Love and Money

by Phyllis Bentley

  “Mistress Brownwood? Why, yes—doubtless you are right,” said Thomas, comforted.

  He drew Isabella to him and kissed her. Their great happiness seemed to bathe Mesburgh perpetually in sunshine.

  10

  The message from Sir Richard which came a year later arrived at a most inconvenient moment, for Isabella had but just given birth to her son and Thomas was quite frantic at the thought of leaving her.

  “I shall not go,” he said, setting his jaw.

  “But, Thomas, old Simon says that Sir Richard is ill.”

  “Then he is ill. It is no concern of mine.”

  “It is a concern of mine, however,” said Isabella softly.

  Thomas made a sound betwixt growl and groan.

  “I cannot bear to leave you, love,” he said. “Why should I go?”

  “Because it is your duty, Thomas, and you are a man who always faithfully performs his duty,” said Isabella.

  Thomas growled more loudly, and touched his son’s cheek with a gentle finger.

  “Well,” he said.

  His tone was yielding, and Isabella at once began to discuss plans for his journey—when he should go, what wear, what eat before his departure, when return. He decided to leave Martin at home in charge of the household, and set off early the next morning with old Simon, who was now little but a bag of bones, toothless, doddering, bald save for a few straying wisps of thin white hair.

  “But what is this fever of Sir Richard’s?” demanded Thomas irritably as they rode along.

  “It is not a fever, begging your pardon, Master Thomas,” replied Simon—it was difficult to make out what he said, his voice being weak and his consonants missing. “ ’Twas more a kind of a thunderstroke. He was playing at gleek, with Mistress Brownwood and a gentleman from Annotsfield”

  “Sir John Resmond, perhaps?”

  “Oh no,” piped Simon: “Sir John never plays at cards.”

  “The less fool he,” muttered Thomas. “Well—go on. What happened?”

  Simon maundered along, sprinkling his talk with unfamiliar terms, tib and tiddy and mournival Sir Richard it seemed had a mournival of queens and thought to win but the gentleman from Annotsfield having spoke for the ruff-

  “For heaven’s sake, Simon,” said Thomas impatiently: “Quit thy ruffs and mournivals, which mean nothing to me, and tell a plain tale. Sir Richard lost the game, is what thou wouldst say, is it not?”

  “Aye—Sir Richard had a mournival of queens, four that is, sir, but the Annotsfield gentleman had four aces,” mourned Simon, shaking his head. “So then Sir Richard sprang up from the table, like, and threw down his cards, and snouted: ’There goes the last of Annotsfield!’ ”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Thomas involuntarily.

  “And he laughed very loudly but it was more like sobs,” continued Simon, “and then suddenly his face changed and he fell down as one dead. He was not dead,” quavered Simon: “But at first he could not speak or move his hand. Now he can speak though it is difficult to cut one word from another, and he bade us send for you. His face is somewhat drawn still,” concluded the old man.

  That this was most sadly true, Thomas found when he was ushered into his uncle’s bedchamber. A deep pang pierced his heart as he looked down at the wreck of his once handsome and debonair uncle. The left side of Sir Richard’s face drooped, and his eyelid twitched continually. But aside from these results of the thunderstroke (which was a disaster might happen to any man, thought Thomas staunchly) his uncle’s person showed the deterioration which the years of drinking and gambling and Mistress Brownwood had brought upon him. The fine clear cheek was marred by creeping veins, the handsome eyes were rimmed with red; the forehead was deeply lined, the curly dark hair lustreless; moreover an expression of weariness and disillusionment dragged at his mouth; he looked an angry resentful disappointed man. Thomas was very disagreeably affected; for even in this state Sir Richard’s countenance showed its resemblance to Isabella’s, while by contrast with her fair young beauty, now so familiar to him, her father’s marred looks seemed even more horrible.

  “Well, Tom,” said Sir Richard in a slurred but still strong speech. “Give me thy hand, lad.”

  Thomas obeyed, and was saddened again to feel the blood leaping irregularly in his uncle’s once powerful fingers.

  “Raise me on these pillows.”

  Thomas performed this office with the skill born of experience with his mother. Sir Richard glanced at him shrewdly. They exchanged a few words on Thomas’s journey. Then Sir Richard, looking aside, said in a careless tone:

  “I shall not be here much longer to keep you out of Bellomont, Thomas.”

