‘She is fortunate to have such a charitable cousin to attend upon her,’ Mr Brougham said in that courteous way of his. ‘May you be rewarded, my dear.’
‘Amen to that,’ Nan said. ‘But not in Heaven. I’m for rewards of a more temporal kind.’
And although they didn’t know it, there was a reward of a particularly temporal kind awaiting their charitable Euphemia almost as soon as she returned to Clerkenwell.
She and Will and Mirabelle set out on their travels later that morning, with their three oddly assorted attendants, brisk Tom Thistlethwaite, limping Bessie and Mirabelle’s maid, who was a dour-faced, determined old lady called Duffy. The coach journey was dusty and uneventful but the trains were very decidedly hot, even with the windows open as far as they would go.
‘Luckily I have brought some eau de cologne,’ Mirabelle said, when Will was gone, fishing the little phial out of her handbag. ‘So refreshing on a long journey I always think.’
It cooled their wrists and temples most agreeably.
‘Caroline takes cologne on a journey,’ Euphemia remembered, and the memory made her aware of how much she missed her cousin. ‘I wonder how she – they are.’
‘Well enough, I daresay,’ Mirabelle said, ‘and not thinking of us, you may be sure. ‘Tis a love match, is it not?’
‘Yes,’ Euphemia sighed, envying them despite her resolution not to do any such thing. ‘It is.’
‘Then they are fortunate indeed,’ Mirabelle said lightly. ‘Most of us mere mortals have to contend with a lesser state, do we not?’
The question was so direct it made Euphemia blush. ‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘I have no knowledge upon which to make such a judgement.’
‘’Tis my opinion, cousin Euphemia,’ Mirabelle said, smiling at her with her one sound eye, ‘that most gentlemen are unable to give their love in quite the undivided way that is expected of women. In this age of progress they are more concerned with building a reputation or a fortune. Now ain’t that so?’
Euphemia had to admit that it probably was.
‘Whilst we are expected to devote ourselves exclusively to our menfolk, and to run their households and rear their children, if we have any.’
‘Yes, that is true,’ Euphemia said. And she thought how willingly she would devote herself to Will if he would only give her the chance.
‘Ambition, you see,’ Mirabelle went on. ‘That’s what it is. A quality we ain’t supposed to possess, if you ever heard such nonsense. Why should we be any different from our brothers?’
The raw earth of an embankment gave way to the green of open fields and the passing flick, flick, flick of a copse of tall trees.
‘I mean to extend my literary salon to journalists as well as writers this autumn,’ Mirabelle said. ‘An interesting breed, journalists. Perhaps I could prevail upon your cousin Will to tell us about Ireland and the potato famine.’
‘I doubt it,’ Euphemia said. ‘He don’t speak of it to anyone, not even us.’ And it was true. If they wanted to know where he’d been and what he’d been doing they had to read his articles. It was curious that until Caroline’s wedding she hadn’t noticed how very guarded he was, but he’d been so distant with her during the last week she could hardly help being aware of it now.
‘Creatures of extremes,’ Mirabelle said. ‘Reticence is common to one half of the profession and loquacity to the other. The reticent are the more interesting. I will see what may be done with cousin Will.’
‘I doubt if you will prevail,’ Euphemia felt she had to repeat her warning. ‘He is a very private creature.’
‘And you love him, I think,’ Mirabelle said shrewdly.
It was possible to be honest with this oddly outspoken cousin. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Which love ain’t returned?’
‘He loves me as a brother,’ Euphemia temporized.
‘But not in the way you would wish.’
‘No, I fear not.’ It felt so final to admit it like this, but there was no doubt about it, not after the chill of the last week.
‘Then you’d best find an ambition,’ Mirabelle said, practically. ‘That’s my advice. Or take a husband from the many who love you. You have refused several, have you not?’
‘Yes,’ Euphemia admitted, cheered by the memory. ‘But I do not think they were particularly eager for acceptance.’
‘How so?’
‘They took their answer without argument.’
