Off the Rails (19 page)

The problem plagued her for the next two days and would have gone on troubling her for even longer if her thoughts hadn’t been dramatically
interrupted
. On the third day after Nathaniel had left for Rugby, when she was planning the day’s meals with Mrs Cadwallader, she had an unexpected visit from Mother Hardcastle, and the news she brought put all thought of poor Milly right out of her head.

‘I’m so sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, my dear,’ the midwife said, as she took the seat that Jane had offered her. ‘But there it is. In the midst of life we are in death.’

The word put Jane into an instant alarm so that her thoughts spun like fireflies. It couldn’t be Nathaniel because Mrs Hardcastle wouldn’t know what was happening to him, nor Milly, but it could be Lizzie. ‘Who is it?’ she said, forgetting her manners in her need to know.

‘I’m sorry to tell ’ee straight out,’ Mrs Hardcastle said, ‘but there’s no way I can mek it easy. ’Tis your father.’

‘Dead?’

‘Aye. Dropped dead in the fields yesterday at the end of the day. Never said a word, apparently, just dropped down dead where he stood. I came on account of your Ma being in such a state, poor woman.’

Jane’s thoughts were still spinning. He couldn’t be dead. She’d only seen him last week and he was his usual red-faced self, stomping into the kitchen and kissing her in his usual rough way, looking every bit as strong as he always did, if a little more stooped. Then she took a deep breath and
understood
that her mother was in a state and needed her and that brought her to her senses and she knew she had to go to Scrayingham at once. She got up, walked briskly over to the fireplace and gave the bell-pull a sharp tug. There were things to be done. For a start, she would need the carriage and Audrey would have to be told to look after the children until she got back.

Half an hour later she and Mrs Hardcastle were on their way to her father’s cottage. It was a quiet summer morning, the sky was full of gentle clouds and there were skylarks singing over the cornfields. It simply wasn’t possible that her father was dead.

But one look at her mother brought reality into the sharpest focus. She was sitting in her old chair beside the empty hearth and she was totally distraught, rocking to and fro, to and fro, her face so pale that even her lips had no colour. Jane strode across the kitchen at once and took her in her arms. ’Tis all right, Ma,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

‘What am I to do?’ her mother said, looking down at her old patched skirt. ‘Oh Janey! What
am
I to do? They’ll not let me stay here, bein’ tied an’ all. What’s to become of me?’

‘Tha’rt to come home wi’ me and be cared for,’ Jane told her. ‘I’ll see to t’funeral and such. Have ’ee had owt to eat?’

‘I couldn’t eat,’ her mother said. ‘’Twould stick in my throat.’

I’ll coax her to eat when we’re back home, Jane thought. A little bowl of gruel or summat. For the moment the important thing was to get her out of the cottage and away from the anguish.

It surprised her when her mother got up meekly and allowed herself to be led out to the carriage. ‘If you’ll just wait for another five minutes, Mr Morton,’ she said to her coachman. ‘I’ll not be long.’ Then she went back into the cottage to gather her mother’s belongings and say goodbye to her father.

He was lying on his back on the bed with his arms folded across his chest and his familiar face looking completely empty, just as poor little Dickie’s had done. ‘Dear Pa,’ she said to him. ‘Don’ ’ee fret about Ma.
I’ll look after her. I’ll look after everything.’ And she kissed his cold
forehead
.

She was true to her word, even though everything she did over the next few days was fraught with grief. She drove to Scrayingham Church and arranged the funeral, organized the funeral breakfast, ordered mourning clothes for her mother, sent invitations to her father’s three cousins and wrote to Nathaniel, who sent a letter back by return of post to say he would be home in time for the funeral and to Milly, who came home the very next day. And then, after what seemed an endless time and no time at all, they were all standing beside the grave as her pa’s simple coffin was being lowered into the ground and the priest was speaking the ritual words of farewell. And she turned her head to look at her weeping mother and her sad-eyed daughter and remembered how worried she’d been. How life and death do sweep you on, she thought. I haven’t given ’ee so much as a thought since Pa died. But I’ll make up to ’ee now.

It was easier thought than done. Her mother needed a lot of gentling, Nat and Mary were difficult, Nathaniel was away in Rugby again and Milly’s three-day stay was over before she’d barely had a chance to speak to her, leave alone ask her about Felix. In fact nothing was said until she was packing her travelling bag and ready to leave. And then it was her mother who opened the subject.