  Thomas was still searching for something honest to say to this when his uncle spoke again.

  “I fear you may be disappointed about the land, Tom. Annotsfield is all gone. Annotsfield, Annotsfield! I’ve grown to hate the sound of the name. Resmond always wanted me to sell him part of Annotsfield—no other land would serve.”

  “Is it very rich land there?” asked Tom.

  “There is a township on it which grows. Well, it is all Resmond’s now. The last few acres went in that accursed game—they were a close at the end of Eastgate. And there are those two girls to provide for. Isabella, Isabella—I always think of them as half a mournival of Isabellas—but what the deuce are their other names?”

  “Isabella Lees and Isabella Brownwood,” said Thomas.

  “Aye. I cannot leave them portionless, Tom, even if it means robbing you. Try not to hate me, lad.”

  “I could never hate you, Uncle Richard,” said Thomas. “Though it would be false to pretend I do not grieve for the land, I shall always be grateful in my heart to you.”

  “Grateful? For what? Tom, dost know thou hast grown into a very well-looking fellow? Thou’rt almost handsome, with a smile and an air thou hadst not as boy. Art happy, Tom? Is life good, my lad?”

  “Very good,” said Thomas, smiling. His thoughts being thus naturally turned to Isabella, he said: “We were grieved that you did not come to the wedding, uncle.”

  “The wedding? What wedding?” Reading his answer in Tom’s look, he exclaimed with an oath: “I heard of no wedding. ’Tis that Brownwood customer has kept the tidings from me. So thou hast changed thy condition, eh? Who hast wed, then, Tom?”

  “Why, your Isabella,” said Thomas, quite astounded at the thought of his marrying anybody but Isabella: “Isabella Lees, who else?”

  Sir Richard stared at him, then suddenly began to laugh. He threw himself back on his pillows; great peals of raucous laughter rang out from his throat, his mouth gaping and shaking unpleasingly.

  “Well done, Tom! Well done!” cried Sir Richard. “Hast tricked them all!”

  The laughter went on and on, louder and louder until Thomas’s head rang with the sound, then it rose suddenly into a wild groaning shout and Sir Richard fell silent. For a moment his eyes shone up at Tom with their old merry sparkle, then the lids dropped and Sir Richard’s life was ended.

  “Don’t you ever dare to raise your hand to me, miss!” said Mistress Brownwood in a loud bullying tone. “I’ll teach you if you raise your hand to me again! What! You’d put your tongue out at me, would you? Take that!”

  Thomas could not but hear the sound of a sharp slap, though he knocked loudly in the hope of preventing it.

  There was a pause before a very genteel voice bade him come in, and when he entered the room which had been Mistress Brownwood’s for so many years, he saw the reason for the pause. Captain Brownwood’s widow and her daughter were arranged in a charming family group, the young girl leaning against her mother, whose arm encircled her maternally. The second Isabella’s pale cheek glowed where her mother’s hand had caught it, however, and her eyes, light blue like her mother’s, burned with an intensity of hatred which horrified Thomas. In fact he found he disliked the child heartily; long and thin and pale, with a long thin nose and a long thin mouth, a pale pasty complexion and pale lank hai
r, she was plain enough, heaven knew, but it was not her plainness which disturbed him—after all, he was no beauty himself, thought Thomas—but the glare of malice in her eyes.

  “Pray be seated,” said her mother.

  Thomas, reflecting not without satisfaction—of which however he was ashamed—that it was his own chair she was inviting him to take, bowed politely and sat down.

  “We have suffered a great grief,” said Mistress Brownwood in a lachrymose tone.

  “Sir Richard was a most noble-minded and chivalrous gentleman,” said Thomas, preferring to sound over-zealous rather than equate her grief with his own. She was such a bloated, painted, sluttish wreck of a woman that he could hardly bear to look at her; it sickened him to think of his uncle living in her company for fifteen years—“and all by my fault,” sorrowed Thomas. Well, that burden must be borne. 82

  “You are of course your uncle’s heir-in-chief,” said Mistress Brownwood impatiently, “being his nearest kinsman.”

