As it was, I had leisure to weigh up the absolutely certain consequences of revealing to Mrs Bennet that she was sitting, almost literally, on a powder keg, against the far less certain chances of an explosion.
My conscience, I fear, has always been too easily satisfied, and this occasion was no exception. The assumption that, even if Mr Washington was a trifle sanguine, a veteran like Sergeant Millburn, who, it was clear, was the man to whom the private soldiers looked for guidance, would have taken all necessary measures, proved enough to quiet it.
Even so, I made an effort to alert my family to their danger, but my return to their side occasioned such an incessant torrent of complaints from Mrs Bennet about the heat, the slowness of our progress, the noise of our escort, the creaking wheels of the wagon, the dust and just about every other subject under the sun that I was struck dumb until Mr Washington galloped back again, with the news that we should be crossing the River Wear in a few minutes.
“We have but Roker to skirt,” he said, as we came into a village with low, brick built houses on either side, “ and then you will see something to make you stretch your eyes. There is nothing like it on the Tyne, or anywhere else in the world, I warrant.”
“What can it be?” I cried, “some natural beauty, famous locally but unknown elsewhere?”
“A beauty she certainly is sir, but hardly natural. Here we go, just at the end of this street.”
We speeded up, as if both horses and men were eager for their journey’s end, and came to the end of the street, and the world fell away.
“My word!” was all I could think of to say. “My word!”
Chapter Twenty-one :A Reunion
I suppose I had expected Sunderland to be a sort of smaller Newcastle, with the land on either side of the river comparatively low-lying, leading to the usual sort of ancient stone bridge, supported on many arches but a few feet above the water level. Instead, we seemed almost to leap across a cavernous gorge, deep and steep-sided, where figures like ants scurried about at the water’s edge, and ships, great, full-sized three-masters passed to and fro beneath us. To the left the river widened, yet still it was full of ships, while to our right both banks were lined with strange, brick-built towers, shaped for all the world like wine bottles, from whose necks great clouds of black smoke were billowing, and should have affected us sorely had the wind been in the other direction. I confess I could not make them out, although it was obviously some kind of manufactory. I discovered later that these were kilns in which the famous Sunderland Pottery was fired, with its celebrated metallic lustre, before being sent abroad as ballast in the bilges of colliers. Some of them, indeed, had ceased to smoke, and ant-like figures could be seen, shovelling containers like oversize kitchen sinks in and out. These were the saggars, in which the pots were loaded into and out of the kilns. Each one, I was informed, was the product of an unlikely-named ‘saggar maker’, assisted by the even more unlikely ‘saggar maker’s bottom knocker’, whose function was to test the containers for soundness by tapping their undersides with a hammer. I record all this merely for the education of those of us fortunate enough to have avoided such knowledge until now.
The great rainbow on which we soared above all this activity was one single arch, like Bifrost in the northern legends, and all of iron. The span must have been at least a hundred feet, and the distance to the water below us could not have been less.
I said as much to Mr Washington, who grinned broadly at this opportunity to impress.
“You are not far wrong with the height, Mr Bennet,” he replied, “but sadly out in your estimate of the length. The span is not one hundred feet, but two hundred and forty. You are crossing the largest single-span bridge in the entire world, and by far the largest ever built of iron. It contains two hundred and ten tons of cast iron and forty tons of wrought iron, and the stone piers supporting the ends are built of individual blocks weighing eight tons each. It has been likened to the eighth wonder of the world, and quite rightly so.”
“You are very minute upon this subject, Mr Washington.”
“I have needed to become so, sir. Since our removal to Sunderland, many have twitted me on its design by Mr Thomas Paine, whom the humorous insist on asserting to be a connection of mine, if not my protégé.”
“I have heard of Mr Darby’s famous iron bridge at Coalbrookdale,” I remarked, “but never of this remarkable feat. Why should this be so, I wonder?”