‘Gentlemen,’ Mirabelle said, as if that explained it. ‘And the more fools they. So if it ain’t to be Mr Will Easter, you’ll need an ambition. Have you found one yet?’
‘I have found an occupation, for I teach in the ragged school.’
‘Very commendable,’ Mirabelle approved. ‘When love is doubtful it is sound policy to keep oneself occupied, but I would advice you to find an ambition as well. Ambition is more demanding. Would you care for a little more cologne?’
Euphemia dabbed the cologne on her hot forehead, and as the evaporating spirit cooled her head, she wondered where Will was and if he ever thought of her when he was away from home. She decided with a sigh that he probably didn’t.
Euphemia would have been surprised and gratified if she’d known how often she was in Will’s thoughts during his long hot journey to Nottingham.
Caroline’s marriage had had a peculiar effect upon Will Easter, and one that he hadn’t expected at all.
It had all begun in church, at the moment when Uncle James had smiled at Henry and told him, ‘You may now kiss the bride.’
The women in the congregation had caught their combined breath in a little suppressed sigh of satisfied romance, and the sound had made Will feel irritable and uncomfortable, so that he had to look away from them at once and find something else on which to focus his attention.
What he found was Euphemia’s lovely madonna face. It was turned towards her embracing cousins and wore an expression of such melting tenderness that he was lifted with a rush of overpowering affection towards her. And to his surprise and shock he realized that it was quite the wrong sort of affection. He wanted to step forward to the altar rail and take her in his arms and kiss her, not courteously and gently as Henry was doing, but over and over again, with all the passion he was feeling so strongly. In fact, if he hadn’t been twenty-eight years old and sensible, he would have imagined he had fallen in love.
It was a blessing that he was in church with a ceremony and a congregation to restrain him, otherwise he might have spoken to her there and then. Poor Pheemy. What a shock that would have been, when they’d been like brother and sister all these years. As it was, the service and the reception gave him a chance to get these new improbable feelings under control, although as he realized in the next few days, now they’d been roused they refused to disappear altogether. It made his life horribly difficult. Obviously he couldn’t run the risk of being alone with Euphemia, but he even felt ill at ease with her when they were in the same room and with other company about to chaperone them. Ill at ease and unshielded, somehow, open to misunderstanding and the possibility of misinterpretation. In fact if Nan hadn’t had the tact to invite cousin Mirabelle to stay, life could have become quite awkward on several occasions during the last week. It was very upsetting.
So when he arrived in Nottingham and Tom Thistlethwaite packed his luggage aboard a cab saying, ‘Sight better’n weddings, eh?’ he was happy to agree.
‘Can’t be doing with all that pie-jaw,’ Tom said cheerfully. ‘Give me the single life, that’s what I say. Love ‘em and leave ‘em.’
‘Sworn bachelor, eh?’ Will teased, climbing into the cab.
‘Lord, love yer, yes,’ Tom said, shutting the low door after him, ‘never found a woman I could put up with fer more’n a week. A day’s too much sometimes. I likes ter be up an’ away. Ready fer the off are we, sir?’
Yes, Will thought, as the cab rocked them over the canal and into the town, that’s about the size of it. Tom and I are the sort of men w
ho have to be constantly on the move. Always ready for the off. If we stay in one place for too long we stifle, or start thinking foolish thoughts. And it occurred to him that his friend Jeff Jefferson was the same. We’re just not the marrying kind. That’s what it is. We’ve been bachelors too long to change now. Was it any wonder he’d felt uncomfortable at his sister’s wedding?
By the time the cab racketed through the archway into the long courtyard of the Flying Horse in Cheapside he had turned his mind away from the confusion of the last week and was ready for anything. Which was just as well, for the ancient coaching inn was crowded with people, merchants and bankers, horse riders and horse traders, a quiet group of Chartists up for the meeting, and newspaper men from every paper in London.
