World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  "Must I say?"

  "No—you're right. Well, Euston is a palace compared with London Bridge station. The only shelter we've got is a bit of old sailcloth to keep off the wind. And no platforms!" He guffawed and dug John in the ribs. "Porters have a fine old time handing the ladies up into the carriages, I can say!"

  John soon broached the subject of an arched railroad. Roberts thought that if John ever took on such a contract, it would be wise to go for one that excluded the price of bricks, or, failing that, he ought to enter a long-term contract with the maker for the specified number of bricks at an agreed price. The Greenwich railway arches, he remembered, 878 of them, had caused quite a famine of bricks and drove the price very high; the contractor had made no profit on the last hundred arches he built.

  John was interested to learn that the question of stone or wooden sleepers for the track was settled decisively in favour of wood some years ago on this elevated track. "Huh! They're still trying to decide it on the Manchester and Leeds. We've got timber outside the tunnel, but there's lengths of track inside laid in massive slabs of stone. On brick invert."

  Later in the evening, when the ale had loosened his tongue even more, George told him a lot of inside dirt on the shameless behaviour of the Brighton Railway Company's directors and managers—the open stock-jobbing, the leakage of funds, the dilatory supervision.

  "They're carnivores," he said. "Talking of carnivores—you and your wife ought to go to the Surrey Zoological Gardens. There's a tiger there in a cage with a dog. Bee-zarre! Still—the other carnivores, the Brighton line people—they're not going to tolerate the arrogance of the Greenwich people. I'll lay any odds that within two years, they'll have conspired with the Croydon line to build another station somewhere down Old Kent Road and leave the Greenwich line wishing they hadn't charged such high tariffs to use their roads to London Bridge."

  "You think the Greenwich'll go bankrupt then?" John asked.

  "If they don't get leave to extend to Dover they will."

  And so the talk went on for hours—who was projecting what, where, what it would cost, problems of operating a line, memories of the pioneer days a decade ago, dreams of the future, the fortunes awaiting the right men.

  It was gone midnight when John returned, and Nora had by then long been sound asleep. He heard again the screaming and the laughter outside their window and wondered what it could be.

  Nora, had she been awake to hear it, would not have wondered. It was the first question she asked Sarah, whom she summoned back to the room as soon as John had left.

  "Oh," Sarah laughed. "We don't notice anymore. It's the lunatics in Guy's Madhouse in Queen Street, just over the way. It has no meaning. Was that all, madam?"

  Nora looked carefully at the girl's plain and pleasant face, wondering how far she was to be trusted, knowing she had to be trusted…worrying. "I need a number of things, Sarah," she said quietly. "I need a knife with a blade scoured so thin you can almost see daylight through it. I need a little spirit lamp of the sort to heat medicines or hair tongs. And I need a room where I may work undisturbed for half an hour. Not this room." She waited anxiously for the maid's reply.

  Sarah stared a long while, summing her up, before she answered. "I want no part in anything illegal."

  "Nothing illegal is intended," Nora assured her.

  "If it is," Sarah said, "if it should turn out so, I will not lie to shield…anyone."

  Nora admired her caution. And her frank spirit. "I will tell you in part," she said. "Enough to set your mind easy. There is a man who means my husband's business ill. My husband will not believe it. I have intercepted letters to this man and hope they may show one of us right. Until then, I wish to spare my husband knowledge of it. I must unseal and copy them privately, now."

  Whether she believed her or not, Sarah nodded and said: "In ten minutes I shall take you to a place."

  The place proved to be Sarah's own room, a snug, airy little garret immediately up the stairs from the Pilgrims' Hall. Their bell rang up here as well as in the servants' hall so Sarah, having pointed to the knife and spirit lamp on the table, left her and returned to their parlour in case of John's early return.

  "Tell him, if he comes, you're just sitting there to keep watch while I went to see him," Nora cautioned.

  When the maid had withdrawn, Nora, now barely able to contain herself, slipped the two letters delicately from her bodice. They were hardly rumpled— at least, in the light of the one candle Sarah was allowed—they looked smooth enough. The stiff side panels of her corset had kept the paper firm.

  Controlling the tremor of her hands as best she could, she heated the paperthin steel of the knife Sarah had found for her. She was pleased to see it was freshly scoured. Even so, she tried it on the jotting pad she had brought—both to see that it had left no stain upon paper nor singed it on contact.

  She lifted a third of the seal before the knife cooled to the point where it no longer melted the wax. She reheated it. Next time she was almost through before it cooled. The third heating finished the job. Quite expert! she thought, for an utter amateur! There was no telltale mark; it was as if the seal had by some magic, sprung off complete. With more confidence she managed to get the other seal off in two heatings, even though it was slightly larger.

  She dowsed the spirit lamp by replacing its dome of glass over the burning wick. Both letters lay unsealed but unopened before her. She had to fight an impulse to seal them again at once. Suppose I mark one, she thought, or spill ink on it! She wiped her hands compulsively for the third or fourth time since she had sat down. Then, still feeling them unclean and fearing the marks they might leave, she took some paper from her writing case and tried in vain to rub a mark into it. Then she checked that the ink was tightly stoppered and made one more fruitless attempt to wipe dirty marks onto her note paper. And all this time her eyes strayed back, once and again, to the two unsealed envelopes on the table.

