He smiled but did not answer.
"You speak with feeling," Arabella said.
"Oh, my dear, I tell you—no debtor was ever badgered by baileys as we are hounded by the mails."
The boy rider, spurring up the lane, took the gate without hesitation. It was a beautiful leap and they all cheered spontaneously.
"Well ridden, lad!" John called as he reined in and leaped from the saddle.
"Your mail, Mr. Stevenson, sir," the boy said.
John thanked him and flipped him a half-crown. But instead of opening the letter, he threw it on to the rug so that it landed near Nora. Her attitude changed as soon as she saw the name of the sender: The Bolton & Preston Railway Co. John told the boy to go and get a bite of snap off the girls and to rest his horse half an hour.
"Won't you open it?" Arabella said. "Please do. It must be important."
John looked at the letter and then at Nora. "No," he said airily. "I gave my word."
Nora pouted and tossed her head. He laughed at her. "You made me give it. Ten minutes after dinner. That's my allowance."
"But if it's important…" Arabella repeated, still thinking it was simple courtesy that held him back.
"Oh no," Nora said to her, though her sarcasm was all for John. "Not important at all! It's only to let us know whether we've got the most recent contract offered on the Bolton and Preston Railway."
Arabella's eyes lit up. "Oh!" She looked incredulously at John. "Don't you burn to know? How can you leave it lying there?"
"My word is my bond. Ten minutes after dinner."
"It's simply to revenge himself on me. Because I extracted that promise."
John nudged Walter's shoe with the toe of his boot. "Thornton," he said. "I have a football in one of those baskets in the car. What d'you say to a kickaround before lunch to work up an appetite? We can take on the groom and that lad."
Walter rose grudgingly and followed him toward the car.
"It's just to annoy me." Nora told Arabella. Then she raised her voice as he departed. "Well, I mean not to be annoyed."
They got out the football and, with the other two males, played across the slope. They took it in turn to mind goal, which they marked with their rolledup jackets.
"What's the contract let for?" Arabella asked.
"Oh," Nora said, her sarcasm now wasted. "Only twenty thousand pounds! And there's a tunnel on the next section to go to tender. That will be at least thirty thousand. It would be ideal to work the two together."
"It does seem…wayward." Arabella leaned back on her pile of cushions and winced.
"Is anything wrong?" Nora asked anxiously.
"I shouldn't have laughed so much when you were mimicking Lady Henshaw," Arabella said. Then she added stoically: "Besides, it is our burden."
Nora nodded. "All pleasure costs pain they say."
"Pleasure?" Arabella asked so sharply that Nora turned to her in surprise.
"You know what I mean," she said.
"I do not," Arabella answered vehemently. "I do not."
"Well you soon will, now," Nora soothed. "The pleasures of parenthood. Of fostering new life."
"Ah!" Now Arabella was embarrassed by her misunderstanding. But Nora, her eyes fixed on the footballers, appeared not to have noticed. "Yes, I see. How right you are, Nora dear, to direct my thoughts to that. It is…what did you call it? The sunshine to my present shadow; a month at the most, Dr. Ray says."
"Does he," Nora said casually. "I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't sooner." She looked at her. "Maybe quite a lot sooner."
Arabella was delighted. "Do you think so? Really?" Nora nodded sagely.
"How d'you know?" Arabella prompted her.
"I've delivered several babies in my time," she said. "Poor folk don't trouble doctors for that sort of thing."
"What…how is it?"
"The first one I helped, that was down at the mill in Stockport. She went into labour, had the baby, and was all swaddled up again and back at her loom—all in the half-hour break for meat. My second one was two long days. You can't tell."
Arabella relaxed again. "I shan't be sorry. It can't come too soon for me." She sighed, deeply satisfied. "I wonder what the future holds."
Nora chuckled. "Who can ever know that? Last year I was walking this very path, without a penny to bless me…"
"But," Arabella interrupted. "I thought you said you had a sovereign?"
Nora cursed her forgetfulness. "Ah…yes," she said, thinking quickly. "But that was spoken for. If I ever got to Leeds. I wasn't able to spend it on the way. Still… here I am again today. Same place. And now I've a husband who pretends he can't find sufficient interest to open a letter concerning twenty thousand pounds! If that isn't topsy-turvy! If you told me that next year we're all to assemble here again and to shake hands with the Man in the Moon, I'd not know how to dispute you."
For a while they watched the footballers. Then Arabella said "See how fiercely they play! That's Mr. Stevenson who's done that. He gets people"—she clenched her fist—"really working hard. Or so Walter says. He has a charmed way with people."