“I will tell you why, sir, it is because Coalbrookdale is a hundred miles nearer London than we are, and thus more accessible to Society, as it is called, so that the bridge there, a pitiful thing not half the size of ours, yet using half as much iron again, is much noised about, while we are ignored.”
At this point, however, it proved necessary to halt for negotiations with the keeper of the toll gate.
“They always try to charge us,” said the subaltern, when he returned to my side. “We never pay, but that does not stop them trying. It is difficult to argue, however, with a man with a file of musketry at his back.”
With nothing now to impede us, we sped across the bridge and turned left. I say ‘sped’ because, our escort, once on the south bank, instantly stood straighter, threw back their shoulders, and quickened their pace almost to that of a trot.
“We like to put on a show for the locals whenever we pass through the town,” said Mr Washington. “We are Light Infantry, after all, with the quickest marching pace in his Majesty’s Army, and it would never do to shuffle along like those clodhoppers of the Line Regiments.”
I saw no indication that the inhabitants of the town appreciated this ‘show’. The streets were not thronged with waving children or cheering townspeople, but why should they be? It was the middle of the afternoon, and I suspected that most of them were still hard at work, down the alleys which led off on each side, from most of which the sound of clattering or hammering could be heard.
I had anticipated that, after leaving the bridge, we would either carry straight on, towards a broad street adorned with shops, or veer right, towards an open square where a church of quite substantial proportions could be seen. I said as much to Mr Washington, who stared at me as if amazed.
“Why, sir,” he said, “that is only Bishopwearmouth. We are bound for Sunderland.”
“But is this not Sunderland?” I enquired.
“Well, sir, in a sense it is, but what is commonly called Sunderland encloses three quite separate settlements at the mouth of the River Wear. Monkwearmouth, on the other side, there, is the oldest, belonging originally to the monastery where the famous Bede studied and became a monk, a thousand years ago. Bishopwearmouth, where we are now, was the property of the Bishops of Durham, distinct from the monastery, and still largely is so today. We are now making our way down towards the true Sunderland, the land sundered from the monastery by the river. You will see that it is quite different from up here.”
It was, indeed, very different, if a long narrow street, lined with warehouses on a steep hill, with alleys on one side running down to the river and on the other up into a warren of side streets, with the noise of hammering and clattering coming from them all, and people bustling about carrying nameless pieces of wood and coils of rope could be said to be different from the open spaces about the bridge. The buildings themselves looked much the same, brick-built and, for the most part, totally undistinguished except by their dirt. There were one or two buildings of more distinction, which Mr Washington took great delight in pointing out, as, the Exchange, the Assembly rooms, the hotel and so on, but I cannot honestly say that I was impressed.
“What would you have?” was my guide’s response to such a comment. “This is a working town, much more so than Newcastle. We build ships here, more than anywhere else in the kingdom, and have done for five hundred years and more. And when they are built, we transport coal in them, for all Newcastle’s Royal Charter Monopoly. My own family’s pits send their coal here to be taken to London, which has an insatiable a
ppetite for the stuff. You would have seen much more industry had we come by the Low Street rather than the High. Down there it is really the quayside, and you should have seen everything happening, but our progress would have been much slower. But we are almost at our journey’s end now, and soon we shall come to a more genteel area.”
At length we came out onto an open space, covered with grass, and with trees about it. It resembled nothing so much as a large village green. On the other side stood a handsome church of the style of Queen Anne’s day.
“That is Holy Trinity,” said Mr Washington, “where we have our church parades since we have as yet no chapel of our own. This is the Town Moor, where fairs and reviews and other such are celebrated on occasion, and which serves the town for rus in urbe generally. You are not the only one to remember the odd Latin tag, Mr Bennet. And up the street in the far left hand corner of the square, we will find the barracks, and the new Black Cat Battery, both still a-building and rather makeshift, but that will not stop us offering you and your lovely ladies some comfort. But you must be impatient to see your daughter again, so let us get on.”
