“Jenny?” he exclaimed. “Is that you?” The nose was still the same—as if she had leaned against a window with a trifle too much pressure—but it fit very nicely into her straight, even features. The freckles were totally gone. Her hair was long—well past her shoulders—and was the color of sunlit sand. Her eyes, very wide and a soft blue, were smiling at him, pleased with his reaction.
“Yes, Derek. It’s me.”
He looked at her mother. “I can’t believe it. She’s all grown up.” Then he introduced them to John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Theodore Turley. “The Pottsworths were baptized on the same day Peter and I were.”
“How is Peter?” Jenny asked as soon as the introductions were made.
“Peter is fine. He said if I made it back to Preston, I was to be sure and look you and your mother up and say hello.”
“Say hello, nothing!” Sister Pottsworth cried, feigning a hurt look. “Why, you’re coming to stay with us. Me and Jenny are saving to go to America. We want you to tell us all about it.”
On January sixteenth, Joseph Fielding, president of the British Mission, returned to Preston to a warm and touching reunion with his longtime friend John Taylor. The next day, not yet a week since their arrival in England, the missionaries met at the home of Willard Richards in council with the British Mission presidency. Brother Fielding was president, Brother Richards his first counselor, and Brother William Clayton second counselor. Clayton was one of the first converts to be baptized when Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde had come in 1837. Though there were two Apostles present, they deferred to Joseph Fielding as mission president.
After considerable discussion, John Taylor was assigned to labor in Liverpool. With the Cannons already showing interest, this gave Taylor a base from which to work in that seaport town. Theodore Turley was originally from Birmingham and pressed vigorously for permission for him and Wilford Woodruff to go there where he still had many family and friends. Wilford finally agreed to go south, but only as far as the Staffordshire Potteries, and then they would decide from there. By assignment, Derek was asked to accompany Wilford rather than Brother Taylor, and it was decided that Willard Richards would stay in Preston and serve as the central communications point for all the missionaries. It was also determined that Willard should be free to go wherever the Spirit led him.
On the eighteenth, they met again at the Richards home for what Wilford described as a “season of fasting and prayer.” They gave blessings to each other and then went to the railway station, where some of them left for their previously determined fields of labor. The mission to England had begun in earnest.
It was snowing lightly in Palmyra, New York. The air was cold, and the humidity off Lake Ontario sent the chill creeping through even the heaviest of clothing. There were a few people on Main Street going about their business, but generally it was quiet. With the Erie Canal closed for the winter, much of the normal bustle of Palmyra came to a halt.
Inside the McBride store, they had a fire well stoked in the large black potbellied stove. The air around it shimmered as it sent its heat throughout the room. The store too was mostly quiet. Lydia was behind the counter, helping a farmer and his son. There were no other customers. Nathan was in the back room of the store, assembling a cast-iron stove for a family in nearby Vienna. Elizabeth Mary played beside him, content with a set of blocks Lydia’s mother had bought her for Christmas. Young Joshua and Emily were in school and wouldn’t be back for another couple of hours.
The McBrides’ living quarters were behind and above the store, and now the door at the top of the stairs opened. Lydia looked up. Hannah McBride was standing at the doorway, looking down. Her face was white. She looked around, dazed and confused. Lydia dropped the pen, letting it clatter to the counter. “Mama?”
There was a strangled cry and her mother half stumbled, groping blindly for the rail.
“Mama!” Lydia screamed. She darted out from behind the counter and raced toward the stairs. Nathan was closer and took the steps three at a time, reaching his mother-in-law just as her knees started to buckle. She sagged against him.
Lydia had reached them now too. She grabbed her mother’s hands and peered into her face.
“It’s your father,” her mother said, almost like a bewildered child. “I can’t wake him.”
Lydia fell back a step. A great sob welled up inside her. “Oh, Mama! No!”
