Love and Money (8 page)

“Sir Richard Bellomont has heard that you mean to seek your fortune in the New World.”

“He hath heard aright,” said William Lees. “All things go to wreck here, many godly ministers of our persuasion are silenced, and the light of the gospel is like to be put out. We go where we may worship the Lord in our own way.”

“Sir Richard is naturally concerned,” continued Thomas.

“Why? My wife is no concern of Sir Richard Bellomont's,” said William Lees.

“But Isabella?” urged Thomas. “She is his concern.”

“He is no very loving father, I fancy,” said William Lees with contempt.

“You are wrong there,” said Thomas steadily.

There was a pause.

“Master Thomas Bellomont,” said the weaver at length: “My wife has always spoken well of you, as an honest and well-meaning young gentleman. Let me ask you then to speak out plainly what Sir Richard's intention is in sending you here, and I for my part will strive to hear you with patience.”

“Sir Richard is concerned about his daughter Isabella, lest if she go to New England she will suffer grave hardship, yet if she stay here and be separated from her mother she may suffer more. He desires Mistress Lees to say what she wishes for the child, and Sir Richard will endeavour to accomplish it.”

“I will take no money,” said the weaver, his colour deepening.

“Isabella shall never go back to Bellomont,” said Joanna.

Thomas looked from one to the other. He had always liked Joanna, and now he felt a considerable respect for her husband. It was strange, he reflected; he could well understand how William Lees regarded Sir Richard as a sinful, tyrannical, useless cumberer of the earth, and how Sir Richard regarded William Lees as a canting hypocrite who wished to take all joy out of life by his unreasonable puritanical restrictions; yet Thomas himself liked both men and would have been glad of either at his side in an awkward fray. However, he must do his errand.

“I must see Isabella,” he said firmly.

“Isabella!” called William Lees up the ladder.

“Come down here, love,” called Joanna.

The child Isabella ran lightly down the ladder and stood at her stepfather's side.

“She is a child of sin,” said William Lees firmly, placing
his hand on her head: “But yet I have a great affection for her, unruly though she be.”

Thomas's heart seemed to turn over in his breast. The child was of a singular beauty, with copper-coloured hair which lay in great waves about her face. Her eyes were a very dark blue, sparkling and dancing like Sir Richard's, her complexion a pure and dazzling ivory. She was neatly though soberly dressed, and clearly well fed and well cared for. At her stepfather's speech she did not stir, but into her lovely eyes came a look of such insupportable anguish that Thomas wondered her mother did not leap across the room and take her in her arms to comfort her—it was all he could manage not to do so himself. What could it be like to be called constantly
a child of sin,
thought Thomas; Sir Richard and Joanna and William Lees all wish Isabella well, but between them they are killing her. If her spirit lives, she will turn strumpet; if not, she will sink into a drudge. Thomas gathered himself together, and calmly and steadily and with an air of entire conviction, lied.

“Sir Richard's wish,” he said, “is that Isabella should come to my house at Mesburgh, and live there under the protection of my mother.”

“If Sir Richard desired his daughter to be a gentlewoman, he should have wed her mother before she was begotten,” said William Lees in an angry tone.

“What like of a woman is your mother, Master Thomas?” enquired Joanna.

“She is a very worthy, kind and somewhat anxious lady, notable in housewifery,” replied Thomas. “My household is sober and godly,” he continued on a bitter note, for he was quite as angry as William Lees: “There is neither gaming, dicing, drinking nor any other such diversions in it. I am a poor man as gentlemen go, and I live a plain hardworking life. Nevertheless, I believe Isabella would fare better with us than in a house where her birth can never be forgotten, and I believe you would fare better in New England had you only your own children to care for.”

“It is not a question of faring better or worse,” said William Lees, “but of our duty as servants of the Lord.”

“We are not commanded to inflict suffering upon ourselves unless it be for some good end,” said Thomas. “A child not your own will always be a thorn in your flesh, Master Lees.”

“Isabella,” said her mother softly: “Come hither to me.”

The child ran across the room and buried her face in her mother's breast. William Lees clicked his tongue.

“She is ever too violent and too free in her affections,” he said.

“Isabella—nay, lift up your head,” said Joanna, turning the child's face gently upwards with her hand. “Look at me, and speak the truth now.”