‘We’ll see thee again come Christmas,’ she said, as she kissed her drooping granddaughter goodbye.

Milly smiled at her. ‘Aye,’ she said.

‘And Felix too?’ her grandmother pressed on. ‘He comes to stay at Christmas, en’t that right?’

‘Only if his pater will allow it,’ Milly said sadly, ‘which I doubt he will.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he will,’ Mary Jerdon said. ‘He’ll not want to keep ’ee apart at Christmas time, not bein’ tha’rt so fond of each other.’

She was most upset when Milly sat down on the bed and burst into tears.

‘My dear child,’ she said, putting her arms round Milly’s shaking
shoulders
. ‘What is it? Tell your old nanna.’

And out it all came tumbling, how Sir Mortimer was a brute –
‘tha knows that, Ma’
– and how he was determined to make Felix marry
‘some awful girl from some awful family, whether he will or no’
, how Felix didn’t like to argue with him and was being pushed from one party to the next and not allowed to visit anyone except his family and how unhappy she was.

‘If he’d only make his mind up that he’s got to say summat,’ she said, looking at Jane, ‘but he can’t do it. He puts things off when they’re difficult – what I can understand bein’ how gentle he is and I wouldn’t want him any other way – but that only makes ’em worse. He said he was going to
ask Mr Cartwright if he could marry me, all proper like, and that was last Christmas. He promised me, Ma. You’d think that’d be the easiest thing in t’world, but no, he couldn’t even pluck up t’courage to do
that
. For the life of me, I can’t see how we’re ever going to get married. We’ll just go on and on, growing further and further apart. He used to write to me every day in the Season and now it’s only every other day, and in the end he’ll marry some awful girl because that’s what his father wants him to do and he can’t stand up to him. I’ve lost him, Ma, an’ that’s the truth of it.’ And she cried worse than ever.

Jane took a handkerchief from the drawer and handed it to her. ‘Dry your eyes,’ she said, ‘and try not to fret too much. Tha’s not lost, not by a long chalk. We can change things atween us, you’ll see. I’ll not stand by and see thee unhappy and do nowt.’

Milly mopped her eyes. ‘I don’t see what you
can
do,’ she said.

‘There’ll be summat,’ Jane promised. ‘There allus is. For a start, I’ll not let the old man bully you. I’ve stood up to him afore and I’ll stand up to him again, if need be.’

‘She will too,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve never know’d such a fighter.’ And that made Milly smile.

‘That’s better,’ Jane said. ‘Now you leave it to me and don’ ’ee fret. Tell your Felix he’s more than welcome here whenever he wants to come.’ And when Milly looked at her bleakly: ‘Christmas if he can or if not Christmas some other time. ’Twill all work out, my darling, I promise.’ She didn’t have the faintest idea what could be done, but she knew she would do it. 

‘G
ENTLEMEN!’
G
EORGE
H
UDSON
said, standing before the committee of the York and North Western Railway, legs commandingly astride, thumbs in the pockets of his white waistcoat, round face beaming with self-satisfaction. ‘I think I can promise you that this will be the biggest celebration our old city has ever seen.
This
will be the official opening of the York and North Western Railway, and this will top every party I’ve ever given. You have my word for it. And if George Hudson gives you his word, you may depend on it.’

His listeners cheered and thumped the table, for if there was one thing
they knew about the ebullient Mr Hudson, besides the fact that he paid good dividends, it was that he knew how to entertain.

The news pleased Jane Cartwright too.

‘Now this,’ she said, handing the newspaper to Nathaniel, ‘is exactly what we need for Felix.’

He read the article briefly and laughed at her. ‘Is it indeed?’

‘It is indeed,’ Jane told him seriously. ‘’Tis just what I’ve been waiting for. A grand occasion with plenty of guests and lots of food and drink. Summat lively. He’ll not have time to sit and brood if he’s rattling along on a train or sitting next to our Milly at a banquet. ’Tis just the very thing.’

Nathaniel grinned at her. ‘I’m sure Mr Hudson had your Felix in mind when he planned it.’

‘I don’t really care what Mr Hudson had in mind,’ Jane said. ‘’Twill suit
our
purposes to perfection and that’s what counts.’

