World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  Though he stole frequent glances at the stranger, Walter did not once catch his eye. Yet, he formed the strongest conviction that the man was somehow assessing Arabella and himself. She, too, was plainly uneasy, for she made only the most desultory conversation and spent much of the journey gazing tensely out of the window.

  "Dear, dirty Preston!" He spoke as if to himself; his manner did not challenge Walter to reply.

  Yet, he looked at Walter, pursed his lips, smiled thinly, shook his head as if the two of them already shared some knowledge or opinion, and began to turn from the window. When he halted and looked back at Walter, it appeared to be in a spontaneous afterthought.

  "Fisher," he added. "If I may make so bold as to introduce meself. Dr. Arbuthnot Fisher. I think we are all about to become temporary neighbours at Blackpool?"

  "Why yes!" Walter smiled and introduced himself before presenting the doctor to Arabella.

  "You are from Preston?" he asked, picking up the older man's remark.

  "No. From Manchester. But I have watched the towns of Lancashire—and Yorkshire—growing these last forty years and more. And the singularity of this"— he sighed and gestured at the Preston townscape—"never fails to surprise me."

  "Oh?" Walter looked out at the town, wondering what the doctor could mean. It seemed much as any other northern town—a sea of slate over which tall chimneys poured an endless rain of soot.

  "Indeed. Other towns, as they gain in numbers, wealth, and factories, gain also in civilized appointments, public cleanliness, and other material amelioration. Preston alone is as…" He stopped and looked at them in sudden thought. "Have you never visited here before?"

  They shook their heads.

  "Why, then"—he laughed—"then you shall see a town as dirty and narrow and crooked as any your grandfathers ever trod in. The shops are as Hogarth might have sketched them. There are no public buildings—not even so much as a market. No public baths either, mark you; neither hot nor cold."

  "No news rooms?" Walter asked.

  "Two," he conceded. "But even the better of them is very unworthy of its subscribers. No"—he sighed again and spoke as a teacher might of children beyond salvation—"it is the citizens, the better citizens, who are to blame for this lamentable state of things. They seem intent only on gathering wealth. They give little thought to their town and its people. When I think what Manchester, Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax, and even Huddersfield have become, I shudder for Preston. Truly I tremble for it. Half a century of steady public spirit and expenditure would still leave it defective."

  Walter wondered whether the doctor had at some time failed at a local Preston election. "I fancy we may soon see a like desertion of Manchester and other cities," he replied. "The railway will attract those who can afford the fares to move out of the centres. Preston may be in advance of the times. Other places may soon revert to Georgian barbarism at their hearts."

  Though the doctor sighed and shook his head he did not, Walter noticed, seem over-pleased to have his own pessimism outdimmed. His response was to clap his hands and, rubbing them vigorously together, beam at Walter over the tops of his halfmoon spectacles. Then, still smiling, he turned to Arabella. "But there!" he said. "No one comes to Blackpool to fret over the problems of our cities."

  Arabella did not venture an opinion. The train had stopped and they waited to be unlocked from their coach. Walter searched out their tickets and the excess-luggage ticket that the clerk at Earlestown, not being as complaisant as the one at Boxmoor, had exacted.

  "There's an iniquity," said the doctor, pointing to the excess ticket. "The rate has nearly doubled in only four years. What was it? A penny a pound, stated on the ticket. And now they cross it out and write twopence. I know. I read the prospectuses."

  "Railways must live if railroads are to build," Walter said.

  The porter unlocked them and both the men climbed out to hand Arabella down. The platform was wet and muddy and she had to pick her way with care.

  "There are four or five public coaches at the gate," the doctor told them. "But if ye'll take my advice, ye'll wait out the hour and take Bamper's. He's only four inside and none out. It's the most comfortable doing the run from here to Blackpool."

  "What d'you think, my dear?"

  Arabella looked dubious. She was on the point of electing for an immediate departure when the doctor, with a knowing smile, added, "Unless ye've any pressing reason to get there sooner."

  "No!" she said firmly. "Let us take the more comfortable coach by all means."

  Walter laughed as he turned to the doctor. "You have so praised this town that I greatly look forward to this delay."

  "Ah," said the doctor, "but it boasts one jewel that no serious-minded young person should overlook."

  "Oh?"

  "Go to the corner of Church Street. Gilberton the chemist." Already he was walking away. "Ask him to show you his fossils."

  Gilberton looked more like a farmer than a tradesman. In fact, he was no chemist but a mere retailer of drugs whose business had been greatly sacrificed to his geological mania. His face told of long exposure to wind and sun, and his hands always bore the mark of some recent digging. That the Thorntons were perfect strangers to him was of not the slightest consequence; they were interested enough in his work to delay here an hour—and that was a passport to his immediate confidence.

