"But that's—impossible," he stammered.
"Why? Do they have some legal right to be there? We've been fully submerged in legalities of late. Is there something about the Cranfords' position at Eden that I should know about?"
"No, of course not. It's just that—"
"Then I want them gone," she repeated, her voice less even.
She was aware of James closely watching her and equally aware of an unprecedented look of defiance in his face. "I'm afraid I can't honor your request," he pronounced at last.
"Why?"
"I have no desire to do so. Sophia and Caleb are my closest friends. I owe them a great deal."
Slowly Harriet settled back in the seat. "Then I shall leave you," she
smiled pleasantly. "I shall take our son and return to Hadley Park, and you might as well say prayers for both of us because you'll never see us again."
She saw the mild look of defiance on his face change. She knew that her absence would mean little to him. But his son was another matter.
"I—don't believe you," he faltered.
"We shall be gone within the week, I swear it."
Slowly he shook his head, a clear look of pain in his eyes. "But why? I don't understand. What have the Cranfords done to you?"
"Nothing. But I can see, even if you can't, what they've done to you, and to Edward, and poor Jennifer."
"They had nothing to do with Jennifer's illness," he protested.
Harriet was on the verge of speaking further, but changed her mind. She'd promised herself not to waste energy on argument. "I want them gone," she repeated calmly, "or you'll find yourself without wife and son.
During the next few minutes he argued and raised objections of every nature. His voice became shrill and with no great effort she saw and felt his pain and was sorry for having caused it, but not sorry enough to alter her command.
As at last he fell back against the cushions in mute agony, she offered a serene suggestion: "Pay them," she said, "any amount you wish. Tell them that they are due retirement and offer them a generous purse."
"They would never take it," he snapped, glaring out the window. "They are too devoted."
At that Harriet smiled. "They are devoted," she agreed, "to their own mean and selfish ends." She leaned forward now and altered her approach. Steeling herself against sensation, she reached for his hand. "We are in the process of raising a son, James," she murmured, filling her voice with wifely concern. "God willing, there will be others. I want no influences about save those which I select." She patted the lifeless hand and abridged the last statement, "Save those which we select. The Cranfords are old, long past their prime. Our children deserve better."
He appeared to be listening. "They won't understand," he grieved. "They'll be deeply hurt."
"Pay them," she repeated with emphasis. "You now have control of the pursestrings. Pay them to salve their hurt."
He listened, then abruptly twisted in the seat. "I don't understand," he groaned, something petulant and childlike in his face.
With an effort of will, Harriet sent away the image of Edward which had mysteriously appeared before her. The comparison was brutal.
A few minutes later, she felt the carriage slowing for the approach to the gatehouse, heard the rattling vibrations as they moved across the double grilles.
Inside the inner courtyard, she saw, standing at the top of the Great Hall steps dear old Jane, holding young Richard in her arms. And with the sense of putting the meanness of the last few days behind her, she left the carriage even before it had come to a complete halt and ran up the stairs and threw her arms about the old woman.
In the closeness of the embrace, and with her son cooing in her ear, she looked back down on the courtyard, James apparently still seated inside the carriage, the second carriage just turning into the gatehouse.
With old Jane spilling out a hundred questions—"Tell me of London, the latest fashions, are there feathers this season, and what of the theater, did you see—?" Harriet took her son in her arms and tried to pacify Jane, and stole a final glance down on the second carriage, Sophia and Caleb just emerging, though still no sign of James.
What would he do? Would he honor and act upon her request? Would she be Lady Eden this time next week?
It was incredible, almost frightening, how little she cared.
Six days later, from her new private chambers high in the east wing. Lady Marianne's old chambers, Harriet stood at the window and watched the departure.
Stewards had been loading trunks all morning. As a going-away gift, James had given them the handsome carriage and a coachman, plus an incredible severance pay of thirty thousand pounds. No matter. Harriet would have approved of three hundred thousand pounds if that amount had been necessary.