It wasn’t long before Will found three friends from Fleet Street and the Strand, and the four of them decided to dine together, drink together and pool their expenses and their findings, ‘being,’ as the man from the Chronicle said, ‘I don’t see much chance of a revolution with this little lot’. And certainly the Chartists in the Flying Horse were a sober crowd, speaking low, drinking little and dining frugally. In fact they took themselves off to their meeting so quietly that Will and his friends didn’t see the going of them.
But the meeting was easy to find, for it was being held in the Market Square, a mere hundred yards away from the Flying Horse and it was brilliantly torch-lit.
Unfortunately the torches seemed to be the only brilliant thing about it. The first speeches were boring and predictable, and so was the first decision that was put to the vote. Chartists everywhere would collect signatures for ‘a third and overwhelming petition for universal suffrage’.
But then just as Will was beginning to think that he would hear nothing new and was folding up his notebook ready to put it back in his pocket, the main speaker of the evening arrived. And the main speaker was Mr Feargus O’Connor.
He was in electrifying form. ‘Yes,’ he roared. ‘Let us say “yes” five million times to the six points of our Charter. Let our procession fill the streets of London. Let our combined and potent voice be heard. But let us take other action, for I tell you, my friends, a petition is not enough. We must be bold in innovation, forthright in pursuit of power. And to that end, gentlemen, I tell you here and now, that I intend to stand for Parliament in this constituency. Let the sitting members look to their laurels. Tell our local worthies, Mr Hobhouse and Mr Gisbourne, that their days are numbered.’
‘Now that’s more like it,’ Will said, taking notes as well as he could in the darkness. That was news.
And there was more to come. Their renowned speaker had taken other action too. He had founded a ‘Land Society’ and was proud to tell them what its objects were. ‘We mean to purchase land on which we shall settle a chosen company, selected for the purpose, in order to demonstrate to the working classes of this Kingdom, firsdy the value of land, as a means of making them independent of the grinding capitalists; and secondly to show them the necessity of securing the speedy enactment of the ‘people’s charter’ which should do for them nationally, what this society proposed to do sectionally, namely, to accomplish the political and social emancipation of the enslaved and degraded working classes’. Three communes were already planned, and would soon be built, in Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, and Snig’s End in Gloucestershire, and at Minster Lovell, near Oxford. ‘The next stage of the revolution has begun, my friends! It must and will progress!’
The news was greeted with the first cheers of the evening. And Will made up his mind to interview Mr O’Connor and set off through the crowd towards him at once.
Mr Feargus O’Connor was even more forthcoming in private than he’d been on the rostrum. ‘The revolution is upon us,’ he said. ‘Write that to your readers, young man. The revolution is upon us. Let our masters beware. What cannot be won by petition and persuasion will be taken by force of arms.’
‘An armed rebellion?’ Will enquired.
‘If necessary. Yes.’
‘Does he mean it?’ the Chronicle wondered, as the four reporters strolled back to the Flying Horse through the smoke-filled air.
‘Yes,’ Will said. ‘I think he does.’
‘Is the long-awaited English revolution about to begin at last?’
It was an exciting thought.
‘If I wanted something as much as they want the vote,’ Will said, trying to see the Chartists’ point of view like a good journalist, ‘I’m damned if I’d go around just signing petitions, especially when they’ve already had two of ‘em ignored. Their patience must be running pretty thin, don’t you think?’
‘What would you do eh, Easter?’ the Chronicle asked.
‘I’d take a gun to somebody’s head, I daresay, the same as they will.’
‘It’s lucky you’ve got all you want then.’
But had he? The words echoed in his mind all night, as he tossed and turned on an uncomfortable bed in a hot airless room under the eaves. Had he? He was a reporter now, but he couldn’t deny the shaming knowledge that he had chosen to change jobs despite his father’s death and at quite the wrong time for the rest of the family. It was a demoralizing way to have achieved what he wanted. It left him with a feeling of resentment and dissatisfaction, as though he should be striving for more and greater things, perhaps to make amends. But how could he do that, when he had no idea what they were? And then there was this peculiar change in his attitude towards Euphemia, who had done nothing at all to provoke it and certainly didn’t deserve it. It hurt him to be behaving in such an irrational way. He was still tossing and still wondering when the window panes grew grey and cocks began to crow. And he was no nearer an answer.