Isabella looked up into her mother's eyes. For a long moment they exchanged a gaze which seemed to Thomas to contain all the anguish they had both experienced since the child's conception.

“Wilt thou go with this young gentleman and live in his household with his mother, Isabella?” said Joanna.

Isabella buried her face in her mother's breast again and answered:

“Yes.”

“If any one of you, man or maid, speaks of my cousin's birth, either behind her back or to her face, you shall leave my house within the hour,” said Thomas to the groom (who was also the serving-man), the old nurse and the young kitchenmaid, who made up his modest household. He glared at them so sternly that they were quite abashed, and casting down their eyes, decided they had best obey him.

“He is so obstinate,” complained Mistress Bellomont to old Martha when she heard of this, half pleased, half vexed.

“He is like his grandfather, a very proper man,” said Martha staunchly. “Not like his father who, saving your presence, mistress, was but a poor tool.”

These dialogues occurred the day after Isabella's arrival
at Mesburgh. Thomas counted it one of the great mercies of his life that at the moment when they reached the house the child, worn out by riding pillion earlier in the day, was fast asleep in his arms. It is a hard-hearted woman who is not touched by the sight of a sleeping child, and Mistress Bellomont was not hard-hearted, only a trifle calloused on the surface by a trying life. Isabella, pale with fatigue, her copper lashes lying quietly on her cheek, her little arms drooping helplessly, looked most beautiful, gentle and appealing, especially when presented as a little kinswoman of Sir Richard's. Mistress Bellomont took her straight into her arms.

“Why, the poor lamb!” she cried. “Martha, put a warming-pan in the bed in the gable room.”

The two women fussed over the child, feeding her, undressing her, putting her to bed—her clothes, though very plain, were of a cleanliness satisfying even to Mistress Bellomont, which was another mercy. When his mother came down to where Thomas was eating a belated supper, she seemed already to have taken Isabella to her heart.

“What a lovely child! A kinswoman of Sir Richard's, say you? She hath a look of him, do you not think so, Thomas? About the eyes,” said Mistress Bellomont innocently.

Thomas choked a little over his ale and plunged into an account of the iniquities of Mistress Brownwood and Sir John Resmond, at which his mother, poor ingenuous lady, was so filled with horror and alarm that there was no room in her mind for any other subject, this being what Thomas intended. When she showed a disposition presently to return to Isabella's degree of kinship with Sir Richard, Thomas cut short his supper and made off to bed.

But in the middle of the night he was suddenly jarred awake. Mistress Bellomont threw wide the door of his bedchamber, rushed into the room and drew back his bed-curtain with an angry hand. Holding a candle dramatically high, wrapped in a very shabby old housegown, with some kind of fard on her cheeks and her grey hair screwed up into short plaits above her ears, she had a rather ridiculous
air, but Thomas was too kind a son to find her appearance comical. Moreover, she was in a towering rage.

“Thomas Bellomont!” she addressed him in a loud angry tone: “That child you've fobbed off on me—she's a natural daughter of Sir Richard's!”

“Yes,” said Thomas.

“She's a love-child,” cried Mistress Bellomont. “Yes,” said Thomas.

“How could you do it, Thomas?” said his mother, bursting into tears. “How could you do that to me? Even your father never did that to me!”

It was clear that to Mistress Bellomont an illegitimate child was something obscene and disgraceful and altogether disgusting, not to be suffered in an honest house. Since his experience of his uncle's licentious household, Thomas was not at all inclined to disagree with his mother as to the general undesirability of bastards, but there was another point of view.

“Her birth is not the child's fault, mother,” said he.

“Whatever it is, it is naught to do with us. I will not have her, Thomas,” said his mother, her chin quivering and the hard tears of middle age rolling down her lined cheek: “I will not have her in the house.”

“You force me to say what I do not wish,” said Thomas.

“Say it, say it!” cried his mother shrilly. “Do not pause from any love for me.”

“It is my house,” said Thomas.

Mistress Bellomont's sobs rattled like the beating of a drum.

