Even outside, Robert could hear him. Rights of man. Free association. Trades unions. The national federation of labor. God-given dignity for all men.
Well, Robert thought, if it's God-given, why the hell hasn't God taken some steps to spread it around?
The courtyard was fairly clean, but that only meant that the stench was barely endurable. A child came out of one of the inner-facing cottages and squatted in a corner of the yard, unperturbed at Robert's frank observation. This is the common man, Robert thought. Give them all the rights they clamor for, and what will they do with them? He tried to imagine Anna letting him shit in a corner, even when he was a child. Unthinkable. Some people were born low, Robert knew, for all that the theorists shouted about equality. Most people, perhaps. Most people are exactly where they belong in life. Only a few of the rich deserve to be low -- those who squander their fortunes, as Robert's grandfather had done. And only a few of the poor deserve to be rich -- those with the courage and drive to achieve wealth.
He looked up and saw no stars. In Manchester there were no stars to be seen, the smoke loomed over the city, preparing to pounce. At times like this it felt heavy and oppressive.
But it was different in the factory. There the smoke was closer tied to the fire, and Robert tended his steam engines and gave power to the machines. Smoke was only a sign that the power was coming. It was the dark face of the fire, and Robert breathed in the smell of it as other men drank their liquor.
Other men drank their liquor; other men sat in political meetings and believed in all the talk of votes for the workingman, power for the people. In America, maybe the common man might have some strength; but then, America was a land of savages. Robert had hoped once that when the Parliament was reformed, some of the power might filter down to the people. But of course that could never happen. Now instead of boroughs being in the pockets of great lords, they were in the pockets of substantial business interests; great money had taken the place of great names, that's all. Workingmen could get together all they liked. They could make fiery speeches and talk rashly of strikes and whisper cautiously of revolution, but it would come to nothing.
I will not come to nothing, Robert whispered. I have the power of coalfire in my blood, and I am as fit to run the gears of England as any man alive. Why should I destroy myself to keep fellowship with these pitiful supporters of a doomed cause? If the power goes to the men with money, then what I need is money. And so I'll get it.
"You're taking a long time plucking daisies, Robert," Matthew said from behind him.
Robert was startled, but he only turned calmly and said, "Didn't come for that."
"They don't like the way you leave so much these days during meetings."
"Don't they now?"
"Makes them think you're off with the police."
"Neither the police nor the militia could find their arse with their hands tied behind their back."
Matt laughed. It was what Matt was best at. Robert found himself getting irritated. Matt never knew when a thing wasn't really funny.
"So what do you do out here?"
"Plan what to do with my second thousand pounds."
"What happened to the first?"
"If I had the first thousand, I wouldn't have to sit out here dreaming, now, would I?"
"We're both dreamers, Robert."
Maybe you are, but I'm a maker.
Matthew thought for a moment. He always did that, Robert reflected, before he said something unusually stupid. "We ought to be more like your brother Charlie."
"Charlie! And how should we be like a little boy?"
"Well, he makes good wages, Robert."
"He makes clerk's wages. If he's very, very good, when he's fifty he'll be a partner in the firm and he'll earn only five hundred in a year, maybe even a thousand, if he's very lucky."
"You're right. I'd be ashamed to have so little."
"Mark me, Matthew. Five years from now I'll have more than enough to buy Charlie's little counting house out of my household budget."
"And when you've bought it, you'll sack him?"
Robert was appalled. "My own brother?"
"Oh, don't get your Kirkham face on. it's what I like least about you -- and Dinah, too. When she gets her Kirkham face I know there'll be no peace until I give in to her. Yes, your own brother. You know you detest him."
"A brother's a brother."
"So you don't sack him. So you give him a big raise in wages. He'll know it came from you, and it'll gall him all the more."
Matthew was getting uncomfortably close to Robert's unspoken wishes. For a fool, Matthew was sometimes wise. Never, though, when it was convenient. "Who gives a damn for Charlie? it's Parliament I'm after. Not these silly mettings."
Matthew grinned. "Parliament? To bomb it, Mr. Guy-fawkes?"
"To sit in it," Robert answered testily.
"You, a common engineer with greasy hands, you sit in Parliament? While you're at it, why not wish to be king?"
"The king's an old fart who loses power every day."
Matt looked terrified. "My Lord, Robert, what are you trying to do? Get us transported? I hear Australia isn't heaven, you know."
"I'm just telling you, Matt. It's time for me to move on. Move up. The meetings are getting me nowhere. I've been to the last of them. I won't be back."
"I thought you believed in the rights of the workingman."
"The workingman will have rights when the rich men give it to them. When I'm rich, I'll fight to give the vote to the poor. But while I'm poor, I can't do a damn thing for anybody."