She leaned closer to the window. James was there. Apparently he'd cancelled his customary horseback ride to the Hanging Man in honor of the occasion. Poor James. She knew he was shocked at how well the Cranfords had taken their dismissal.
And there they were, just emerging from the Great Hall, Sophia dressed elegantly in peacock blue, a gown she'd bought on their recent trip to London. And Caleb as always at her side.
As the two approached James standing by the carriage, Harriet considered averting her eyes. She could feel the intimacy of the parting even from this distance. There was a final whispered exchange, then James stepped back, his head and shoulders visibly bowed.
When the carriage started forward, she saw him raise his hand in parting, as though bereft. A few moments later he swung up onto his
horse and accelerated to a rapid gallop, passing beyond the gatehouse in rapid pursuit of the carriage.
Now below, she saw the courtyard empty save for a few stewards who were cooling themselves in a patch of shade near the castle wall. The guardsmen were lowering the grilles and closing the gates. Apparently they knew, as Harriet knew, that James would ride with the carriage as far as the Hanging Man, where there would be another tearful separation, and James would stay and ease his thirst and his grief and return sometime after nightfall.
Slowly Harriet looked back into the chamber. It was hers now. She had everything: titles, wealth, complete autonomy of Eden Castle, a son and heir.
Everything. Everything. As she left the window, she stopped at the edge of the Persian carpet, her left hand moving vaguely out as though for support.
All that remained for her to do now was to devise a manner in which she could learn to live with her impressive victory.
,yss<9
Seated atop the wagon in a cold drizzle, reins in hand, with Elizabeth and John beside him, Edward stole a final glance back at the house on Oxford Street. He'd hated to sell it, but as Elizabeth's meticulous bookkeeping had informed him, he'd had no choice.
In the beginning it had been fairly easy. Within a week of that morning when he'd ceded all claim to the Eden wealth, Edward had received word from Sir Claudius Potter that Lord James Eden very generously had signed over to Edward the deed to the house on Oxford Street plus an allotment of one hundred pounds per month.
He'd not asked for it and had considered not taking it. But there had been seventy-three children in the Ragged School on Oxford Street. And with the enrollment in his other schools already burgeoning he'd accepted both the house and the money in the name of the children, and life had proceeded, little changed from before, though considerably more spartan.
Then three months ago, while taking an early morning canter down Rotten Row, Sir Claudius Potter had urged his horse to daring speed, not taking into consideration the night's moisture still heavy on the mossy lane. The front left hoof of the horse had slipped and Sir Claudius, elegant in his black and crimson riding habit, had flown over the beast's head, his brittle old bones cracking upon impact with earth, his brittle old neck in particular. Not until the horse, uninjured, had wandered back to the stables had anyone thought to go back and look for the hapless rider.
The first month after the
funeral when the allotment did not arrive, Edward had thought little of it. But in the second month, they had been forced to farm the children and the volunteers out to the other Ragged Schools, now under the protective subsidy of the Union. And only last month when Elizabeth had confronted him with a debit sheet that defied argument, he'd placed the Oxford Street property in the hands of an estate agent, had accepted his first bid of four thousand pounds, had taken one thousand pounds and had purchased a small one-story timber-frame house in the slum of Bermondsey near Jacob's Island. Of the remaining moneys, fifteen hundred pounds had gone to creditors, and the rest had been divided equally among the other seventeen Ragged Schools, a meager attempt to repay the Union for its financial aid.
Now for the past week, the three of them, Edward, Elizabeth, and John, had worked night and day whitewashing the walls of the tiny structure in Bermondsey, a spirit of fun pervading their activities despite the grim turn of affairs, all except for John, who, while cooperative, seemed to keep to himself.
Edward's purpose in purchasing the old structure was to open a "Common Kitchen." "If we can no longer fill their heads," he'd laughed, "at least we can try to fill their bellies. Perhaps that's where we should have started all along."