One by one they came up to Lydia and her mother, standing beside the open grave. The coffin now filled the bottom of the hole, the first shovelful of dirt on top of it. The dark brown of the recently opened earth contrasted starkly with the snow around it. They shook hands, murmured their last condolences, then moved away. The pastor of the Presbyterian church where Josiah McBride had been one of the elders for many years was the last to come up. Lydia stepped forward to meet him. “Pastor Gordon, thank you so much. It was a lovely service. You have been most helpful.”
“Your father and I have been friends for many, many years,” the man responded soberly. “He was a good man. It was an honor for me to do this.” He shook hands with Nathan, then stepped to Hannah McBride. She started to express her thanks, but immediately tears welled up, and she just shook her head. He patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, Hannah. It’s all right.”
He turned back to Lydia. “Is there anything more I can do for you?”
Hesitating only for a moment, Lydia nodded. “Could you take my mother and my children back to the house? I would like to stay with Papa for just a few minutes more, if that’s all right.”
“Of course.” He took her mother by the elbow and steered her toward the carriages. “Come children,” he called to young Joshua and his sisters. “Your mother will be along in a while.”
Nathan started to turn away too, but Lydia reached out and took his arm. “No, please stay with me.”
They stood there in the cold, waiting until everyone had gone. The sexton of the cemetery, seeing them there, quietly backed away. He would complete the work when they were through. Nathan had his arm around Lydia, trying to help ward off the cold. Finally, she looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Nathan, for letting me be here for him.”
He nodded, grateful to his own father for having the wisdom to insist that Nathan take Lydia home. “I know your father didn’t change his mind about Joseph Smith,” he said, “but he changed his mind about us. He changed his mind about what Mormonism has done for us. Three nights ago, while I was sitting up with him, he said that to me.”
She looked up in surprise. “He did?”
“Yes. He said that he would never be able to understand why we believed in Joseph, but then he said that he had to admit that our religion made us better people. He went on and on about the children, how well we have raised them, how pleased he was that they are so confident and happy. And he said that he knew it was partly because of the gospel.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.
“I knew his time was short. I decided I would save it until now, so you would have something happy to think about.”
She nodded, understanding and appreciating that. She reached out and took his hand. “Nathan, I think we need to stay long enough to help Mama find someone to run the store for her, and settle up any of Papa’s affairs, then I’d like to go home.”
That startled him. “Don’t you want to wait until the weather turns?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I want to go home.”
He pulled her more tightly against him. “All right.”
They stood there in silence for several minutes. Then she spoke again, her voice barely above a murmur. “Nathan, do you remember the night I got my patriarchal blessing from Father Smith?”
“Yes, very well.”
“Do you remember what it said?”
“Some.”
“He told me that I would yet have sons and daughters.”
“Yes, I remember that very clearly.”
Early
this morning, while Nathan was still asleep, she had slipped out of bed and read her blessing over and over. She began to quote it softly. “ ‘You are to devote your time and your talents and your energies to being a righteous mother in Zion. If you are faithful—’ ” She stopped, the words choking off. She took a quick breath and started again. “ ‘If you are faithful in this calling, you shall be as a river of pure water which rushes down from the mountain, bringing life to all that is nearby.’ ”
He was nodding. “You are that, Lydia. You bring life to me and to our children. You bring life to my family. My mother loves you as dearly as her own daughters.”
“And I her,” she said, sniffing back the tears. She slipped her arm around his waist. “I’m ready to go home, Nathan.”
“So am I,” he murmured.
“I want to have another baby.” She smiled at him as he stared at her. “I want to have me another little Nathan.”
“I would like that very much,” he said.
She pulled free from him, brushing at her eyes with the back of her hand. Then she bent over and scooped up a handful of dirt. She stepped to the edge of the grave and opened her hand, letting the dirt fall in upon the coffin. “Good-bye, Papa,” she called softly. “I love you.”
Then resolutely, she turned back to Nathan. “Let’s go home.”
