This was a year for weddings; there was Moll Fairfax’s marriage, and our Sam’s—no, that came the following year; but there was that other match, very unexpected by me, though looking back now I see he always had a fancy for the girl.
One afternoon when John returned from some of his steward’s business I looked out as he rode up, and saw he had another man beside him; a long thin body of somewhat awkward carriage, but well clad in sober merchant’s style, and riding a nag of good shape, well fed. I heard John’s voice calling me next moment, and left Chris, on whose doublet I was sewing a button, bidding him cut the ends of the thread himself as I went downstairs. I was growing a little heavier in those days and did not fly up and down as I used when I was nimbler on my feet, so by the time I reached my guest he and John were standing on the hearth together. He is an ugly but well-meaning man, I thought, observing with what an air of serious interest he was regarding Abraham, who was already showing him a drawing. He had coarse short hair of a salt-and-pepper colour, and a flat frog-like face.
“This is an old friend of ours, Penninah,” said John. I knew by his voice that he did not quite mean what he said, and I looked at the stranger more shrewdly.
“You do not know me, Mistress,” said he in a somewhat mournful tone: “I am become a stranger to my brethren.”
“Ah, heavens! Can it be Joseph Lister?” I cried.
Lister smiled. “The very same, Mrs. Thorpe,” said he.
“Why—Lister,” I stammered, for in truth I did not know how to greet him: “It is long since we saw you. You have done well for yourself, it seems.”
“Aye, the Lord hath prospered my way,” said Lister. “I have been much about the country since I departed from The Breck.”
“He has been in London, and seen our Sam,” put in John.
“Oh, I have spent several years in London,” said Lister condescendingly. “And after, I was steward for a gentleman in Durham. But the preaching there has of late become so clouded and confused, I am come home again to Yorkshire to hear sermons with some meat in them.”
“Well, Lister,” said I in an easy gracious tone, for I was vexed a little by his smug carriage: “For the sake of old times I forgive you for deserting us in a time of trouble, and make you heartily welcome to The Breck.”
“Deserting you in a time of trouble!” exclaimed Lister, taken aback. “Did I not get the hay in for you?”
“Why,” I began, but broke off, for I saw Lister’s eyes fix suddenly in a wide stare at something beyond my head. I turned, and there was Chris, leaning against the angle of the stairs, dangling the scissors in his hand. I had never seen him look so tall, so handsome, or so like his father.
“I brought your scissors,” he murmured, disconcerted a little by Lister’s silent stare.
Lister’s face was as white as tallow. I saw what a strange conjunction it was of the four of us: Lister, and John, and Francis’s son, and me. And the boy there was so ignorant of it all, and thought our lives at The Breck so tedious and dull! My heart melted.
“This is my third son, Christopher,” said I. “Chris, this is Joseph Lister.”
Chris came forward with his frank smile and his easy manner, and gave Lister his hand—he had been trained, I take some pride to say it, after a better prescription than his father, and was always courteous, especially to those who were older or poorer or some way weaker than he.
“I have heard much of you from my brother Sam,” he said.
Lister dropped his hand as if it were fire, but could not take his eyes from the lad.
“He hath your voice of velvet, Mistress,” said he.
“Well—you will stay and dine with us, will you not, Lister?” I went on hurriedly. “And what trade do you intend to drive in Bradford? Shall you be a steward again, or return to cloth?”
“I thought to be a merchant,” muttered Lister, in a voice so changed from his former complacency that I felt bound to try to cheer him.
“I am sure far-seeing merchants are much needed in these hard times,” I said.
John was relieved that this awkward meeting had passed off without open flame, and as we all sat down together he became more at ease with Lister, and they fell to talking of old times. I could see Chris’s look of tedium at all this, courteously veiled, and Abraham listening with a puzzled air, as children do to talk of times long past, and I had a strange sense of how life rolled on, how a moment ago I was a child listening to my elders at The Breck, and now I was an elder with children listening to me, and all my life had gone like a flash between.
“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 even 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.
Well! This journey to London hath made me quite notable around Bradford, and even now many of our neighbours will ask to hear its story. But alas, I remember very little of it, for to me it was a nightmare. People and places swam dizzily in and out of it, and changed abruptly, as they do in nightmares; all I remember clearly is that I was never out of suffering, I felt all the time as if I had a fever.
