The World From Rough Stones

by Malcom Macdonald

  Louise, Arabella's younger sister, was the first to regain some measure of composure. She came forward and nudged Arabella's arm. "Show a little happiness," she said. "How can you stay so calm!"

  How can they believe I'm calm? Arabella wondered. Her heart, thrust high into her chest by the tightening of her corset, thumped like a forging engine, trembling through her soft flesh and making the lace upon it shiver. Could they not see? Still, she was glad it showed in no other way.

  She took the first step across the boudoir and out to the stair-head, moving like a great and beautiful clipper in full sail on a calm sea.

  The stairs were built to rise in a single central flight of thirteen steps to a halfpace, where they divided, curving around in two flanking runs, also of thirteen steps, meeting at the landing outside the boudoir. The ballroom door being to the left of the stair, Arabella chose the flanking run to her right so that she was in full view of those below from the very first step of her majestic descent.

  From those who saw her first, a ripple of astonishment spread through all the company. In the cool light that filtered from the dome above, the ground below turned pale as face after face lifted upward and was held. In the silence, she heard only the swish and creak of the women's clothing as they turned to see her. No queen ever made a finer entry; and if anyone had had the ill taste to applaud, there were many in that throng so lost to themselves that they would have joined in quite spontaneously.

  Arabella gave no sign that she understood the impression she was making. When she reached the turn inward to the central flight her eyes found Walter's, as he waited by the foot of the stair, and never again left them until she had gained his side. And all that long, long while he basked in a whispered chorus of "by harrys!" and "I says!" Never had he felt such exultation of his spirit.

  He was speechless until she touched his fingers. Then, "What a setting for my pearl!" he said quietly.

  Her hand flew to the lace at her throat, for she thought he was referring to a little pearl he had given her at Christmas.

  "I forgot it," she whispered, mortified. "I never thought!" Her eyes prepared to cry.

  For a moment he was puzzled. "Oh no," he said at last. "I mean my pearl beyond price." He kissed her hand to reinforce his meaning.

  Too close to tears to make any reply, she took his arm and together they walked among the guests to the portico, where the family coach already awaited. The crowd, animated again and buzzing with excitement at this beautiful climax, poured out behind them. Among them, prouder than she could ever remember, was Mrs. Paine, carrying the dark silken and worsted bombazine wrap that Arabella would need upon the train.

  Two footmen came around from the courtyard, bearing the last of their trunks.

  "Stow them firm you fellas," Claude George II shouted. "The road at Harpenden is as rutted as Vauxhall Gardens."

  Among the younger set only Claude George III and his flash crowd laughed.

  "Father!" Letty called out. "That is disgraceful."

  "There'll be rutting enough tonight eh!" cackled old Mrs. Paine, Arabella's surviving grandmother. "Ye'll need no help from the roads! Eh, Walter?"

  He did not even smile at her, but glanced in embarrassment at Arabella. She, however, was her usual calm self: "Grandmother, do be quiet or you'll vex us all."

  Unrepentant, the old woman cackled on.

  "Don't pretend you didn't hear," the younger Mrs. Paine told the older; then she arranged the cloak around her daughter's dress.

  When she had done, there were handshakes and hugs all around until Walter, now stealing anxious glances at his watch, handed Arabella up into the coach. He followed as soon as she was seated.

  Up to that moment Mrs. Claude George Thornton II had been somewhat remote. Now she appeared suddenly to realize that the younger folk really were going. "Your bouquet, child!" she cried, snatching up Letty's garland and thrusting it any old how through the still-open carriage door. "Oh!" She drew back from what she saw inside. "Such a picture! I shall weep!"

  Letty, counting the bags on the roof of the coach, absently nudged her mother with a small bottle. "Your salts," she said.

  There was a distant rumble of summer thunder.

  "Said it," uncle Claude called out. "Said so. Better hurry."

  "One valise is missing!" Letty shouted and went back indoors to abuse the footmen.

  Walter climbed out again, feeling guilty that he had not himself noticed the omission. He walked around the coach, looking with seeming purpose at the axle boxes, and came face to face with Claude George III. Both were embarrassed.

  "Well, Walter," his cousin said. "Launched."

  "I suppose so."

  "And no ill feeling."

  "I daresay not."

  He walked back to the other side of the coach, where Letty had returned with the errant footmen and the missing valise. "One can rely on no one," she said with a victorious smile. "Be so happy, Walter dear!"

  They embraced.

  "And you, Letty. It won't be so long now for you."

  "Don't!" she cried, flapping her hands in mock despair. "I daren't think! So much to do! How I wish it could all be as simple as this, today."

  "And as cheap!" Claude George II chimed in.

  There were some more casual exchanges and goodbyes before the coach bore them off, but it was these two remarks by Letty and her father that Walter chose to let ring in his ears. They were so characteristically Thornton!