"I didn't know you had a rich uncle who was leaving it all to you."
"Out your nose, Matt. You're still my friend, whether you believe in me now or not. In six months, if you want a piece of what I'm doing, you just say so and you're in. And in five years I can promise you there isn't a rich house in Manchester we won't be welcome in."
"Go on then, Robert. I thought you were being serious."
"When I walk into the Exchange the price of cotton will rise."
Matt laughed, punched Robert in the arm. "Come back in, Robert. Everyone has dreams, but you can still keep fellowship."
"I'm not going in, Matt. Never again."
"Well, for all that, you'll have to go through the cottage to get home from here."
"Maybe you will." Robert walked across the court and began climbing up the drainpipe. The pipe was old and most of the water circumvented the drainage system anyway, but the pipe held well enough and in a few moments Robert was sitting on the edge of the roof, regarding Matthew with a smile.
"Come down, you silly fool!" Matt was laughing, of course.
I have ascended out of hell, and you're laughing. Robert got up and began going over the roof.
"Where are you going?"
"To the railroad, Matey! Coming?"
"No! Come down!" But Robert did not come down. So Matthew also scrambled up the drainpipe and joined Robert on the roof. "Hope the constables don't see us here," he said, out of breath. "They'll have us as dancers sure enough."
"I don't plan to stay up here long." To prove his point, Robert went to the street side of the roof, let himself slide out off the edge of the roof, dangled for a few moments, then dropped to the ground and rolled.
He looked up at Matthew, who was standing near the roof's edge, shaking his head.
"Good God," Matthew said. "Didn't you break your leg?"
"Just roll when you hit bottom, and you'll come up fine."
Matthew tried it, much more awkwardly but well enough that he broke no bones in the fall. "At least I think nothing's broken."
"If you can think about it, nothing's broken."
They made their way to the railroad, then. It was the Manchester-Birmingham line. It came in as far as Store Street and stopped. The left track was empty; on the right track a train was standing idle. It was half-loaded with cargo. Because they were both engineers, they went at once to the steam engine sitting on its litt
le platform and wheels.
"Pitiful little thing, isn't it?" Matt said, stroking the boiler.
"Hasn't enough guts to push a cow out of the way. But it moves. And pulls a load."
"There's no future in them," Matthew said. "Hauling coal, maybe. But the canals are cheaper and can carry more."
Robert said nothing. He just fondled the engine, measured the gauge of the track with his step, compared weights and tolerances with the huge steam engines at the factory.
"And it's impractical," Matt went on. "Has to carry its own fuel with it. The farther you go, the more coal you have to bring, and so if you go any distance at all, you can't carry any cargo above the engine's fuel supply."
Robert only nodded. He knew better. He knew in his mind the shape of an engine that would be light enough to move, yet strong enough to pull a train three times the size of this one, and probably go faster to boot.
"There'll come a day," Robert finally said, "when a train will go twenty-five miles an hour, carrying more load than a canal boat."
"And what difference will it make? People will still be starving in Manchester, no matter how fast the trains move."
Robert looked at Matt, wondering how his good friend could be such a fool. "You're married to my sister, Matt."
"And you're married to mine."
"Do you plan for Dinah to be an engineer's wife, always? When you're done fighting for the six points of the charter, when the Grand National's formed and taken over England, she'll still be an engineer's wife, won't she?"
"There's nothing finer than to be the wife of a workingman."
"Do you believe that?"
Matt nodded defiantly. "With all my heart, Rob."
"Start using your head, then. When your sister is a rich man's wife, then by God my sister had better be, too."
"When God leaves us money in our boots, then our wives will be rich."
"In a year you'll come to me. You'll want a part of what I have, Matt. And do you know what I'll say to you?"
Matt tried to take it as a joke, and laughed as he said, "No."
"I'll say yes. But not for your sake, Matt. For Dinah's."
"Well, just so I live in comfort all my life." Matthew laughed, but soon realized that Robert didn't share his mirth. He fell silent. They began to walk home together in darkness. Up Store Street to Great Ancoats, then up Jersey to Prussia. They talked about a lot of things; about nothing. When they neared Matt's cottage, he started talking about Dinah.
"She's not lively, you know, Rob," he said. "Not lively at all."
Robert could not figure what Matt meant by lively.
"She's cheery enough with little Val, of course. And she's glad enough about expecting another. You knew that she was that way again, I expect."
"I knew."
"But she doesn't seem to like it, you know?"
"Like what?"
"The blanket hornpipe, man, must I spell it for you? She avoids me. I thought when I married her that she'd be lively."
"It's not a thing a brother ought to talk about," Robert said.