“Nay, mother,” said Thomas kindly. “Do not distress yourself. Give me the candle,” he added, sitting up, for his mother was shaking tallow all over the floor. He took it from her hand and set it down on a table by his bed, and Mistress Bellomont, quite overpowered by grief, flung herself into his arms. Thomas drew her grey head to his shoulder and comforted her, quite as though he were the older of the two.

“Isabella's mother has married a puritan weaver and they
intend to try their fortune in New England,” he began— not without guile, for his mother, he knew, did not care for puritan weavers. “The child is wretched with them.”

“Well; very well; that I can easily believe; but let Sir Richard care for his own children,” wept his mother. “Let him take her back to Bellomont.”

“Mother,” said Thomas very seriously and sincerely: “If you saw Mistress Rosamond Brownwood you would not confide any child to her care. She is altogether vile.”

“That, again, I can easily believe,” said Mistress Bellomont, giving her head a virtuous little toss, so that the ends of her plaits tickled Tom's chin. “But why should
we
take the child, Thomas?”

“I am Sir Richard's heir. He confides in me. There are matters betwixt us of which you know nothing,” replied Thomas solemnly.

His mother looked up at him, suitably impressed. “Couldst not tell me of these matters, son? Thy mother?” she ventured in a timid tone.

Thomas smiled grimly—screams and fainting would be the least of the reception his mother would give to the news that he had assisted Sir Richard in a highway robbery, he thought—and was silent.

“Sir Richard wishes us to take the child, then?” pursued Mistress Bellomont.

“My uncle Richard,” said Thomas, lying firmly: “wishes you to have the care of Isabella, because you are an honest woman and will grow her into an honest woman.”

“Well, that is so,” agreed Mistress Bellomont, raising her head and smiling happily at this flattery. “That is true, Thomas. I think I may say I can give her the education of a virtuous gentlewoman. After all, I have lived in great houses in my day. I do verily believe I can bring the child up as she should be brought.”

“Who better?” said Thomas, kissing her heartily.

“And it would be a shame to hand such a pretty little mite over to that wicked Brownwood strumpet,” pronounced Mistress Bellomont.

“So it would indeed,” agreed Thomas, as if the notion had never struck him before.

“Yes, I will bring her up as a virtuous gentlewoman,” said Mistress Bellomont with satisfaction.

This was all very well and a great mercy, thought Thomas, but in the next few days it seemed to him that Isabella received so much correction in the course of being brought up as a virtuous gentlewoman that she was likely to choke on it, especially as he judged she was not a meek or docile child by nature—one could hardly expect a child of Sir Richard's to be that. Her manners at table, her lack of prowess with the needle—she had been taught, as most weavers' children were, to card wool rather than to mend or sew—her occasional Yorkshire turn of speech, her light dancing gait: all came under Mistress Bellomont's well-meant but ponderous criticism. Thomas thought he saw a flash of the dark-blue eyes, a biting of the cherry-red lip, from time to time, but Isabella subdued her angry feelings, if they existed, with remarkable firmness for one so young, and continued to behave with great decorum.

On the third day of her residence at Mesburgh, however, after a long afternoon of instruction from Mistress Bellomont, Isabella sprang up and ran to meet Thomas when he came in, with a look of relief which was only too visible.

“Well, Isabella!” said Thomas cheerfully. “And what have you been learning this afternoon?”

“To walk with a book on my head,” said Isabella.

“Show me,” said Thomas.

The child raised a book with two hands and placed it atop of her copper curls, then walked solemnly round the room, maintaining her head at the proper angle.

“Why, that is well done! That is very well done!” said Thomas.

Isabella glowed with happiness. Turning to his mother with a smile, Thomas was disconcerted to see that she wore an offended look. Hastily he complimented her on her instruction of Isabella, but he was too late; Mistress Bellomont was vexed to be superseded in interest in her son's eyes
by another woman. Unluckily Isabella, knowing all too well, as a child does, where she was praised and where scolded, for the next week or so tended to follow Thomas about like a spaniel. Thomas noted with a sinking heart that his mother viewed this habit with increasing irritation, recalling the child sharply to her duties, with an angry spark in her eye. When at last one morning Isabella ventured with a happy smile to offer Thomas his gloves as he was going out, Mistress Bellomont snapped out in the unreasonable rage of a jealous woman that it was not Isabella's business “to wait on my son.”