  It was like the dawning of a sweeter day to settle back in the coach beside Arabella. His rancour melted in the firm blue gaze of her eyes, and he fondled her new ring through the thin silk of her glove.

  "It feels strange," he said.

  "Not at all. It feels as if that hand had always lacked something—and not known what it was until today."

  Her reply made him too happy even to speak—until he felt her shudder slightly.

  "What?" he asked.

  She did not at once answer.

  "Are you cold?"

  "It's the elder ones," she said. "How…uncouth and vulgar they seem."

  "Yes," he agreed, uncertain that he wanted to open up this line of talk.

  "How dreadful it must be to live so deficient of delicacy."

  "We must always remember," he said, in tones that promised finality, "that they lived in very disturbed times. They had so few of our incentives to virtue."

  "How right that is, dear!" A welcome admiration flashed in her eyes. "You are always so good and charitable. Father has always said it. In fact, it was he who pointed you out to me first as one to admire and aspire to."

  "Really? Your father!" The rector was, in fact, something of a womanizer— though, of course, his wife and daughters would be the last to hear of it.

  "Oh, Walter!" Arabella clutched his arm. "Do please help me to be virtuous, too!"

  And he, looking down at her trusting, adoring face, could think of nothing beyond his longing to behold and caress the untouched body beneath. "Oh, but you are already such an example to everyone!" he said in jocular rejection of her plea. "I'm sure you will need no guidance from me."

  He wondered how prepared she was for the things they were to do that night. And while she leaned her bonnet on his shoulder and snuggled happily against his arm, his fantasy moved forward in time to the little room he had booked in the inn at Earlestown, way up there at the end of the line. Until they were married, he had forbidden himself to imagine what would happen there; now he need have no such scruples.

  "Tell me again about our house," she said, cutting across his picturing.

  And for the tenth time, he told her of the little house he had rented in the vale of Todmorden and how its front rooms looked up the valley to the Leeds mouth of Summit Tunnel, his tunnel. He told her of the long purple and blue shadows that stole across the fields at dawn and dusk. But as he had not yet lived there, he could tell her nothing of their new neighbours except that an acquaintance of his, Branwell Brontë, who was soon to be appoint
ed clerk-in-charge at Sowerby Bridge station, had said they were "respectable and godfearing."

  That was pleasing. "And factories?" she asked. "I meant several times to inquire and always forgot to."

  Like most southerners she imagined the north had already vanished under brick and chimney. The desolate moors around Dotheboys Hall—a name added to the language that very year—were, somehow, set in the north of a different England. It sounded a fine, unfrivolous place, Arabella thought, seeking to reassure herself. The Maran valley and this part of Hertfordshire were undeniably beautiful, but it was all so manicured—so thick with park and covert and fine houses—that it seemed entirely given over to pleasure and sport. The thought that she and Walter would have to begin so frugally, with such a small house and only three servants (and only two of them living-in), also pleased her—especially when she saw what wealth had done to the Thorntons.

  "Oh, Walter," she said aloud. "We shall manage somehow. And we shall be so happy—I just know it."

  Chapter 13

  The clerk-in-charge at Boxmoor had been expecting Walter and his new bride, for Walter had bought their tickets north on his arrival earlier that week. He thought it something of an honour to have the young engineer make use of his station—the engineer in charge of the longest tunnel now building anywhere in the world. As the coach turned on the slope that led from the turnpike up to the station, he and the porter came out on the forecourt and—against all the rules— helped with carrying the luggage. This made Arabella positively glow with pride. She had seen Walter only as the poor cousin at Maran Hill, yet here were these railway people, on such an important line as the London–Birmingham, treating him like a visiting duke! The dozen or so other passengers already waiting clearly thought, too, that he was someone of importance. Walter, aware of their attention, also glowed with pride, for he was sure that Arabella's beauty was the cause of it all.

  They had come a good fifteen minutes ahead of the train, so there was plenty of time for the coachman and company servants to take the luggage across to the down platform. Then Mullins, the clerk-in-charge, came hurrying back, not so much to talk to Walter, for they had had a fair old yarn on that earlier visit, but to hover respectfully nearby in case he was needed.

  Dark clouds had blown up well clear of the northern skyline. To Arabella they looked like towering mountains wrenched from the soil and unleashed to wander overhead. It was a living tableau from a painting by John Martin. She was just about to turn to Walter to share this discovery with him when he hit his thigh excitedly and called out "It's a Bury! Four-wheeler, two driven!"

  He obviously meant the engine, now puffing into view up the line. How could he be so certain? To her it was still hardly more than a blur. She had seen but two trains in her life, both from the safe distance of the bridge at St Albans. It took all her courage to stand her ground as the great monster rumbled by. The heat it gave off! She had not expected that. And the strange, fishy smell of the steam. She was glad when it had passed and their carriage, comfortingly first class, had stopped. Mullins leaped in to unlock it for them.