Nathan lifted the last case and put it in the third seat of the sleigh. He shoved it down between the other cases, wedging it in tightly so it wouldn’t bounce around too much. He checked the packages that contained the gifts for the family, and the box that held some dried food for the journey and a jar of quinine powder for treating the ague in the upcoming summer. Everything was where it needed to be. He pulled the tanned deer hide over it all and poked the ends beneath the seat. Now, even if it should snow while they were on the road, their luggage would remain dry.
He turned and looked to Lydia. “All right, we’re ready.”
The children were already in the sleigh. They had said their good-byes to their grandmother and were now bundled up beneath the heavy buffalo robes furnished by the driver. Emily and Elizabeth Mary were in the middle seat. They would ride with Lydia. Young Joshua sat in the front beside the driver. Nathan would be beside him. Lydia nodded, the tears already trickling down her cheeks. She turned and threw herself into her mother’s outstretched arms. “Good-bye, Mama.”
Hannah McBride was weeping too. “Good-bye, dear Lydia. How I will miss you and the children.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind, Mama,” Lydia sniffed. “You could come with us.”
Hannah shook her head. They had gone over this more than once. She had never lived anywhere but Palmyra. All her friends were here. The store was her means of livelihood. This was her life. There was no point in going through it all again, so she changed the subject. “I am so glad you came,” she whispered. “It meant so much to your father.”
Nathan had come up to stand beside them. Lydia stepped back, and Hannah reached out and took Nathan’s hand. “Thank you, Nathan, for bringing my daughter back. And the children. My Josiah wasn’t much at words, but it meant more to him than he could say.”
“I know, Mother McBride.” He kissed her quickly on the cheek, then took Lydia’s elbow. “We’d best be going or we won’t make it to Canandaigua by dark.”
“Nathan?” Hannah was fumbling in the pocket of her dress. She pulled out a flat black pocketbook as he turned back to her. “I want you to have this.” She thrust it out to him.
Puzzled, he took it. It was thick and heavy. “What is this?”
She inclined her head toward it. “Open it.”
When he did so, his mouth opened slightly. Lydia stepped over to see better. She gasped. “Mother!”
Nathan couldn’t tell how much there was, but the purse was stuffed with bills. There were at least a dozen five-dollar bills—Vs, as they were commonly called—and at least that many Xs (ten-dollar bills). There was easily three, maybe four hundred dollars in his hand. He was shocked into silence.
“But Mama—,” Lydia started.
“Now,” Hannah scolded, “don’t you say a word. That’s part of your inheritance from your father. Josiah has left me well situated. And you have a long way to travel. I don’t want you letting my grandchildren go hungry because you don’t have enough money.”
“But it won’t take nearly—,” Nathan began.
“Besides,” she went right on, ignoring him, “you’ve worked at the store now for almost six months. Let’s just call it part of your wages.”
“I . . .” He was stammering, feeling like a fool. Had she heard him and Lydia expressing to each other their worry about how they were going to make their forty dollars stretch across half a continent? He didn’t think so.
Hannah suddenly went up on her toes and kissed Nathan on the cheek. “The money isn’t for that,” she said, “but if you could bring them back again in a year or two, Nathan, I would be forever grateful.”
“I will,” he said, feeling the wetness of her tears against his cheek. “I promise.”
He helped Lydia into the sleigh and poked the buffalo robe in around her. Then in a moment he was up and beside young Joshua. “Good-bye, Grandma,” the children called, waving.
“Good-bye, children.” As the driver picked up the reins, Hannah looked at Nathan. “By the way, the driver has already been paid for taking you to Buffalo.” As Nathan’s head jerked around, she gave a little wave of her hand, motioning for the driver to be off. He flipped the reins and the horses began to move. Nathan turned, waving the purse. “No,” he called, “not after this.”
She laughed and waved. “Remember, you promised to come back.”
The horses picked up speed and broke into a steady trot. The runners of the sleigh hissed over the snow-packed street. Nathan looked at Lydia, who was shrugging helplessly at him. He turned to the driver. The man nodded soberly. “It’s true, Mr. Steed. I have already been well paid. So you just settle back and enjoy the ride.”
