Free Love and Money by Phyllis Bentley Page B

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.”
    â€œIsabella,” 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.
    â€œShe is ever too violent and too free in her affections,” he said.
    â€œIsabella—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.
    â€œWilt 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:
    â€œYes.”
8
    â€œIf 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.
    â€œHe is so obstinate,” complained Mistress Bellomont to old Martha when she heard of this, half pleased, half vexed.
    â€œHe 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 arrivalat 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.
    â€œWhy, 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.
    â€œWhat 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 ridiculousair, but Thomas was too kind a son to find