  At last she took the first one up. "My most precious angel," it began, "my handsome darling"…and her worst fears about the folly of her action appeared justified.

  Sick at heart, cursing her stupidity and arrogance in leaping to such wild conclusions, she picked up the other letter and listlessly folded it open. This time she hardly dared to look.

  "My dear N," it began. How discreet they all were! She looked for the signature: "T." Oh, so discreet. "It is done! The last £100 was replaced this morning and the entire £2,675 is as if it had never strayed. More than that—the accounts and receipts have been revised to perfection and the whole episode is now beyond detection. Old Adam, I need hardly say, is eternally grateful. He swears the boy has learned the lesson of his life. He and I are both forever in your debt, and none, you may be sure, is more cognizant of that fact than, Yr obedient and devoted servant, T."

  Well, she thought glumly, it was something. Mr. Dow was not entirely above board. It made her wonder what she had really expected—that Dow had been in touch with someone about the fire or about Summit and that someone would be replying? It was asking a lot of fate. Still, here was a gift from fate: a compromising letter. Dow had in some way entered their lives; his purpose was as yet unexplained; until it was clear, one should not abandon anything that might be of use. One never knew.

  So she copied it, word for word.

  And for good measure she copied the other, which read:

  "Tempest has discovered nothing! We are safe once more. I tremble already with pleasure at the thought. Oh do—do come to me and still these fevered longings. None but you can quench them—and that only briefly!! Ever, Ever, Ever."

  There was no signature; unless it were cleverly disguised in that final repetition, Eva? Eve? A stuttering attempt at Evelyn? And how tantalizing that one letter was signed T and the other hinted at deceiving a certain "Tempest"! Were they the same? She shivered at the web of deception here a-tangling—and herself now part of it!

  All that remained was to reseal the letters, with a swift
pull of the hot knife, held absolutely flat so that it did not make a telltale little furl in the edge of the wax. She put them in a larger envelope and stuck them in the bottom of her writing case. And then, for the first time, she took a real look around Sarah's room.

  What a deal of books the girl had. She counted: thirty-two. And some journals. She peeped inside them. A lot of religious books—sermons and things like that. And a lot of poetry—Cowper, Shelley, Burns. None was dedicated to her. Secondhand probably. One book stood out as new: a copy of Nicholas Nickleby. This one had a dedication: "To Sarah Nevill, a loyal servant from a grateful master, T. Cornelius. 18 February, 1840."

  That date! She shut her eyes and bit her lips. The room reeled briefly before she steadied herself. How it still hurt. It was a judgement for her wickedness this night.

  No. There was no sense thinking like that. Judgement! That was Arabella's way: Torture yourself into inaction by self-doubt. True, there was nothing to be proud of tonight; but it had to be done. It was like…building a sewer. It had to be done. Their business had to be protected.

  She put the book back as it had been, neatly arranged the knife and spirit lamp, blew out the candle, and left, clutching her writing case to her. A memory of the snug, orderly little room lingered on. Briefly, she envied the girl a life that was so neat and good.

  Sarah stood up the moment Nora entered. She closed a small book and put it into her pocket. She had not relished the passive role that Nora had forced her to take in the evening's clandestine activities and there was no warmth in her welcome. Nora had been going to give her a half sovereign, partly to thank her, partly to buy her silence; but something cold and remote in the girl's eye and upright stance forbade it.

  "Thank you, Sarah," she said. "I'm very grateful."

  "Glad to be of service, ma'am," Sarah said formally.

  "Stay and read on if you wish. It's a more comfortable chair and a much better light. Besides, I owe you an inch of candle, I'm sure." She could see the girl hesitate. "You're a great reader. I see by your shelf up there."

  Sarah smiled. "I've always been fond for books."

  "And at the moment, to judge by the one on your windowsill, it's Mr. Dickens."

  She shivered, like a cat when its back is scratched. "Oh last Sunday, ma'am, my afternoon off, I went up to Doughty Street to see his house. But they said he's moved; over to Paddington reservoirs, they said."

  "Do you have any other tales by him?"

  Sarah smiled shyly and sat at least half-way down, on the arm of the chair. "It's my ambition, one day, to own all his books, madam."

  "Then may I help? May I buy you one in London tomorrow? To say thank you for your help tonight, which I'm sure went against your nature."

  The girl darted her a quick, slightly puzzled look. Nora could see how much she wanted to accept and how strongly she felt impelled to refuse. But the bookworm won. "There's Oliver Twist or Pickwick Papers," she said reluctantly.

  John was right. Everyone had a price; and by no means was it always in cash.

  Nora nodded, so as not to stretch the subject further. "I'm so ignorant of books," she said. "May I ask you who this Geoffrey Chaucer was?"