The minute the door opened, Joshua shot to his feet. Rebecca came out first, but Mary Ann was right behind her. In three great steps he reached them. “Can I go in now?”
His mother nodded. “Yes. Congratulations, Papa.”
He nodded and smiled, then pushed past them into the bedroom. Caroline was half propped up with pillows and had the baby cradled in one arm. She looked drained, but glowed with happiness. He moved quickly to her, pulling around the chair that sat at the edge of the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m fine,” she answered, touched that he had inquired about her first. “Tired. But I’m fine. How are the girls?”
“Fine. Rebecca went to get them. They’re dying to see the baby. Savannah says she gets him first.” He looked at the bundle lying on her stomach. “So it’s a boy.”
She nodded and pulled the blanket back.
He leaned over, peering at the tiny round face, still partially flat and with red splotches from the birth. The eyes were screwed tightly shut, and there was the barest touch of dark black hair across the top of his head, no thicker than frost on a window. A great sense of wonder filled Joshua as he looked down into his son’s face. “He’s beautiful, Caroline.”
“He’s got a lusty set of lungs on him,” she said. “Did you hear him?”
“I did,” he said proudly. “In fact, he woke up some of the people across the river in Montrose.”
She laughed, reaching down to run the side of her finger across the fuzz of his hair. “Do you want to hold him?”
“Of course.” Carefully, he reached out and took the bundle into his arms. The baby gave one little whimper, then immediately settled down again. “Our little Charles Benjamin,” Joshua said, pulling the blanket down farther enough to reveal the tiny hands with the perfectly formed little fingernails.
“Do you still want to call him that?”
He looked surprised that she would suggest otherwise. “I chose Savannah’s name. Charle
s is fine with me.”
“I don’t want to call him Chuck. No one ever called my father Chuck. It was always Charles.”
“Then Charles it shall be.” He looked down at his son. “First one to call him Chuck gets a good pop from his father.”
Caroline watched father and son, feeling contented. It hadn’t been a particularly difficult labor, but she was almost thirty-four now and could tell it took more out of her than giving birth to Will and Olivia.
Joshua turned to her. “Know what I was thinking out there while I was waiting?”
“What?”
“He could easily live into the twentieth century.”
Her eyes widened. “If he lives to be sixty or more, that’s true.”
“Oh, he’s going to live to be ninety or more. I can sense it.” As she laughed at his pride, he sobered, speaking now to his son. “Imagine that, Charles Benjamin Steed. The twentieth century. And you’ll get to see it.”
Chapter Notes
Two missionaries from Nauvoo arrived in England in December, but John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff were the first of the Apostles to come. They arrived in Liverpool on 11 January 1840 and journeyed to Preston on 13 January as described here. On 17 January, a council was held and the assignments were given for the missionaries’ various fields of labor. (See MWM, pp. 106–9.)
Chapter Nineteen
By some quirk or twist of nature, Staffordshire, about thirty miles south of Manchester, had been blessed with rich deposits of pottery clay. For over a hundred years it had been a major center for the English pottery industry. A major factor in that happening came as the result of one man. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, a master potter in the area came to prominence. Brilliant, clever, and possessing a fine sense of art, the man began to experiment with different mixtures and firing temperatures. He developed a beautiful light blue porcelain, then found a way to lay white porcelain designs over the top of that. Expanding from the normal line of dinnerware, he developed decorative art pieces—vases, cameos, statuettes, pedestals, flowerpots, busts, and medallion portraits. In a very short time, the name of Josiah Wedgwood was world famous. Royalty around the world vied for his creations. People in Europe and America sought pieces of Wedgwood as visible proof of their own economic success. Eventually even the name for a particular color—Wedgwood blue—would honor the work of the craftsman. As much as any other man, he had brought the Potteries into the industrial age.
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