  “Yes. My uncle has, however, made ample provision for his daughters.”

  “His daughters? What daughters? ” shrilled Mistress Brownwood.

  Observing her angry flush, Thomas understood that she was furious at the failure of her plan to make Sir Richard forget Joanna’s daughter. In fact it had served precisely to impress her existence on his mind. “Half a mournival of Isabellas,“ thought Thomas with a rueful smile.

  “This young lady,” he replied with a courteous inclination towards the pale child, “and—” he hesitated, because he hated to mention his Isabella in the same breath as her horrid namesake, but screwed himself to it: “my wife.”

  “Your wife?” said Mistress Brownwood, pretending ignorance, though it was clear to Thomas that both she and the child were perfectly aware of the circumstances of his marriage.

  “Isabella Lees has become my wife.”

  “Ah! You married Sir Richard’s elder daughter,” sneered Mistress Brownwood. “So you will take her portion. That was clever of you.”

  “I shall not forgive you that speech,” thought Thomas, but aloud he said courteously: “I am indeed most fortunate and happy in my marriage.”

  “Well! Let us come to the point,” said Mistress Brownwood with impatience. “Your uncle’s will. You have the land and the house.”

  “Yes. And I must request you, madam, to make your preparations for leaving Bellomont with all due speed,” said Thomas. “I do not wish to put you to inconvenience, but I must ask you to be gone by the end of this month. So that my wife and I may come here,” he concluded. He was thinking only of his longing to set to work on Bellomont, to have it cleaned and repaired and restored to its former beauty, but he saw that Mistress Brownwood took his remark as a reflection on her virtue, for her pale eyes flickered angrily. Thomas considered this and found that he did not care, but he added in a tone he strove to make kind: “My steward will inform you of the moneys set apart for your daughter and the times for paying them, and will also supply your immediate necessities.”

  “My daughter, my daughter!” cried Mistress Brownwood fretfully: “Always my daughter! Do not delay and draw out, Master Thomas, do not beat so about the bush! What hath Sir Richard left to me?”

  “Nothing, madam,” said Thomas.

  Mistress Brownwood’s jaw dropped and she gaped at him in horror. The cold laugh which tinkled through the room came from Isabella the second, who pinched her mother’s arm and cried triumphantly:

  “The money’s mine!”

  Thomas, bowing his way out, reflected that Mistress Brownwood, living on her daughter’s provision, though it was ample would do ample penance for her sins.

  Old Simon came doddering towards him to say that Sir John Resmond had called to offer his condolences. Thomas greeted the owner of Annotsfield coldly. After uttering a few conventional phrases about Sir Richard, Sir John offered his assistance to the new master of Bellomont, if Thomas should require any advice in the management of his estates—still large in spite of Sir Richard’s depredations. Thomas bowed but made no answer.

  “I fear you have unfriendly feelings towards me, cousin,” said Resmond.

  “I may have feelings, but you have Annotsfield,” retorted Thomas.

  “Sir Richard’s prodigious gaming was not my fault.” “No? You did not encourage Mistress Brownwood to encourage it?”

  Sir John flipped his thumb-nails.

  “And yet, Thomas,” he said, “I could do you a service if you would accept it.” Thomas was silent.

  “It is rumoured,” continued Sir John, “that your uncle bequeathed substantial portions to your wife and to Isabella Brownwood.”

  “That is so.”

  “But who is Isabella Brownwood? There is no such person. Her mother was never married to Captain Miles. Whatever the child’s name is, it is not Brownwood. You could retain her portion on those grounds, Thomas.”

  “Perhaps I could, but I shall not,” said Thomas.

  “Would it be agreeable to you that I should make known your generosity to Madam Brownwood and her daughter?”

  “So that they might feel they lived always on my bounty? No,” said Thomas.

  “I fear your generosity is as foolish as your uncle’s,” said Sir John, flipping his thumb-nails again sharply.

  “I do not game, however,” said Thomas. “And I am very happy in my marriage. So I hope to sell no more manors.”

  Sir John gave a short sharp bark which Thomas presumed was meant for laughter.

  “You are a better man than your uncle, Thomas Bellomont,” he said.

