to Lord Fairfax, our men set out to attack the Royalists in Leeds. It was a bitter day; a chilling wind stung the tips of the men’s ears, so that they looked red and swollen; there was a strong white frost on the ground, making it slippery, and whirling snow showers often veiled the country-side. I planned to give the officers who assembled at our house hot spiced sack as a stirrup cup, to warm them. While I was in the kitchen, ladling sack into our best pewter tankard, for Sir Thomas, my hand started so that the scalding fluid flew in all directions, for Lister was standing in full view on the staircase. The sight of his rough rusty hair and his freckles and his big raw-boned hands made me shudder deep down within me. John was confronting him, barring his passage.
“The work of the Lord must not be done negligently,” John was saying sternly. “We need every able godly man in the West Riding to clear the country of these malignants. You are able, and on your own profession, well-affected. Why do you not take a musket and join us, Joseph Lister?”
“I will never lay hands on a man again,” croaked Lister, his voice harsh and mournful.
“Well—I will force no man’s conscience,” said John coldly, and he turned straight on his heel and left him.
Sir Thomas was already on horseback, and John went out at once and mounted. The maids and I ran to them quickly with the sack; I served Sir Thomas, and wished then to serve John, but mere politeness compelled me to offer to our guests. I came to John last, and Sir Thomas was already gathering up his bridle and looking about him to give the signal for departure; John waved the tankard away without looking at me and moved forward. Then, with a great clattering of hoofs and jingling of spurs, and shouting of the word of the day: Emmanuel, they all rode off, Sir Thomas leading. Sir Thomas, I remember, wore on his head a kind of red cap with a scarf to it which he wound about his throat; it was the first time I had seen such a cap, he called it by a foreign name, I think montero.
When they had gone I was very sad. This attack on Leeds was a dangerous enterprise, for Sir William Savile held the town very strongly with almost two thousand men and much ordnance, and he had fortified it very skilfully with many trenches. (We had heard this privately from Will, who was daily expecting to be pulled out of his pulpit at Adel, the Royalists being so close, but went on stubbornly preaching the true word, all the same.) To attack was much more hazardous than to defend; had I not often heard Sir Thomas say so? The Royalists were mostly soldiers of long standing, led by officers experienced in war, whereas the most of our men were what Sir Thomas called ‘‘fresh-water” men, peaceable clothiers and weavers from Bradford and Halifax, quite ignorant of fighting—some of them had seen a pike for the first time only on the previous Saturday. Yes, the enterprise was full of peril and John might never return from it, and if he did not, that we should part thus unfriendly was a poor ending to our married life, in which after all there had been moments of honest gladness. It had been blessed with issue, moreover, and my little sons were dear to me. So I felt sad, sorrowful, dreary.
To drown these thoughts I set the maids about a great deal of laundry, of which there was certainly plenty to be done after all these visitors; and I helped them to carry the sheets and napkins and lay them out, partly on the frozen ground and partly on the tenters, and had Thomas and Sam to help me, weighting them down or helping me to fold them. Sam skipped about light-heartedly with stones for weighting, for without knowing it he despised this woman’s work and wished to evade it, but Thomas helped me very skilfully and soberly, chattering about thirds and quarters and angles as he folded, for he had something of his father’s mathematical ability.
While we were busy thus, I saw a stranger coming up the lane, but as he was on foot and soberly clad, and walking slowly and quietly, I did not much regard him, but went on folding. But when I whipped the corners of one sheet together I found the other end was not being handled the same, and looking up I saw Thomas with the sheet quite forgotten, and his mouth open, staring. So I turned and the wind blew my hair back out of my eyes, and I looked at the stranger, and then Thomas and I called his name at the same moment, for it was David.
I ran to him, and we held each other close, and tears gushed from my eyes for joy and relief to have my own dear brother with me in my troubles, but even in that first moment of meeting I observed that he seemed very grave and quiet. Then there came a sudden peal of laughter from the children, and we looked, and saw that the damp sheet which I had dropped had blown against Thomas and wound itself about him, and Sam was hardly able to help him out of it for laughing. Just as we turned, however, Thomas disentangled himself, when the sheet blew off through the air, coiling and uncoiling itself. We all ran after it, David with the rest; like all things blown by the wind, it fell to earth and started into air again, just when least expected; we were all warm, and rosy with laughter, by the time we had caught it and weighted it down.
“This is not work suited to the dignity of a Bachelor of Divinity,” I jested to David, as I took his arm to lead him to the house, for, knowing little of University terms and courses, I made sure he had taken his degree in divinity before coming home.
“I fear I am not likely to become a Bachelor of Divinity, Pen,” said David.