The next few minutes saw the inevitable pointless ceremonial of challenges and watchwords which the military mind delights in so much, but eventually we were in the barracks yard, and being helped to the ground by willing hands.
“Carry on, sergeant,” said our mentor. “You know what to do. I shall return directly, but I think the Captain might be pleased to see his relatives without delay.”
So saying, he led us through an imposing doorway into a corridor lit only by a small window at the far end, and through the first door on the right, into what was evidently an office of some sort.
“Captain not in, Sergeant Major?” he enquired of the rugged individual who had been seated behind the smaller desk when we entered. “I’ve got a surprise for him. Here is his family, come to visit.”
“He’s roond t’back, Sar,” was the reply, “Wi’ t’missus, playing at Bobby Shaftoe.”
Seeing the blank looks with which most of us met this statement, he continued, “Dandling t’bairn. Yer knaa, on his arm and on his knee.”
The last six words were evidently a quotation from some popular song, for they were uttered in a croaking, sing-song fashion, which, I fear, left us none the wiser.
“Right, you are, sergeant major. I shall be back in a moment to make my report, but there is no need to announce us. I mean this for a surprise.”
With this he opened a door at the far side of the office, and ushered us into a much larger room, much more comfortably furnished and almost home-like. At a table by the window a young lady sat, apparently crooning to herself, while opposite her, reading a paper, was Wickham.
His eyes widened when he saw us, and then his companion turned round at the noise of our entry, and revealed herself to be Lydia, but a Lydia grown almost buxom.
Her manner had not matured so much, however, for at sight of us she sprang up, almost dropping the bundle in her arms.
“Well,” she said. “There you are at last. What kept you so long?”
Chapter Twenty-two : The Adoration of the Lamb
All hope of a rational reply was immediately forestalled by the female rush to examine said bundle, which immediately began to howl.
It was hard to blame the child, suddenly confronted with so many thrusting heads and poking fingers, being passed from one unfamiliar hand to another, all the time accompanied by squeals of delight and interrogations as to who was mama’s lovely little darling, then.
It was as well that I felt no immediate urge to join in, as space within reach of the infant was very much at a premium. Indeed, Wickham himself was unceremoniously elbowed out of the way by Mary, in her eagerness to be at the new toy, and found himself obliged to talk to me.
“It falls to me to welcome you to Sunderland, sir,” he said, shaking my hand with his customary easiness. “I can only lament that you did not let us know when to expect you, so that we could have quarters ready for you. But, however, all that is easily arranged. We have been expecting you these three months past. It must be at least that long since Lydia wrote to you with her news.”
All of which, being translated, signified no more than a reiteration of Lydia’s “What kept you?”
“We have been travelling,” I replied, “and the letter missed us at Longbourn. Then it was misdirected, and it was only after travels rivalling those of Ulysses that it found us at Pemberley, scarce a week ago. We came on as quickly as we could, and, perhaps, might have been a few days earlier had Lydia thought to put her direction on her letter. As it was, we knew no better than to go to Newcastle and enquire at the regimental depot there, and we are come from there today with your supply delivery.”
He greeted these words with a smile that was a trifle wry, but betrayed no trace of embarrassment. I doubt very much if Wickham possesses anything which might accurately be called virtues, but he does have some traits that come close to resembling them. One of these is that, when he apologises, he does not make excuses, nor does he prolong the process like some I could name.
“I feel for you, Mr Bennet. I love your daughter deeply, of course, but if I had a guinea for every time I have impressed upon her the desirability of dating and addressing her letters, I should be a rich man now. So you came with the draft from Newcastle. Tell me, what do you think of young Mr Washington? Will he make a good Ensign of Foot?”
Wickham is also very good at changing the subject.
“He is a very obliging young man,” I replied. “As to his suitability as an army officer, however, I am in no way qualified to judge.”