Now, with the exception of the natural pain associated with saying goodbye to the house that had been in his family for over three hundred years, Edward was not suffering any great loss. He had the sense at last of being perhaps where he should have always been, not straddling two worlds, but planted firmly in the one that seemed to need him most.
"Say goodbye," he suggested now to the two who were looking back with him at the house on Oxford Street.
Elizabeth, seated next to him, drew up the hood of her worn cloak against the chill November mist. "It was always a cold place, it was," she said lightly.
John, seated on the other side of Elizabeth, at thirteen, more man than boy, was maintaining his usual silence. Edward gazed at the back of his head and wished with all his heart that he could penetrate through to the place where thought resided.
Now Edward leaned across and lightly touched his son on the knee. "Did you check the upstairs rooms? No need to leave any furnishings for the wrecking crew."
John nodded. "There was nothing there. It's all in the back of the wagon, everything that was left."
"Well, then," Edward said at last, "if no one feels the need for parting words, we'll depart." He waited a moment to see if anyone did. Apparently not, though long after he'd flicked the reins and the wagon had moved slowly down the street, Edward was aware of John, still looking back.
Apparently Elizabeth saw the concern on Edward's face and leaned close with a whisper. "Leave him be. It's the only home he's ever known. He'll settle in right enough."
Edward nodded and turned his attention back to the complicated traffic. About an hour later as they approached the low-lying area of Bermondsey, Edward looked ahead to the small timber-frame house and saw a dozen or so men milling about in front on the pavement, their caps pulled low in meager protection against the rain, some stamping their feet in an effort to keep warm.
"Our first customers," he murmured.
Elizabeth sat up, a willing soldier. "And the fire not even started. John, fetch in firewood from the shed, then help your father unload. At least we can let them in and keep them warm while they're waiting."
Now for the first time during the entire dreary journey, John spoke. "Are they really customers. Papa? Will they be required to pay for the food which Elizabeth cooks for them?"
"They'll pay what they can," Edward replied, guiding the horses close to the pavement. The waiting men looked up. A few tipped their hats. Most were old, all thin and cadaverous.
"And if they can't pay anything?" John demanded.
"We'll feed them anyway."
"How?"
Feeling mild annoyance at the boy's difficult questions, Edward tightened his grip on the reins. One of the horses spooked, veering to the left.
As soon as he'd brought the animal under control, John was there again. "How?" he asked a second time.
Sensing the pressure of the waiting men and the chill November rain, Edward muttered vaguely, "We'll find a way," and started to jump down from the wagon.
"Find a way where?" John shouted back. "You know as well as I that all credit is closed to us, that our empty pockets are likely to be as empty tomorrow as they are today."
Stymied and laboring under a weight of confusion, Edward was on the verge of shouting at the boy again when suddenly Elizabeth stood up between them.
"Please," she begged softly. "They're watching." She waited a
moment for the tempers to cool. "We have food—for a while. I lived the first sixteen years of my life under such conditions—food for a while. It isn't so difficult."
Abruptly she pushed passed Edward and swung herself down to the pavement. "If you two choose to sit here in a cold rain and bicker, that's your business. One of these gentlemen will help me with the firewood." And so saying, she turned, and within a few moments had enlisted the aid of four of the strongest men. As she led the way across the pavement, they followed dutifully behind her until at last all disappeared beneath the low door of the house.
Edward stared after them, still slightly shaken with anger. "John, I'm—" But as he turned to offer an apology, he saw that John had jumped down on the other side and was already at work loosening the ropes and canvas which held the furnishings in place. "We can always go to work, you know," Edward shouted toward the back of the wagon.
"So can they," John replied, jerking his head toward the front of the house where another small group had gathered, women this time, their heads covered with rain-soaked shawls, a few children clinging to their skirts.