  To Thomas this seemed nonsense. But if he was any kind of a man at all, he reflected, it was due to his dearest Isabella. Ah! Isabella! Isabella! There was only one Isabella in the world for Thomas. He rode home happily to tell her that she was now the lady of Bellomont.

  A West Riding Love Story

  (1766)

  1

  Schofield Priestley Was a Yorkshireman. More: he was a West Riding man.

  It was on a cold wet Tuesday morning in 1766 that he had his great idea.

  He was riding down from his homestead on the Scape Scar hillside to the West Riding town of Annotsfield, Tuesday being Annotsfield market day, with the piece of cloth he had woven that week lying in front of him on the saddle. The sun was not yet fully risen and the wide landscape of turbulent hills looked chill, colourless and grim. A strong wind howled at his back and from time to time sudden gusts of rain in very large drops poured heavily down on him from the grey clouds flying across the sky. Many people would have found the scene dreary and comfortless, but to Schofield it seemed natural and stimulating. A shortish, wiry, sturdy, shrewd young man, with tousled dark hair and bright black eyes and a cheerful colour in his cheeks, Schofield had all the robust realism of his county, and the suggestion that his native Pennines were depressing would simply have made him stare.

  At present, in any case, he was too deeply engrossed in an inward vision to notice the rainswept hills. A new and charming pattern for a cloth was forming itself in his mind. He saw it woven in a soft strawberry colour: an arrangement of nine little rectangles forming a kind of lozenge, repeated so ... or so. But no; to repeat the lozenge endlessly was too simple. Crude. A “figured Amens” cloth such as he was planning must have a delicacy, a subtlety, a richness, if it were to please a merchant’s experienced eye. His nine-pointed lozenges must be interspersed with simple rectangles in some way or other, to soften and complicate the design.

  No West Riding road ever completes its course without climbing uphill and sinking down dale, and the rough stony track which Schofield followed down to Annotsfield was no exception to this rule. A short but steep ascent now confronted him. Always kindly and warm-hearted whether to man or beast, Schofield slipped off his plain brown cob and led him up the slope. In this fold of the hills they were sheltered from the wind and had no view; the horse, climbing steadily, kept its head down and planted its feet with care, Schofield did the same and thought about his fig
ured Amens. Suddenly at the top of the slope they came out into the open. The wind hit them like a blow and the huge landscape burst upon their eyes in the colours of full daylight, with the tower of Annotsfield Parish Church visible far away in the distance. At the same moment the design for Schofield’s cloth burst upon his mind, clear and perfect.

  “Aye, that’s right! I’ve hit it!” he exclaimed.

  He remounted Dobbie and rode away down to Annotsfield, whistling cheerfully.

  2

  At that time the cloth market in Annotsfield was held around the Parish Church, the fine Cloth Hall which the third Sir John Resmond was erecting for the town being yet a-building. The clothiers from the outlying districts—or manufacturers, as the more important of them liked now to be called—laid their pieces out on the churchyard wall, or sometimes to the scandal of the vicar on the flat table-gravestones themselves, and the merchants walked around looking at the cloths and choosing what they wanted to buy. If the day were wet or blustery, like this Tuesday, the market was a somewhat comfortless affair, what with the wet grass and there sometimes not being enough space on the wall to accommodate all who desired it. It would be a fine thing for Annotsfield when the Cloth Hall was finished and the cloth could be sold at one’s ease inside, on a bench one rented and was therefore sure of, and sheltered from the wind and rain.

  Today, for instance, there was a fair lanky lad at the market who could not find a place to lay down his piece wherever he went; the men already in occupation either giving him a blankly polite rejection or driving him off with laughing jeers. The lad was well dressed in a full-skirted green coat and wore a cocked hat, beneath which his fair hair was neatly tied back with a black ribbon. His speech seemed above the ordinary, too, with a kind of lisp in it, and he was rather good-looking in a way, having a long fair face—like a merino sheep, thought Schofield—a large well-shaped nose and big pale grey eyes. But for all that he was something of a noodle, Schofield judged; he seemed to have very little idea how to carry a piece of cloth, and fumbled it about getting it over his shoulder till two or three yards came out of fold. Eventually he actually dropped the cloth to the ground, and began to tug and pull at it in a feeble, unaccustomed manner calculated to cover the whole piece in mud before he’d done.