We were not destined to pursue this subject further, however, for at this moment I found myself borne down upon by Lydia, thrusting her bundle into my face.
“Let me introduce to you your new grandson, papa, Master Francis Fitzwilliam Wickham,” she announced, proudly. “ This is your grandpapa, Fizzy, yes, it is, yes, it is. Is he not the sweetest thing that ever was seen, papa?”
The sweetest thing that ever was seen, having subsided into chuckles and gurgles under the cooing and petting of his aunts and grandmother, now took one look at me, and burst into the shrillest screeches that ever were heard.
“Undoubtedly,” I replied, “although I fear I cannot say that I applaud his judgement. But how came you to choose those names? Francis I understand, and acknowledge the compliment, but Fitzwilliam? Do you not think it a trifle indiscreet?”
“He is, in fact, not yet christened,” said Wickham. “We delayed the ceremony for your arrival. As for ‘Fitzwilliam,’ we were rather hoping that Mr Darcy might be induced to stand godfather.”
“I think that unlikely,” I began, “When we left him at Pemberley….”
I got no further than this, however, for I found myself interrupted by Lydia.
“And why should he not? He helped us so much that time in London, arranging the marriage and everything, and we have had nothing from him since. Why should he not notice his own nephew?”
There is no knowing where this might have led, but another thing that Wickham is good at is wriggling out of arguments.
“Let us talk of all that later, my dear. I am sure we must all have a great deal to tell each other. But your family must be exhausted after their journey. Excuse me for one moment, my dear, while I arrange their quarters. We can continue our delightful conversation when we are all rested.”
He stepped through to the outer office, leaving me obliged to take my part in the general admiration of the infant prodigy. That admiration was evidently not reciprocated, for the prodigy merely lay there with an expression of complete indifference on his face as he was passed from hand to hand. It would appear that it was necessary to placate this infant deity all the while by offerings and prayers of the ‘iddums, diddums, waddums’ variety to prevent him instantly venting his wrath upon his sectaries. Even I found myself joining in with “Goo, goo, goo” for want of anything more constructive to add to the proc
eedings.
Fortunately, I was rescued from having to live up to such an extravagant statement by the return of Wickham, which enabled me to pass my bundle back to Lydia. The infant’s demeanour towards his mother, I noticed, was markedly different from that displayed to the strangers who had been handing him about. He squirmed and wriggled and positively crowed with delight, stretching out his podgy hands towards Lydia’s ringlets, which he then tugged with all his might.
“Isn’t he a darling?” was the reaction of all the ladies to this assault, even Lydia, who nevertheless took care to disentangle her hair.
“I have put you in the new married officers’ quarters,” said Wickham. “I fear you will find them somewhat Spartan after Pemberley, but we will see if we can do better for you tomorrow. The beds have not been aired, but I am having them changed for you, and fires lit in the grates. They are not nearly so damp as when they were first completed, and I trust you will not mind the smell of the distemper. Your bags are a-carrying there as we speak. I will send some tea up, and some hot water for washing, and I suggest you make yourselves as comfortable as may be, and join us in the officers’ mess for dinner. We are normally quite informal, but I think on such a special occasion we may make an effort.”
Such an invitation was more in the nature of a command than anything else, and in any case we were all eager to clean ourselves up and recover from the excitements and inconveniences of the journey. Mrs Bennet was still covered in dust from her seat on the box of the cart, while the girls had found that perching on their sack for so long while trying all the time not to fall off had left them with aches and stiffness in unmentionable places. For myself, twelve miles or more on horseback is no mean feat for a man of my age, and I felt it so.
The room to which we were shown was rather bare, but the bed was at least large enough for two, and there was a steaming jug of hot water next to the soap and towels on the washstand. I washed off the dust of the journey, all the while ignoring Mrs Bennet’s encomia upon the unsurpassable virtues of her new grandson, and thought I should try whether the bed was as uncomfortable as it looked.
More Sport for our Neighbours Page 16