  But Walter was not to be cheated. "Come and have a closer look," he said, making off down the platform. "This is a stroke of luck! We've just taken delivery of two Burys for the Manchester–Leeds. Let's see how well they're regarded."

  Arabella meekly followed.

  As soon as they arrived at the front, he reached a hand up to the engineer. "Thornton. Engineer on Summit Tunnel for the Manchester–Leeds."

  The other wiped his hands well before he took Walter's. "McConnell," he said.

  "My dear, here is Mr. McConnell, our engineer"—he turned inquiringly back—"all the way to Earlestown?"

  "All the way tae Earlestown."

  Arabella and the engineer nodded to each other. But this time Walter did not even notice the admiring glint in the Scotchman's eye; he himself was lost in admiration of the engine—a bright green creature with black bands around her boiler, a tall chimney, a great beehive firebox of burnished copper, and wheel splashers of gleaming brass.

  "Manchester–Leeds," McConnell said. "I was tae Burys works at Liverpool last week for new spoke shoes for this. They tell me ye've bought two."

  Waiter looked at the number on the company plate. Number One it said. "What's this then? 1837? Ours are this year's, of course. Robert Stephenson's own design actually, not Bury's. Very like this to look at, but with four driven wheels. An improvement, I fancy."

  "It's well enough," McConnell said. "But, mon, I cuid tell them a dozen improvements."

  Walter smiled, seeing a kindred spirit. He, too, longed to design an engine—a Thornton eight wheeler! "A longer boiler for a start," he said.

  "Aye. Ye're right enough there! Feel the heat frae this—mon, it's a terrible waste. And I'd anchor it up forrard only—put it on sliders tae the frame back here. When it gets hot now, bolted both ends, ye shuid see the distortions tae the frame!"

  "Yes!" Walter began to grow excited. "And I'm sure we can now build crankshafts strong enough to let us do away with all these sandwich frames and inner frames that Stephenson and his father are so wedded to. Such a mess! We could manage with one single inside plate frame.

  McConnell grinned and stepped down, beckoning Walter to come forward and peer under his boiler. "Bury's close tae it here," he said. "It's a single inside bar frame."

  "So it is. Yes—so it is. Well—that more or less proves my point."

  "I'd gae even further. I'd make a central common valve chest and drive the slide valves directly—do away wi' rocking valves and all that caper."

  Walter looked puzzled.

  "Put the slide valves on their sides, of course," McConnell added.

  "Ah yes!" Walter said. "Yes. I see."

  Arabella, looking from one to the other, both oblivious of her, felt the strongest urge to pinch herself. Plate…bar…slide…frame…tube…she knew the meaning of every word. So how could they add together to make something so utterly incomprehensible!

  Mullins came padding up the platform, embarrassed at having to interrupt. "The train must go, sir," he said diffidently.

  Walter bade goodbye to McConnell. "One day they'll do it all," he said.

  "Just you and I keep reminding them!" McConnell shouted back.

  They had not journeyed far before most of the sky grew black. The thunder that had rumbled so distantly at Maran Hill now roared above, shaking and tearing the sky apart. Some of the clouds were so dark as to merge with the dense smoke that poured ceaselessly from the engine. But no rain fell; and away to the west they could discern a hopeful band of clear yellow sky. As evening grew, an orange sun slipped down into this band, underlighting the dark hulls of the thunderclouds with the deepest hues of sulphur. The same infernal colour touched the leaves of willows and aspens as they whitened in the squalls that presaged rain.

  Walter and Arabella, in facing window seats, sat spellbound, watching the long transformation from orange through carmine to the latest deepest crimson of the sunset. Then, when the sun had gone and the heavens had returned to lead and charcoal, large oily drops of rain slid out of the sky. It was raining hard by the time they drew near to Birmingham.

  Walter reached out a hand and, by a combination of luck and well versed anatomical judgement, found and squeezed her knee. It was only a light, experimental squeeze, but she stiffened at once and he had to pretend that he had merely wanted to point out the passing scene to her. A solid wash of rain spouted down over the tossing trees and glistening roofs of Bordesley Green and Ashted.

  The distant patch of clear sky had dwindled to a mere halo of smudged gray above the horizon. Arabella, reassured that he had meant nothing improper, pulled a theatrically glum face at this scene.

  "Poor Mr. McConnell," she said.

  "They dress for all weathers. And the fire soon dries and warms them. They're not like coachmen."

  "When you and he make your own engine, contrive some shelter for your colleagues."

 
; He laughed. "With portholes and chintz curtains!"

  All the same, he thought, it was the basis of a sound notion. Later still, he wondered why one never said "poor coachman" unless the weather were truly foul.

  At New Street Station three clergymen and a stout lady, evidently a parishioner of one of them, were let into the compartment; but, as they were all Roman Catholics, Arabella was glad that no one attempted any conversation.