  He took them through his shop to the back room, where stood three large mahogany cabinets each with two dozen drawers of various depths. Every drawer was labelled with zoological words in a barely decipherable hand.

  "They're mostly of the mountain limestone formations," he said, opening one of them.

  It was full of small mollusc-shaped stones and fragments. Many were tagged—and with more care than the drawers, for the names could actually be read. Schizodus schlothemi, said a little thing like a lifeboatman's hat. Terebratula digona, asserted a miniature miller's sack with a bullethole mouth. "That was from Bradford clay," Gilberton said. Pleurophorus, claimed another hesitantly before offering in parentheses and a smaller hand (Pleurorynchus(?)). "It's so hard to come by information here," Gilberton explained. "One does what one can."

  Many were unlabelled. There were snails with beautiful lightning strokes across their shells; ammonites with bands as sharp as the day they died; balls like giant, folded-up woodlice; coils like toy pagodas; shells like walnuts, like strange pastries, like well tamed hair caught in a wind, like oak galls, like the gizzards of chickens.

  "Such variety!" Arabella said.

  "And each from its own stratum. Each to its own time. Not one in thirty of these can be found living today. These are from primary strata. These…" he opened another drawer in the neighbouring cabinet, "from secondary. Each to its time."

  "Some are more than two thousand years old, I shouldn't wonder," she mused.

  He chuckled. "Twenty thousand…two hundred thousand…two million— who knows?"

  "Oh," she said. "But the earth itself is only six thousand years old."

  "We have only the word of a bishop for that. Here!" He pointed at his specimens. "Here is the word of God. If not written in his own hand, at least in his own handiwork."

  "They really are that old?" Arabella asked, touching them with a new reverence. "Two million years?"

  "That is a guess. It is all a guess. See. This"—he picked out a simple, nutlike shell labelled Lingula davisii—"this is from the silurian rocks of South Wales. Sir Roderick Murchison has this year published his analysis of the complete system. Do you know there are places where more than twelve thousand feet of aqueous rocks overlie the silurian? Sandstone, carboniferous rocks, clays, grits, oolite…all formed by the slow, patient washing down and compression of river silt. How long do you think it might take to wash down twelve thousand feet of sand, or mud, or silt…for the seas to rise and fall and rise…for tropics to come…and deserts…and ice? And all to go again. Many times. Your bishop has strange notions of the laws God wrote for his Earth to
obey."

  Arabella, who had never heard episcopal authority questioned before, was torn by this remark. On the one hand it was insolent of a mere tradesman to sneer so at a bishop; yet, on the other, the vision he offered of Creation was vaster and more sublime than the hazy notions she had been taught—a six-day frenzy a year or two before Abraham. Two million years! The idea of so much time and so much happening!

  "Two million years!" she repeated aloud.

  "And all that time…" he held up the little shell again, "this little creature, or remnant of a creature, lay beneath that slowly gathering overburden, waiting, waiting…"

  "For you," Walter said.

  Gilberton smiled. "For a good friend. William Smith. You may know him."

  "I know of him, of course," Walter was impressed. "His geological maps are invaluable to us. A friend of yours?"

  "I hear from Northampton he is very ill. He was sixty this March you know."

  "Dear me."

  "Why is the history of South Wales so violent?" Arabella asked. "Or do you mean New South Wales?"

  The two men laughed. "That was merely an example, my dear," Walter told her. "The history of everywhere else is just as varied."

  While she absorbed this intelligence, Walter told the shopkeeper of his present work at Summit Tunnel.

  They thanked the old man profusely for his kindness and bought a small box of peppermints and some opium pills, so that he should not be entirely out of pocket, before they returned to the station.

  "Do you think any of that is true, dearest?" Arabella asked.

  "Not one quarter, not one hundredth, part of the truth," he told her. "So much yet remains to be discovered. But that"—he gestured back at the shop on the corner—"makes me feel very humble! We have no idea, no idea, of the wealth of treasures stored up by the labour of people in such humble classes. Up and down the country."

  "One realizes," she agreed, "what progress there must have been in all grades of society—when shopkeepers can befriend professors and gain learning enough to mock bishops!"

  The thought of it thrilled her; it was so dangerous.

  "What do you think of my fossils man?" Dr. Fisher asked when they were in Bamper's coach and bowling along through the somewhat indifferent landscape between Preston and the sea. The fourth seat was vacant.

  "Splendid fellow," Walter said, feeling the inadequacy of this judgement.

  "Did he show you his bear's tooth?"

  "No. Only his mineral remains."

  "Pity. He has a splendid bear's tooth. Well now. Where shall you stay at Blackpool?"

  "We thought we'd get the coachman to drive around and let us pick the place we liked the look of best."

  "Ah," the doctor said; his tone showed he thought little of the idea.

  "Would that not be wise?" Arabella asked.