In Bedford Square Euphemia was wakeful too.
It was very lonely in Nan’s great house, even with old Bessie to fuss over her and Cook to pet her and feed her with nourishing food, and at night, on her own in the bedroom that she and Caroline had shared for nearly nine years, she missed her cousin too painfully to be able to sleep, especially with that odd, honest conversation with cousin Mirabelle still reverberating in her mind. It was quite a relief to get up in the morning and order the carriage to take her to Clerkenwell so that she could be busy with Jimmy and Matty and their various children.
They were all delighted to have her back.
‘Just in the nick of time,’ Matty said. ‘We’re to have an important visitor on Monday.’
‘From the Church?’ Euphemia asked, for that was where most of Jimmy’s important visitors came from.
‘No indeed,’ Jimmy said, beaming at her. ‘Not the Church, Pheemy dear. Oh no indeed. The aristocracy. We are to receive a visit from your Miss Nightingale.’
‘The nursing lady?’
‘The same. Ain’t that an honour? She and her family are staying at the Burlington Hotel and she is making the rounds of as many ragged schools as she can find.’
‘Don’t she mean to nurse any more?’
‘According to Canon Fielding her family won’t allow it,’ Matty confided. ‘Which is hardly surprising when you consider what dreadful women most nurses are. Drunken harridans for the most part, I fear. But then again, he says they don’t approve of anything the poor lady wants to do. In fact, between you and me, my dear, I’m not at all sure they even know about these visits. So we are all the more honoured.’
The news was so exciting that for the next few days Euphemia couldn’t think of anything or anybody else. Not even Will and Caroline. She tried to imagine what the lady would look like, and decided that she would probably be gentle and frail and rather timid if her family disapproved of her so much, but splendidly dressed of course, because the Nightingales were extremely wealthy.
On Monday morning she took particular pains to dress herself as well and as neatly as she could, and all through the morning, while she helped Matty in the linen cupboard and the two nursemaids in the nursery, she was dreaming of the visit. But in the heat of their crowded schoolroom she was too busy to do an
ything but attend to her pupils, with the result that the Nightingale party had arrived and were walking through the doorway before she was aware of them. And Miss Nightingale was the very reverse of what she had expected.
For a start, although she was one of three ladies being introduced by Canon Fielding, there was no doubt of her importance. She was modestly dressed in a simple gown of violet silk trimmed with a neat collar of blonde lace, and her hair, which was thick and chestnut coloured, was simply dressed too, parted in the middle and drawn back to be hidden under an unassuming lace cap. But she had such an air about her, a quiet yet forceful authority, which was partly due to the way she walked, for she was tall and willowy and moved with a lilt, as though she were dancing, and partly to her manner of speaking, which was as quiet and musical as her walk, but mostly to her style of questioning, which was direct and knowledgeable and disconcertingly probing. Like a man’s.
The very first thing she noticed was that the children had clean hands and faces. ‘Do you wash them, Mrs Hopkins?’ she wanted to know. And when told that they did, she enquired about the cost, writing down their answers in a little black notebook. How many bowls did they use? How much soap? Who provided them? How often were the towels washed?
‘Has their cleanliness contributed to better health, would you say?’
‘It has made some contribution certainly,’ Jimmy told her.
‘In what way?’
‘We have fewer children absent with sickness and diarrhoea.’
‘You feed them too, so Canon Fielding tells me, so it is possible that this may account for their improved health too.’ Giving him a smile.
‘We hope so.’
‘What do you feed them, Reverend Hopkins? I would be interested to know.’
While Jimmy told her all he could about the soup they prepared each day and suggested that she might care to walk across to the rectory and see the preparations for herself, the children stood by their benches and watched their visitor in awed silence. And really, Euphemia thought, you couldn’t blame them for she was plainly a great lady and very beautiful, with such a strong face and such intelligent grey eyes. A lady to admire and follow. If she ever decided to start her school for nurses, she thought, then I would like to be one of them.
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