For the most part of the way I travelled in Lady Fairfax’s coach, with herself and her daughter. Lady Fairfax had not changed much, either in character or in looks; only her complexion was a trifle browner, her features a trifle sharper, her tongue decidedly more wandering, than of old. She met me with a long tirade on how she was glad to have an hour’s stay in Doncaster, since she did not wish Moll to be frightened by thinking there was need to hurry—I smiled to myself as I remembered her ways of old, and translated this into anger at our delaying her and her daughter. She was much vexed, if one were to judge by her talk, with the Duke of Buckingham for wedding Moll, and her husband for consenting, yet John told me it was common talk she herself had made the match. At first there was a kind of stiffness between us, which I could not exert myself properly to remove; Lady Fairfax, it seemed, did not know of Chris’s departure, did not know, therefore, why I should be so dumb and dazed. It was the Duchess who discovered my grief, for she had a grief too, and sorrow is a strong bond. As I rode gazing with unseeing eyes out of the window at the fields and woods as they rolled by—it was summer, and the land was doubtless very lovely, but I saw it not—she laid a hand on my wrist and drew my trouble forth from me by gentle questions. She was a woman grown now, this little Moll whom I had fed and tended, and very highly educated by many tutors, poets and such; but she was very much the same in looks and bearing as when she was a child; small and slight and very dark-complexioned, with dark scanty hair, and somewhat unfinished features, redeemed from plainness only by the look of noble benevolence in her fine dark eyes. She explained my trouble to her mother, whom she seemed to manage very well; Lady Fairfax exclaimed, and looked at me, and then leaned out of the coach window and called to a man of Lord Fairfax’s who rode beside, and bade him bring Christopher Thorpe to her. In a moment my Chris appeared, bowing very gracefully but coldly in the saddle. Lady Fairfax spoke a word to him and let him go, then turned to me with all her old kindness in her eyes.
“Why, Penninah Thorpe,” said she, “he is the handsomest lad I have seen these seven years!” Her face changed, and she sighed, then cried out suddenly: “Each of us loves a man who leaves us!”
“Mother!” exclaimed Moll, colouring—for indeed she doted on her husband, who was already not very faithful to her, or so folk said.
From that time Lady Fairfax was her old self to me, and we talked long and intimately of all that happened to us since we parted on the night of the siege. We talked both in the coach, and at nights when we stopped, for she had me in to dine with her. From all she said, the nation’s affairs were in a worse way than we thought, with many intriguings and rebellings amongst the Army officers; and she was very bitter that Lord Fairfax should have to ask a favour of Cromwell.
“’Tis the first and last favour, I warrant you,” she said, tossing her head. “A pretty son-in-law, to necessitate a favour from the Lord Protector.”
“Mother!” exclaimed Moll again, painfully.
At last, four days after we left Little Holroyd, we reached London, and were set out at Lord Fairfax’s house in Lincoln’s Inn, just as it came dusk. John was in great hopes of seeing his General, but these were disappointed; Lord Fairfax was not in the house at the time, and we heard from the servants that Cromwell had that day refused to release the Duke, and the General, deeply angered, meant to set out again for Yorkshire on the morrow. Lady Fairfax exclaimed when she heard this and chattered contradictory orders, and Moll looked dazed and downcast, and we stood in the midst of the Fairfaxes’ baggage, longing to take ourselves from where we were not wanted; and then my heart lifted, for Sam came striding in, very brisk and firm and cheerful. He was a grown man, now, our Sam, not very tall but solid and sturdy, with a very fresh cheek and my father’s sandy hair and a lively eye. He seemed very well pleased with himself, as a young man about to marry ought to be; he greeted John and me very warmly, and was delighted with Chris, holding him at arm’s length and exclaiming over and over how he had grown.
I was afraid lest we should appear very homely and countrified before these London people, these Bagnalls, and not do Sam credit, but when I hinted this Sam laughed heartily.
“Nay, mother,” he said: “They are afraid of you, lest they should not be grand enough.”