  "There's two places ye'd pick that way—and only one of 'em ye ought to. Only one place in Blackpool for superior and cultivated persons: Dixon's. Out at the north end."

  "Please don't hesitate to advise us," Walter pressed him. "The book I consulted is clearly somewhat out of date."

  The doctor looked from one to the other, over his half spectacles. "Ye might imagine Blackpool is to Preston what Southport is to Manchester; but it ain't so. No. By no means. The superior classes of Preston go south to Brighton or St. Leonards for their salt-water cures. I should think the highest in rank at Blackpool would be an ironfounder from Halifax or a Liverpool wine merchant."

  "We hold no exaggerated opinion of ourselves, doctor," Arabella said, gathering her cape tightly about her.

  "Then ye'll like Blackpool, for they're capital, friendly folk. They've good appetites for food—and laughter."

  "But this hotel…Dixon's?" Walter prompted.

  "Aye, there's two. Dixon's and Nixon's. Dixon's is five shillings a day, including at least five meals. And the accommodation is equal to any at Brighton."

  "Is the north the better end?"

  "The lodging houses and a great chaos of new building are all to the south. They say South Blackpool will soon eclipse the north. I think you will find Dixon's quieter and more select."

  "You speak as if you shall not be staying there." Arabella put a polite degree of question into her voice.

  "No. I shall stay nearby, at Nixon's. It is sixpence cheaper and the whole company eats at a common board—which is more congenial to my northern way of thinking."

  "Yes," said Arabella. "I noticed that in Preston. People here are much friendlier than we are in the south."

  Her comment pleased the doctor. Walter later discovered that the real attraction of Nixon's was its total lack of male servants; so that the doctor could volunteer for the office of meat carver. And this, in turn, let him quickly rejoice in friendships with the ladies that would otherwise have taken days to foster.

  The only remarkable feature of the whole tedious seventeen miles, as far as Walter was concerned, was the occasional sight of the new line to the Wyre, due to open next year. They had several glimpses of it, just outside Preston, again just outside Kirkham, and again between Weeton and Staining.

  "If they put out a branch to Blackpool, that'll be the end of it," the doctor said.

  Over the final mile, beyond Layton, the air grew steadily saltier and more invigorating; and when the coach finally gained the promenade, it was all Walter and Arabella could do to stop themselves leaping out and jumping down on to the long, almost deserted beach and running and running until they dropped.

  Dixon's was exactly to their taste. They were able to take a room with a private parlour at only a shilling extra, which Arabella thought would be useful, what with the weather so threatening. And there, after a good solid luncheon, they retired.

  While Arabella went through the drawers and wardrobes, checking the maids' unpacking, Walter sat upon the bed and watched her. From time to time she looked at him and her heart sank to see that special excitement invading his face.

  "Come here," he said and held out his arms.

  "Oh!" She coloured and, seeking desperately for some distraction, ran away from him toward the window. "I do believe it may soon clear. Look! Is that not lighter over there?"

  He chuckled as he strode across to her. "What's this? Coy? Come—we can bolt the door so that no one will disturb us."

  She tried to swallow and could not. She tried to speak but could only croak and then had to turn it into a pretended cough. His arms went about her from behind. His breath was hot upon her neck. His hands cupped her breasts. And though she resisted, she felt again that warmth growing within her. Before she melted entirely, she made the still-possible effort, tore herself away, ran half across the room, and turned to face him.

  Not quite mistress of herself, she repeated the one word "no" many times and with a firmness she had not believed she could muster. His face fell and darkened; the excitement vanished.

  "I want there to be no more of that," she said. "I want to be chaste until we have guidance."

  How he stared at her! And how unreadable was his face! What did that dark look mean—anger…shame…remorse?

  "And last night?" he asked at length. "Do you not remember?'

  "Oh I remember," she blurted out. "And I burn for the shame still. We were beasts. We were worse than beasts. I mean there to be no more of it. Please? Dearest?"

  There was no sound but his breathing.

  When he finally broke silence, he was coldness itself. "There shall be no more of it," he promised. And, while she watched in misery too dumb to protest, he took up his cloak and gloves and cane, and he left.

  She saw him walk out into the rain and she watched him out of sight before she broke down and burst into tears. Until he vanished, she had been able to sustain the hope that he might turn and come back to her.

  But she did not weep for long. Her whole upbringing was against such selfindulgence. Within ten minutes she was sitting at the bureau in the sitting room, preparing to record in her journal the events of her we
dding and all that had happened since. And within twenty minutes only the most perceptive observer could have discerned the slightest redness in her eye.

  Chapter 16

  Walter leaned into the rain, moving his head this way and that to let it sting his face. He bared his teeth at it, or opened his mouth to let the drops fall upon his tongue. Its astringent force, the roar of the wind, the dashing of the waves at the foot of the low clay bank that Dixon had called "the cliffs," all combined to obliterate his thoughts.