"He's rash with them," Nora offered correction. "He decides very quickly. Like with that young man on the road today. I know very well what he was thinking. He's so optimistic. He was thinking how we'll need more labour now for the Bolton–Preston contract. He's not sure we've won it until he opens this letter." She turned it over on the rug and let it fall again. "But already he's taking on people. He's too optimistic d'you see? If we haven't got the new contract, there'll be bad trouble at Summit with him getting rid of good men and taking on rubbish like that cripple on the turnpike. Still"—she revived from her gloom and smiled at Arabella—"I've no right to grumble at him, either for rashness or optimism. He asked me to wed him just twenty-four hours after we met."
"Goodness!" Arabella was astounded. She knew it must have been quick, but not twenty-four hours.
"Yes," Nora affirmed. "That was rash. The mouth makes quick, the body breaks slow, they say. Yet, I don't think there's any two happier people in God's whole Creation, so I'm a fine one to speak."
After a short silence Arabella turned to her and said: "Tell me what poverty is like, Nora."
"Poverty?"
"Yes."
"Well…what…I mean what in particular?"
"The mills, for example. I look out of my window at Pex Hill and I see half a dozen mills, and the people coming in and going out, like ants. But I have no notion of what they are like."
"Noise…fumes…" Nora had to force herself to recollect.
"One reads such accounts," Arabella prompted. "The drunkenness and brutality and…lewd behavings…dreadful."
For some reason, Nora felt obliged to defend what she felt Arabella to be attacking. "There was also friendship," she said. "Good company. And on a winter's day, you can just love the heat. If we all looked only on the down side of life, the canals would soon be choked with folk."
"Yes…" Arabella began dubiously, but Nora was now launched.
"Warmth…friendship…" she said. "And…I suppose the word is recklessness. Yes—a kind of recklessness. Very few things could be worse, you thought, so ye'd try anything." Suddenly she turned to Arabella, her eyes alight with discovery. "Perhaps that's why John is so quick to decide. And perhaps that is what nags me. D'you think that could be it? Yes, I'm sure that's it. Recklessness born of poverty is not…fitting. It's dangerous to such a man as he gains power. Dangerous to himself, I mean."
Arabella, sharing her enjoyment in the discovery, said: "More and more I understand why he married you and why you are so necessary to him." She sighed. "Oh Nora! I hope both our families may prosper and that their work will bring us together frequently over the years!"
"Yes, oh yes!" Nora said, just as fervently. She wished she was free to tell Arabella that sometime today John was going to offer Thornton a position.
The men, their game temporarily over, came trotting back, breathless and sweating.
; Nora picked up the letter and stood up before John could flop down. She turned to Arabella. "Please excuse us, dear," she said. "I'm going to force this man of mine to be sensible."
"Suppose it's bad news?" John asked craftily. "That would damp down the day for us!"
For a moment she was nonplussed. Then a slight tremor of his face made her smile and push him gently out on to the path. "You don't for one moment believe it's going to be bad!" she said.
But she did not hand him the letter to open until they were round the corner, up the lane, and into the graveyard—at the same place she had entered it when she and Walter had chased out the goat an hour or so earlier.
She saw how tense he was as he opened the letter. For a moment he hesitated, eyes shut, not breathing, before he squared himself to it and slipped out the contents. She moved close, to hold him in case he needed the solace.
"We've got it," he said quietly. "That Church of England is going to be a very useful man since we…" But she let him get no further. She threw her arms around his neck and whirled him round until he was going fast enough to swing her right off the ground. No cry of joy came from her throat; just one, long, deep sigh of satisfaction and relief.
"All right!" he cried with the last breath she squeezed from him. "This is our fourth contract, so let's behave as if we're getting used to it. Eh?"
She paused. "As a matter of fact," she said archly. "It's our fifth!"
"Well, there you are! You see what I mean." He smiled. "Just behave yourself."
She took his arm and walked with exaggerated primness at his side. He squeezed her hand and she settled.
"Isn't there anything else you want to show me here?" he asked.
She stopped. She looked at the trees skirting the edge of the graveyard and soon found the one she was seeking, a little farther down the path.
She stood and pointed to a patch of the woodland floor. "He's down there," she said.
He watched her carefully but saw no reaction. "Father and daughter," he said.
She looked up at him then. "There's three generations here," she said deliberately.
He did not at once comprehend her meaning. And when he did, he could not believe she had said it.
"I didn't mean to tell thee," she said. "Not till I was more certain of it."
And then he was wild with joy. He lifted her up and began to swing her before he realized what he was doing. Then he lowered her like thistledown, and hugged and kissed and held her. He dropped to his knees again to press his ear and then his lips to her stomach. And all the time he repeated her name and laughed. "What is it," he asked. "Boy or girl?"
"I'll tell thee next March," she said.
Before they left that place she looked again at her father's unmarked grave and said: "Yon man taught us to read and write and figure. That was the key to the goalhouse door for me. What do we give this one?" She patted her stomach.
"A new world," he said. "A better one than this."
At that moment Walter came running into the woodland in search of them. "Stevenson!" he shouted. "Mrs. Stevenson!"