“Not likely!” I exclaimed, halting.
“I have left Cambridge. An oath was being imposed on all Bachelors and Doctors of Divinity before they could receive their degree,” explained David: “an oath designed to prevent all innovations in Church government and doctrine. I was required to swear that I approved of the present government of the Church by Bishops and such dignitaries and would never strive to alter it. I could not take such an Arminian oath. My father’s son, and Will’s brother, not to mention David Clarkson himself, could not so forswear himself. To me, as to John Milton, Bishops are blind mouths, false shepherds, who for their bellies’ sake creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold. So here I am, turned up at The Breck again, like a bad penny. I am the bad penny and you are the good one, Penninah,” he concluded cheerfully, squeezing my arm.
“So your life’s plan is broken,” I cried harshly.
“So it seems,” agreed David in his quiet scholar’s tone.
Then indeed the iron entered into my soul. “Whatever else is wrong in my life,” I had often comforted myself in the last wearying years: “At least David is fulfilling his true destiny”; and the thought of him turning the leaves of old volumes in lovely Cambridge had been balm to my bruised spirit. Now that too was gone.
I looked at him. He reminded me much of my father, being very tall and slender and walking with a scholar’s stoop, but there was a kind of grace and finish about him now that none of us in Bradford ever had—nor indeed he himself, before he went to Cambridge; the only man I had seen then with something of the same gracious noble air was Sir Thomas Fairfax. Not that David was finely clad; for he wore a very plain dark suit, made as I saw of cloth from The Breck which John had sent him the previous Christmas as a present. His fair hair too was somewhat tumbled. But his features seemed cast in a very fine and delicate mould now, as if everything worldly had been thinned from them, leaving only what served to express a high intellectual purpose. His speech, too, had an austere beauty; his voice being very quiet and mellow and his words, though copious, never redundant or affected, but always precisely expressive and very simple. “But he will be wretched, he will be wretched here!” I thought to myself, and in my mind’s eye I saw him hanging about the house, quiet, subdued, useless as he would think, pushed into the background by our lustier Bradford men, cut off from the fount of learning which was the only nourishment he desired, his whole life broken.
“David,” I said in a trembling voice: “I cannot bear it. You are thrice welcome at The Breck, but I cannot bear that your ambition should be thus disappointed.”
“It is the will of God,” said David simply. “How goes it with John?”
Then, to conceal my emotion, as we entered the house I began to tell him of all the military happenings in Bradford and of this morning’s expedition. I sat him by the hearth and brought him some broth to set him on till it should be time for dinner, and the children seeing it clamoured for some too, and leaned up against him drinking, and they supplemented my tale with their childish additions, and so it was Sam who told him about Francis. David looked grave, and said soberly:
“They who draw the sword shall perish by the sword.”
I put the text away in my mind for consideration, for I felt it might have some deep application to Francis.
After a time I left David to make arrangements for his food and sleeping, and while I was upstairs seeing to his bed I heard his voice in the loom-chamber, in talk with Lister. I felt a strong surprise and revulsion, and then I remembered the great fondness Lister had always shown David, and then I reminded myself, exaggerating in my anger, how neither of them had really loved Francis; and then on a sudden I heard Lister’s voice wailing:
“I killed him, Mester David, I killed him!”
My flesh chilled and my scalp prickled, to hear him.
Towards evening we were surprised by a visit from Mr. Hodgson, the Halifax captain, who rode up to our door plastered with mud and bareheaded, but smiling very cheerfully; he said he was going home to Coley, and John had asked him to call at The Breck on his way and tell the news. Our men had gained a tremendous victory—or it seemed tremendous to us at that time; for in spite of all Sir William Savile’s ordnance and dragoons and trenches, and a very insulting reply he had sent to Sir Thomas’s summons to deliver the town, calling his message a “frivolous ticket” and the like, the Parliament men had taken Leeds, and put the Royalists to flight and taken nigh on five hundred prisoners. Sir William himself had been obliged to swim the River Aire to escape, said Mr. Hodgson jubilantly, and was near drowned in the doing of it. He had been in the Aire too—they all had, one way or another.
We had just finished dinner but I asked Mr. Hodgson, who seemed a hearty florid sort of man, to sit to table with us, and he did so, and seeing Sam’s eyes fixed on him so eagerly, he began to describe the fight to us in more detail, using trenchers and salt-cellars to mark the positions of bridges and sentries and so on, as men love to do. He told us how they had sung Psalm 68 in the rhymed way: Let God arise And then his foes Will turn themselves to flight, as they charged into the trenches, and how excellent were the dispositions of Sir Thomas Fairfax, and how one of the Halifax men had a bullet shot into the hilt of his sword, whereby the hilt was drawn out almost as small as wire; and at last he came to his true point, namely that John had received a bullet on one of his buttons, and his doublet had burst open and the bruised bullet had fallen down beneath his shirt, and he was not hurt at all—and the Royalists were all in flight towards Pontefract and the West Riding would be free of them, concluded Mr. Hodgson triumphantly.