‘Then I suppose I must contrive to get him an
invitation
.’

‘Of course,’ Jane said. ‘We can’t have him drooping about not saying anything the way he did at Christmas. He’ll never marry Milly if we let him go on like that. He needs a push.’

‘Which you intend to give him,’ Nathaniel said, laughing at her.

As the date of the official opening grew nearer, York fell into a fever of excitement. New outfits were ordered, carriages and horses were spruced up ready for the parade, the gossip was endless. Milly begged leave of absence from her two pupils for four whole days, Jane bought a new bonnet, Nathaniel treated himself to a grey top hat, and after a long three weeks while everybody in Shelton House held their breath and hoped, Felix wrote to say that he had written to Mr Hudson accepting his kind
invitation
and would be driving his carriage over for the great occasion and was very much looking forward to it.

‘Now all we want is the weather,’ Mary Jerdon said to her son-in-law.

‘Which Jane will have ordered up for us,’ he said.

She laughed at that. ‘Even my Janey can’t change the weather,’ she said.

‘When she’s in one of her determined moods,’ Nathaniel told her, ‘I believe she could turn the tides.’

And sure enough the weather was superb. As the 400 guests arrived at the Guildhall for the inaugural breakfast, the sun shone on their fine feathers and made their polished carriages gleam like new. And Jane was delighted to see that Felix handed Milly out of his own carriage in the most loving and gentlemanly way and walked into the Guildhall arm in arm with her.

‘So far, so good,’ she said as she and Nathaniel followed them.

It was a champagne breakfast, as everybody there expected, and as they emerged into the sunshine afterwards, replete and not a little tipsy, they found the carriages lined up and waiting for them, so the procession got off to a smooth start and looked and sounded extremely grand. Jane said it made her feel as if she were the queen. But the best moment was when she saw Mary and Nat waiting on the bridge, just as she’d arranged, with their grandmother and Audrey holding their hands and their eyes wide with the wonder of it all.

The great George Hudson was driving at the head of the procession, waving to right and left and smiling at the crowds, with his wife sitting stoutly beside him, and
he
was in his element. He
knew
he was royalty and of a real and laudable kind, for weren’t folk calling him the Railway King? He heard it everywhere he went and the newspapers were beginning to use the title as if it were his name. And why not? He was every bit as rich as a king now and had quite as much power.

‘A grand occasion,’ he said to Lizzie with immense satisfaction. ‘And nowt but what I’ve earned.’

But the best and proudest moment was when they turned into Thief Lane and he saw the train all ready and waiting for them, eighteen coaches long, no less, five first class and ten second class for all his guests, and three third class for the navvies who’d worked on the line, with one of Mr Stephenson’s splendid locomotives at each end, one for the outward journey to South Milford, and the other to bring them all home again. It was a triumph.

It took a very long time and a great deal of excitement to get everybody aboard but it was eventually done and the engine shrieked and they were off, heading south into the open countryside at an unbelievable speed with white smoke puffing out behind them and parasols fluttering in the breeze they were causing.

‘Wouldn’t our littl’uns enjoy this,’ Jane said to Nathaniel as they were swayed from side to side by the onrush of their journey. ‘We must take
them
for a ride as soon as we can. ’Twould be such an adventure for them.’

Felix said it would be an adventure for anybody and wondered how far they were going on this particular trip and what they would do when they got there. ‘Feller at breakfast was telling me Mr Hudson means to build a line from York to London.’

‘Aye,’ Nathaniel said. ‘He does. The plans are already under way.’

‘Amazing,’ Felix said. ‘He is truly an extraordinary man. Quite
extraordinary
. To have built all this is amazing enough but to build a railway all the way to London … It takes one’s breath away, it truly does.’

It took their impressive train just over half an hour to reach the little wooden platform at South Milford and then half a dozen men in their new railway uniforms appeared along the platform to help the ladies to dismount and to inform the party that they had half an hour to explore the countryside and to reassure them that the train would whistle when it was time for them to return.

‘He has every little detail planned,’ Felix said admiringly.

‘It’s the nature of the man,’ Nathaniel said as they walked down the little flight of steps. There were footpaths leading east and west, running
alongside
yet another set of gleaming railway lines, and they took the westward one, which seemed the natural choice to Nathaniel as it led them towards Leeds. He and Felix walked at a sturdy pace, talking of railways and their recent champagne breakfast while he watched until Jane and Milly had fallen so far behind that they were lost among the strolling crowd. It was time to give this young man the push he needed.