Still standing atop the wagon, Edward looked first at the newly gathered crowd, then back toward John. A sudden wind gusted and threw a sheet of rain across his face. In spite of the wet cold and the activity going on about him, he felt a profound silence, as though something deeper than winter had just passed over him.
His son was right, yet he too was right, and that huddled gathering of men and women and children on his stoop, they also were right.
At that moment, he was aware of John looking up at him as though he were seeing an idiot or a fool, or both. And perhaps he was. All Edward knew for certain in that moment was that there was strength to endure everything, and that, lacking a sign from Heaven, the heart must persist. And he also knew that perhaps somewhere there was Infinite Mercy and Divine Guidance, but not here.
Here on this wretched road in Bermondsey, there was no God, not even a good imitation of Him. Here there was only Edward Eden, flawed, weak, human, cold, and now in doubt.
Yet in spite of these confusing thoughts, he jumped down from the wagon and held out his hand to the rain-drenched women and in a gentle voice urged them to go inside the house. Then he hurried to the back of the wagon and confronted John, not with words or logic, for John could defeat him there, but rather with action, hurling himself at the heavy canvas coverings where, beneath the collection of furnishings from the house on Oxford Street, was a carton of foodstuffs. It was a paltry supply and would soon be gone.
But it was a beginning, and on that Edward would gamble, acknowledging his feebleness, yet trying the best he could to lighten the burdens of others.
One half of London learned of the remarkable event which would shortly take place in their midst on the morning of June 29, 1849, when at a meeting of several gentlemen at Buckingham Palace, Prince Albert, His Royal Highness, communicated his plan for the formation of a great collection of works of Industry and Art in London to be scheduled for 1851. He also described the advantages of a site which had been selected in Hyde Park along the Serpentine at the end of Rotten Row and recommended an early application to the Crown for permission to appropriate it.
In the beginning no one treated the scheme with complete seriousness. Queen Victoria said pretty things about the idea which h
ad been fostered by the man whom she loved almost as much as her throne.
But when a wildly unimaginable design was selected to house the Great Exhibition, domes of glass stately enough to encompass and shelter full-grown trees, then the clubs and salons of the city began to snicker. "Al's glass house," Punch called it, and the jokes about throwing stones grew tedious and monotonous. Still, Joseph Paxton, the creator of the design, persisted, aided and abetted by Albert and his commission of dreamers.
Here the nations of the world would exhibit their swords beaten into plowshares—if possible mechanical plowshares—by the new industrial processes. "All history points," said Prince Albert, "to the Unity of Mankind." At the "Crystal Palace," as it was now called, Albert intended to achieve on a worldwide scale that "reciprocity" which Palmerston had prevented in Europe. At home, inspiration would flow from the liberated minds of a thousand independent, self-reliant creators.
Clever England! While for over a decade the rest of Europe had been involved in senseless, bloody revolution, she had pacified her band of lunatic revolutionaries by calling cabs for them on rainy days, by opening her arms wide and even providing a desk and lamp for the little German Socialist named Karl Marx. If the English were a quiet people, they were also a polite people, for politeness meant peace, and peace enabled her industrial lions to proceed, uninterrupted, with the greatest revolution of all, the sort that invented a machine to replace a dozen men, one process to take the place of four, brave trophies of a bloodless war. That she now wanted to exhibit the spoils of her miraculous conquest was understandable.
Thus it was that one half of the nation learned of the Great
Exhibition over warm fires, in the soft purple velour of private clubs, while trying on a new bonnet, or when the conversation lagged at a country house party.
The other half of the nation, the miners burrowing in the coal pits, the farmers toiling behind a team of ailing horses, the thieves and pickpockets and costermongers of the London streets, this half of England had not the slightest knowledge that anything remarkable was taking place in their capital city. How could they? Most did not read or write, and even for those who did, newspapers cost money and as practical objects served only to insert inside a tattered coat as extra protection against the chill wind.
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