I did not see how this could be, but it seemed it was so, for with John having been so close to Lord Fairfax, and David so high up at Clare and now much respected for his preaching, which he did sometimes in London, the Bagnalls thought of us as belonging to the gentry. It is some fifteen years now since I saw these Bagnalls in Cripplegate, and in truth I do not remember them, even if I ever saw them, very clearly; I remember her as a very quiet large woman and him as a smaller perkier kind of person, I remember that they had a kind of accent in their voices which sounded strange to our Yorkshire ears, but what complexion they had, or eyes, or how they bore themselves, I do not know, save that they were kind and godly. Sam’s Constance I remember well, for I was greatly relieved when I saw her; she was a buxom, jolly, warm-hearted girl, not pretty but comely enough in a fair hearty fashion, and she had that strong steady love for Sam which is the right kind for marriage, for it endures through the many chances and changes of married life. She was an excellent cook, and cleanly about the house as Londoners go—though indeed that is not very far, for I saw some strange ways in merchants’ houses in London, both in Cripplegate and with the Bagnalls’ friends; they do not wash and scour as we do.
Well, I saw all the sights of London; Paul’s and Westminster, and Whitehall, with the very window where the late King was executed; and Cheapside, with the shops and the bustling crowds; and the Thames, with the pretty boats sailing up and down the river; and the Tower, very stern and frowning, and Blackwell Hall in Basinghall Street, with its heaped piles of pieces and its many little rooms, and its hall where business was done in whispers at the ringing of a bell. Sam was very eager about Blackwell Hall; he spoke much of it and of some part he called “the City,” the locality of which I never could quite fathom. It was Sam who took us sightseeing—Chris and myself, I mean, for John had seen all the sights many times while he was about the country with Lord Fairfax. Chris seemed quite different in London from what he was in Bradford; there were no more moods or lassitudes, he was always bright and eager and helpful, so that the Bagnalls greatly admired him. I spoke of this to John, and he said it was the same on the journey; Chris was the favourite of all the men, being always ready to put his shoulder to a bogged wheel, or his fingers to mending bits and reins, and very quick and apt at any messages, and extremely skilful and daring in horsemanship.
“So it will be best for him to leave us,” said John soberly. “He will do best away and alone.”
Only once did I see the look of distaste and irritation shadow the lad’s face after we left Bradford. It was when I put Sam on to urge him not to cross the sea.
“Wilt stay with me in London, Chris lad?” said Sam heartily. “Could’st live with me and my wife here.”
“You would be very welcome, Chris,” said Constance with a kindly look.
But Chris’s bright face clouded, so we all saw it was no use.
Sam and his Constance were duly married, at St. Giles’ in Cripplegate, and, what gave both the Bagnalls and us great pleasure, David came up from the country and gave us a sermon at the wedding. It was a great pride to me, I own, to see my little brother in a London pulpit. David was as fair and slender as ever, but there was a stern strength, a grave dignity, about him now. He preached on that text from the Philippians: And this I pray, that your love may abound. It was a fine noble sermon on the true nature of love, delivered with singular sincerity and beauty; full of scholarly allusions, and yet so clear and simple that a child could follow. Even Sam and Chris, who were neither of them very fond of hearing sermons, listened with all their ears, not stirring; the congregation were very much moved to the Lord’s service; as for me, it was only David’s sermon that brought me through the next forenoon, when Chris’s ship, the Beaver, sailed.
For she sailed, that ship, she sailed; she moved away from the land, drawing my heartstrings after her till they broke at last. We all went far down the river in a small boat with a sail, beneath bridges and between clustered grey houses and then open green fields, till we came to a very large ship hanging in the middle of the water, which had many masts and sails and spars and ropes all entangled, just as you see depicted in the prints. There were waves in the river, grey tipped with white, for it was a chill and windy day, though only September; our little boat rocked and bounced on the water, so that sometimes there seemed to come a hard knock on the bottom of the boat, and the spray flew high all round us. At another time I should have been terrified of all these strange new things, rivers and boats and waves and ships, but then I felt nothing of it at all; I sat and held Chris’s hand, so warm and young and strong, clasped in mine beneath my cloak, and thought only of Chris and his going from me. We reached the big ship, which had Beaver carved on its hull in very large letters, and lay tossing below its huge bulk, and then we all clambered aboard by a narrow ladder of rope, which swayed in the wind, so that I was very thankful when we all stood safe on deck. Sam took us all up some stairs to see the captain, whom he had met before: a large man with a brown face and kind blue eyes. I could see he liked the look of Chris; he said there was a great chance for young men in the Virginia plantation, and Chris seemed just the sort of lad to go. Then there came a deal of shouting and the captain turned hurriedly away and Sam bustled us down the stairs to the deck, and there were sailors running, and ropes sliding over the deck, and men pulling on other ropes, and sails rising, and masts creaking, and over it all the wind and the strange wild smell of the sea. Then John touched me on the shoulder and said:
“It is now, Penninah.”