During all this David sat with his face in shadow, one fine hand resting on the table in the candle-light, listening very intently, smiling a little, as I judged by his voice, at Mr. Hodgson’s homeliness and eagerness, and sometimes asking some pertinent question which cleared up a doubtful matter. Once I thought I heard a movement in the shadow by the door, and started and looked quickly; and though I could see nothing, by the chill of my flesh I knew it was Lister.
“And are you leaving your general in his hour of triumph?” David was asking quietly.
Mr. Hodgson said: No, he was returning to Coley only for the night, and would then return again to Sir Thomas’s army, for he was resolved to stay by it.
“Then may I beg as a favour that you will inform my brother-in-law of my return and its reason?” said David.
Mr. Hodgson, kindly cheerful creature, buckled on his sword-belt and willingly agreed to do this errand.
So it came about that when, a few days later, John returned to The Breck I had occasion to admire him, for he had hardly entered the house when he advanced to David, and strongly grasped his hand, and smiled very kindly, and said:
“Welcome, lad, for your conscience’s sake.”
I admired John for this, but yet I noted he did not welcome David for my sake. In my heart I noted all these things, and felt that one day, when I had time and my feelings were no longer numb and frozen, I should grieve very bitterly over them. At present I was too actively engaged in endurance, to grieve.
It was a pleasure to me—and it seemed a great thing because at that time I had so few pleasures—to see how the friendship between David and my little Thomas renewed itself. They seemed always together, David reading aloud or talking in his quiet clear fashion, Thomas listening very eagerly; or sometimes David would request Thomas to tell him some mythical story of old times that he had learned at school, and then would mildly ask questions during the course of the story, so that Thomas, as I noticed, grew to think before he spoke and arrange his answers very clearly. Then one morning I found David sitting at the table with Sam and Thomas opposite, teaching them as though they were at school. They both showed him a great deal of respect, for though he was mild there was something in his manner which brooked no foolishness, and it was a great relief to me to see them receiving tuition, for the country was so disturbed I hardly dared let them go down to Bradford to school at that time, and besides, Mr. Worrall, the schoolmaster, was fled away to the Royalists. Yet when I thought of David’s great attainments, it seemed pitiful that he should be sitting in a clothier’s house teaching two little boys their hic haec hoc. I said as much to David, and hinted that John and I were proud to have such a scholar with us as our guest at The Breck. (This I said lest with his delicate integrity he should be feeling he ought to earn his keep.) At my stumbling words David smiled, and said in his quiet but certain tones:
“My brother Will taught me when I was young and the times forbade him employment, and so will I teach your children, Penninah; that the lamp of learning shall not flicker out in the wind of tribulation, but be shielded in a quiet place till a better day.” He added: “Your Thomas has the makings of a scholar.”
This made me glad, and thenceforward as often as I could I sat with my needle and listened to Thomas’s lessons, and rejoiced to hear him prove himself of a clear quick mind, and open to all lofty and generous sentiments. Thomas indeed was a comfort to me, in more ways than this, during that sad winter. His gracious sensitive spirit felt my hidden distress, though he did not understand it, and often he came up to me unexpectedly and threw his arms round my neck and kissed me as though he sorrowed for me.
I needed comfort. I loved David for teaching my sons, but all the same it was a grief to me. Lister crept about the house, sometimes truculent, sometimes mournful, sometimes wailing out to David: “I killed him!” which always made me shudder. John was much away—Sir Thomas, now his work here was done, having removed himself to the east parts of Yorkshire to join his father—and not much my friend, and not at all my husband, when he came home. In any case he had no time for me, being always busy with Parliament accounts and papers. Holroyd Hall was closed and empty, with all the livestock sold, Mr. Ferrand having gone away to join the Earl of Newcastle, which I was very sorry for. Yes, I thought I needed all the comfort I could get that winter, and then, as the winter turned towards our chilly northern spring, which David said was so slow and sparse compared with spring in Cambridge, a blow fell on me which made all other strokes seem light by comparison. One day David was upstairs with Lister, soothing him as usual, and Lister’s harsh voice croaking texts rose and rose as usual till it reached his customary climax:
“I killed him, Mester David!”
As usual, I gave a strong shudder; and in that moment I knew for certain what I had guessed before and had tried not to believe: I was with child, and the child’s father was Francis.