  And Sarah told her. For an hour or more she poured out all she remembered of The Canterbury Tales—the stories the pilgrims were supposed to have recounted, after setting out from this very room, four and a half centuries earlier. Nora sat spellbound, drinking it in. But, for all that, she did not envy the girl so much as she had done earlier. In that eager gush of storytelling, she sensed a hunger for a like person to converse with. Nora knew she was not that person—merely its closest approach in many a long and lonely week. This trip to Dickens's former house…trying to give a body and face to the mind she tapped alone in that little garret up the stairs…the poetry…the sermons…it was a hunger for the exalting mind, and for the mind that addresses you directly. She tried to imagine what it might be like to read one of those poetry books, and then to go downstairs to mingle with the cooks, potboys, ostlers, servants, and rough patrons of this inn.

  No, she did not envy Sarah quite so much. Yet, it was wonderful to have so many fine stories and poems in one's head; that, of course, was something she, too, could have. When she had earned the time.

  Chapter 43

  Eurgh! Got a mouth like a bullring this morning!" George Roberts called out before he realized that Nora was not just another passenger toiling up the ramp approach to the station. "Morning, Roberts," John said and presented him to Nora. She, amused at his confusion, told him that the northern expression was a good deal less refined.

  "Not much to see up here, in fact," George said. "Only our grand classicalromantical curtain wall." He pointed to the patch of sailcloth stretched on ropes to form a screen around the platforms.

  "More curtain than wall," Nora said.

  "Blew off a passing Dutch coaster and they didn't think it worth coming about for." George spoke with such conviction that she believed him for a moment.

  The sail ought to have reached to the edge of the wall that contained the platform and divided it from the approach ramp; but the idle men of the district had reefed it sufficiently clear to create a long aperture through which they, standing on the ramp, could gaze directly at the ladies' ankles—and even, when they were helped into the carriages, at their calves.

  "Plenty to see there," she said.

  "And here's where you see the stupid, short-minded cunning of the Greenwich line," George continued, embarrassed now at her frankness. "There are the Croydon line's platforms and there are the Greenwich ones. Half a mile down the way, all the Croydon lines cross all the Greenwich ones through a veritable macaroni of sliding switch points. And at the Parliamentary inquiry in thirtyseven, when they asked one of the Greenwich directors about the safety and convenience of the arrangement, you know what he replied?"

  "No."

  "He told them the Greenwich preferred it that way because it 'gave them

  a hold' over the Croydon Railway! His very words! Of course, that went down very well with the Parliamentary people! Come on—let's go and look at your arches."

  "Naturally," John said as they began to return down the ramp to the street, "the railway interests know that Parliament will never vote itself the necessary powers of control."

  "Ah you're right there. You wait. This present Select Committee will recommend doing nothing, and before the year is out we shall have a do-nothing Act on the statute books. And our chance to get a rational railway system will be gone forever. You'll see."

  "You sound like a regular champion of nationalization, Roberts," John chided.

  George stopped and said, with all humour gone: "Indeed I am. And so I hope is any Englishman with no direct interest in stock jobbing and legal embezzlement! You wait—in ten years the French will have a national railway system, and the Belgians. And we'll have a thousand branch lines, each annoyed at having to carry passengers beyond their own particular terminal stations. Dear old England! I love her as much as the next man but, oh dear, she does have a gift for steaming bravely out of depot with only half the train coupled up behind her!"

  John could see Nora's hackles rising at this unpatriotic slur so he interposed hastily: "Well—time will tell. I daresay there's a good deal of logic in that but I think you underestimate the value of self-interest and the competitive spirit."

  "I doubt it," George laughed. "It can't be all that long before self-interest and the competitive spirit manage to kill off some of our passengers. Still, we won't fall out, you and I. There's the arches you came to see."

  When they were back in the hackney coach and on their way to the City, Nora said: "I'm out of concert with your Mr. Roberts."

  But John was too busy, turning over in his mind the implications of what they had just seen, to bother with the patriotism of a minor railway engineer. "Did ye notice how they let off the space between the arches?" he asked. "Where the arch doesn't cross a road they let it out for stables, warehousi
ng, manufactories, dwellings. That interests me."

  Nora immediately remembered her ideas about buying up cheap land around new railway stations outside the suburbs of big cities. "Aye," she said eagerly. "We could reduce our quote on the understanding we got a long lease on the vacant arches at a very low rent."

  "Peppercorn rent, they call it," he told her. "You see—we'd treat the profit foregone as capital. And considering all the attendant risks, I think we'd want to see more than two birds in the bush for the one we agreed not to take in the hand."

  "Depending on our own situation at the time, we'd want to see an annual profit of ten to fifteen per cent after expenses on that, I'd think," she agreed.

  He nodded and shrugged. "Aye. Something in that region."

  She laughed.

  "What's up?" he asked.

  "I was just thinking. We know how to make money, thee and me. And how to keep books balanced. But we know bugger all about capital. Raising it, moving it, applying it, repaying it! For all we talk grandly of 'working' capital and 'outlay' capital."