I took my son in my arms and held him, and kissed him once strongly, and let him go.
I meant to be strong, I did not mean to draw out my farewells; but as I hung on the ladder below, descending to our boat, my flesh betrayed me, and I looked up at him. Chris was standing in the forepart of the ship; he was not looking at me, or at our boat, or at the hurry on the ship, but out to sea. His head was lifted, his rich golden hair blowing in the wind; his eyes were very wide, and there was a smile of joy on his fine red lips. As I watched, he drew a deep breath, and sighed it out, then flung back his head and began to whistle joyously—the clear bright sound was borne on the wind to my ears.
“He is happy,” I thought: “He is fully himself, and going to meet his destiny. I could not wish a better thing for him. So I must be glad.”
We saw the ship sail, watching at a distance from our little boat, though we had long enough to wait before she moved, and the wind rose and rose, so that the waves grew great and the boat tossed lamentably. David, poor lad, was constrained suddenly to vomit, for which he apologized with his usual courtesy. But at last the sails were all in place, and billowed out with the wind, very white and curved and huge, and there came a sound of singing and a rattling of chains, and our boatmen said the Beaver was taking up her anchor. And then with infinite grace the ship moved, heeling over to the wind, shearing easily through the tossing waters, and she glided ever more swiftly away and away and away, till at last we could scarcely see her, and then our boatmen shipped their oars, put up our sail, turned our boat about and made for London. I gazed back, shading my eyes, till I could see the ship no longer.
And so the son of Francis Ferrand set sail for the New World.
When I reached the Bagnalls’ house I told John and Sam I must go home. I felt I must have the familiar things of The Breck about me, quickly, or my brain would crack; I could endure no further strain. At first Sam put me off, and I saw he meant to try to keep me for a longer stay, but after he had been out next forenoon he came to us with a very sober face, and said it was best for John and myself to go at once.
“I have it on good authority,” said he, “that the Protector is very ill and like to die.”
“Then England will be free again!” cried John.
Sam grimaced. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe not. I think we shan’t see better till we have seen worse. You and my mother are best at home.”
We took him at his word very thankfully, and set off with the Halifax carrier the next morning. John was to ride one of our horses and lead the other, but his knee had grown so bad, with too little rest and too much anxiety, that he was fain to sit, while for my part I still felt feverish and sick. We pushed on with the rest, however, enduring as best we could, and at last we came to Bradford, and to the lane, and to our own dear home.
Although we had so longed to see it, when we reached it we felt strange there after our travels, and as if we should never settle down. But time went on and we grew into our old ways again, with letters coming often from Sam and Thomas, and Abraham a great joy to John. I picked up my old duties and found some new ones, and tried to put my love for Chris into them, visiting old Ralph, whom I had put to board with Sarah, very regularly, and devoting myself very carefully to Abraham and John. And presently my whirling thoughts settled, I was able to see things clearly again; I dared begin at last to remind myself of Chris’s sailing.
Whenever I thought of it, the picture of his eager daring face, keen set for adventure, between the ship’s sails and the tossing waves, came before my eyes, and I knew we had been right to let him go. I know I shall never see him again; I have lost him. England has lost him too. Something of brightness and joy, something of the glory and splendour of life, left the West Riding, perhaps for ever, when Chris found he could not endure to live there any more. I am sorry for that loss, as I am for my own. Still, he will help to make that far land bright. I am glad to think that there is something of Francis, and something of myself, in that far New World.