"For a freethinker you're a bit of a prude, Robert. I had just thought that what with the overseer and all, she'd be glad to have a younger man in her bed. But do you know? I think she was a virgin when I married her."
Robert stopped in the road. "She damn well was a virgin."
"So I said, Rob. So I said."
"I mean she damn well was. I told you so at the time."
"Well, a brother has to say such a thing, so I didn't quite take you at your word." Matt saw immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. "I don't know what you're so upset about, Robert."
"Go home to my sister, Matt, and treat her kindly. The girl you married was clean."
"I don't beat her, you know."
"She's a lady, Matt. You treat her with respect. You don't go thinking evil things about her."
Matt turned resentful. "She's my wife, you know."
"She's my sister, Matt, and she was that before she knew you."
Sarcastically Matt answered, "Oh, yes, I know how thick you Kirkhams are. No one was ever a family except you. Well, Rob, if you're such a loving hutful of happiness, why hasn't your brother set you up for your railroad scheme?"
"My brother! Charlie's earning a wage, he doesn't own the money that passes through his books."
"But Hulme does. And Charlie knows him."
"He knew the old one. The old one's dead."
"I'm sure Charlie has a thousand excuses. But he knows young Hulme, and he could introduce you if he wanted."
"I haven't asked him."
"That's what I figured. Oh, you Kirkhams are such a lovey crew, but you can't even ask your brother to introduce you to his friend. Or is it that you don't believe that your ideas are really good enough to get capital?"
Robert knew how Matthew was manipulating him -- Matthew was too clumsy to be subtle -- but Robert also knew that he was right. Why hadn't he asked Charlie? It simply hadn't occurred to him, that's all. But why not try now? If Hulme was at all clever, he'd know the value of what Robert had to offer. A simple introduction would be enough. Taking anything from Charlie's unforgivingly generous hands would be galling -- but he'd put up with a lot more gall than that if it let him build the engines he dreamed of.
"I see," Matthew said. "You're afraid of Charlie."
"I am," Robert said. "Afraid that someday I'll lose control and go to hell as a fratricide."
"You aren't afraid of Charlie and you don't believe in hell, Robert Kirkham. But you'll never talk to Charlie about it."
"I'll talk to him tonight. See if I don't end up talking all this through with Mr. Hulme."
"I was joking, Robert. There isn't a hope in the world of Hulme going into business with the son of his former servant."
Robert refused to let himself get angry at the slighting reference to his mother. Much of Matt's value as a friend was that he didn't always say what would please people, that he sometimes said the truth. So Robert let the insult pass, and then invited himself into Matthew's cottage for coffee.
They found, to their surprise, that Charlie was there visiting Dinah, with a book of poetry in his hands and a slightly embarrassed look on his face. "Stopped by on my way home from work."
Matthew grinned, but Robert saw that he was not pleased. What, Robert thought, is Matt jealous of Charlie?
"Two hours is a bit of stopping by," Robert said.
Charlie's eyes flashed at his brother. "I had a book of Wordsworth, and we've been reading together."
Dinah sat in her chair, Val asleep on her shoulder, the boy's legs cast over the broad abdomen that held the next child. Robert did not like looking at his sister pregnant, perhaps because he held so near in his memory the conception of his own children, and could not see Dinah's growing belly without also thinking of Matt covering her in his clumsy way. It embarrassed Robert. He was not responsible for everything, he knew, but for this he partly was, as if he had placed on Dinah at least some of the great weight she carried, and not the lightest part of it, either.
Dinah smiled up at Robert. It came to him as a relief. Benediction. She still loved him, despite Matthew. And why despite him? Why shouldn't she love the fellow? Robert loved him, after all, and forgave his inadequacies because he was such good company -- why should he feel sorry for Dinah, who had the same good company? No, Dinah did well, Dinah was happy. Wasn't she smiling?
"You should read some poetry, Robert. It would do you good."
No doubt Matthew felt himself left out of a Kirkham family conversation; he insisted on making himself a part of things -- even, apparently, a quiet argument. He reached for the book. "Let me have a read, then. Maybe poetry can do us all good."
Reluctantly Charlie handed the book to him. Robert was amused at that, to see Charlie handing a sacred book to the infidel. Poor Charlie -- such a hoity-toity fellow about learning, it never occurred to him that someone like Matt might read poetry, too.
Matt opened t
he book and awkwardly began to read. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," he declaimed. "Do you want to hear it?"
Who could say no? Dinah tried, saying gently, "Perhaps this isn't the best time for poetry."
"It's a good enough time," Matt said. "'She dwelt among the untrodden ways, beside the springs of Dove, a maid whom there were none to praise, and very few to love.' Now there's a nice rhyme, I think."
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