"Surely we've not been gone that long?" John said.
"He sounds fretful," Nora replied. "Here!" she called.
"Oh! Thank God! I say—do come. Quickly!" He was breathless though he had hardly run a hundred yards.
"What is it?" John asked. Both he and Nora hastened toward him now.
"It's Arabella. Something's wrong!"
"Wrong!" Nora was scornful. "Don't you know?" She looked at John. "I've thought so. All morning I've said it to myself."
"What?" Walter asked. Now all three were hastening back to the picnic place.
"She's in labour!" Nora said. "Talk about ignorance!"
Without further question, John went to harness and saddle the horses.
When Nora and Walter arrived at Arabella's side, it took only a few brief questions to establish that the twinges—the pains that Arabella had been trying to shrug off as "our burden"—had started at least as early as that morning and were now coming quite often.
"We must get her home!" Walter said in an anguish.
"Exactly when did they start?" Nora asked.
"To be quite truthful," Arabella said. "I think they really started last night."
"Last night!" Nora tried to remain calm and reassuring.
"I didn't know they had anything to do with the baby," she said. "Or not with the birth."
"There's no hope of getting back to Todmorden now," Nora said. "Not in time. No chance at all."
"Littleborough, then," Walter said, now even more desperate. "We must make a stretcher. Stevenson!"
John came over, leaving Jackson to finish readying the horses.
"A stretcher," Walter said. "Cut two saplings and we'll use our jackets."
But John was watching Nora's troubled face. "What's wrong, love?" he asked.
"Well," Nora said. "The obvious choice is Littleborough. There's Dr. Mason there. But I'm not sure she'll even reach there."
"But I can't have my baby here!" Arabella was aghast. "How can you be so certain?"
"I can't," Nora answered, also troubled. "That's what is so dreadful. It must be your decision. We could set out for Littleborough—and risk having to deliver the baby beside the turnpike. Or we could snatch whatever little time we have left and make a place ready here. There's a lot of privy places in the bushes behind us."
Walter had gone to pieces by now. He walked up and down, saying: "Oh dear dear dear, oh dear oh dear oh dear…" as if it were a litany.
"I can't," Arabella protested. "Like some farm girl. Hidden in the bushes…oh we never should have come! I said we shouldn't…"
"You said!" Walter exploded, rounding on her as if he would hit her. "I asked you whether you thought it wise, and you insisted. 'Oh not for another month,' you said. Well I tell you now, Mrs. Thornton, if you've done anything to jeopardize my son…"
"Thornton!" John snapped angrily. "Blow steam, man!"
Arabella moaned as another twinge racked her.
"That settles it!" Nora said, realizing that neither Thornton nor his wife was fit to decide anything. "Right, you men. Get agate. One of you is to go to Littleborough to fetch Dr. Mason. The other is to get all the blankets and cushions except the ones she's on now and find a privy place in those bushes. Come on—lively now! Bess! Tabitha!"
Jackson came over to them with Hermes. John turned to Walter. "Go on, Thornton. You go for the doctor."
Walter moved like one in a dream. "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know." John helped him onto the saddle. Once he was seated, he seemed to take more charge of himself. He even smiled at Arabella. "Bear up, my dearest. Help is on its way." And off he galloped.
Bess and Tabitha came running over. "Yes'm?"
"Listen." Nora's calm and unflustered manner soon overcame their excitement. Indeed, everyone now took their cues from her.
"Mrs. Thornton's likely to be delivered here. Has either of ye helped deliver a woman before?"
Bess had. Tabitha had not.
"Right. Bess is to stay by me. Tabitha, you go with Jackson, take the two horse pails and give them a good scrubbing in that brook we crossed, back down the lane, and bring them here again, full and clean."
In less than fifty minutes, Walter had returned—but no doctor rode with him. "He's out on a visit over toward Rochdale," Walter said. He kept peering at the bushes, hoping to see something—or hear it.
"Nothing yet," John said.
"I left word. He'll come as soon as he gets back. I hope I did the right thing."
"Of course you did."
Nora appeared from the bushes, wiping her hands. "Not yet," she said in answer to the inquiry that at once lit Walter's face.
"The doctor…" he began.
"I know," she said. "I heard."
Once again he looked worried. "Don't fret," she told him. "Arabella's a good, strong gal. The baby's presented the right way. She's not altogether comfortable but she's in no re
al pain. We don't need a doctor, you know. It's not a sickness! She'll do just fine without. She's a strong, healthy lass and all the signs are good. Couldn't be better! John—take this man for a walk."
"Oh, Stevenson!" Walter said, still bemused but no longer fretful. "There is a treasure indeed!"
Twenty minutes later Walter shouted: "Is it over?"
And Nora's shout came back: "No!"
Fourteen minutes later Walter shouted "Well?"
World From Rough Stones Page 74