‘You had something particular to say to me, I believe,’ he said and smiled.

Felix blushed so much that he was rosy to the roots of his fair hair. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘as to that, I mean to say, there was something, actually there is something, only the truth of it is it’s a deal more complicated than I would wish, so perhaps …’

‘There’s nowt so complicated but can’t be cured by a little
consideration
,’ Nathaniel said, quoting the old saying. ‘If I’ve learnt nothing else from working on the railways I’ve learnt that.’ And then as Felix blushed and said nothing, he prodded for a second time. ‘It concerns my
stepdaughter
, I believe.’

The hedges around them were a twitter of nestlings calling to be fed, the corn was green and promised a good harvest, and in the old lush fields beside the new straight lines of their amazing railway, white lambs snuggled against their mothers’ mud-flecked sides and watched them curiously.

‘Which is all in the nature of things,’ Nathaniel prompted.

‘The truth of it is, sir,’ Felix ventured at last, ‘the truth of it is, I would like to – um – ask your permission to – um – marry your Milly. However … however, the fact of the matter is … I would have liked to have been able to tell you that I could provide for her, I mean to say, provide for her well, that one day she would become Lady Fitzwilliam and live in Foster Manor and that she would never want for anything, but I fear that is uncertain.’

‘On account of your father, I don’t doubt.’

Felix swallowed painfully. ‘He has made up his mind that I’m to marry a girl he approves of,’ he admitted, ‘which means a girl he’s chosen for me.’

‘And if you do not?’

‘Then I fear he may disinherit me.’

‘I can see that that is a problem for you,’ Nathaniel said gravely, ‘and a very considerable one, however it need not concern us unduly, for the matter between is whether or not I would give my permission to your marriage. Even if you were to be disinherited you would not go penniless, that is true, is it not?’

‘I could earn a living, sir. I am a barrister now that I’ve completed my pupillage. I take cases. Not very many at the moment, I must be truthful, but I’m building a reputation. Quite a good one, actually. I am patient and thorough and I persevere. My clients are pleased with what I do for them. Sir Godfrey speaks well of me and that’s quite a feather in my cap, for he is a man who speaks his mind.’ He was talking with some pride now, as Nathaniel was pleased to notice, and a great deal more easily. ‘In short, sir, I am confident that my career will grow. I will earn more eventually, possibly a great deal more. I don’t earn a great deal at present, I have to admit, but what I
do
earn is enough to keep us.’

Nathaniel smiled at him. ‘Then you have my permission,’ he said.

Felix was blushing again. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, holding out his hand, which Nathaniel shook. ‘Thank you very kindly.’ Then he couldn’t think what else to say so perhaps it was just as well that the train gave out a long shriek to recall them to their carriages and that allowed him to run back along the path to find his beloved. And Nathaniel, walking more sedately behind him, was able to send an eye signal to Jane as she walked towards him that the deed had been done and all was well.

They rode back to York in great pomp and the happiest state, although since there were other guests in the carriage with them they couldn’t talk about this great change to their fortunes, but Felix and Milly sat happily hand in hand, and Jane smiled so much, first at her daughter and then at her husband, that by the time they chuffed back into Thief Lane, her jaws were aching.

A civic banquet seemed entirely appropriate after that.

George Hudson stood at the centre of the high table in the banqueting hall, with the great George Stephenson beside him, smiling at his 400 guests. Success on such a stunning and public scale was lifting his spirits to ecstasy. It was entirely deserved, of course, which was all the more reason to enjoy it. He’d tackled things that nobody else could have tackled or even dreamed of – he, George Hudson, who’d once been mocked as a mere farmer’s son and a one-time linen draper, and he’d done it all on his own, often with far too much opposition. And this was just the beginning, as he would soon be telling his guests.

The master of ceremonies was clearing his throat and calling the assembly to order. ‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for your host, Mr George Hudson, Lord Mayor of York.’ And they were applauding and turning expectant faces towards him. It was a perfect moment.

He began his speech with a graceful tribute to George Stephenson. ‘If ever there is a man who deserved to be held up to the public approbation of the whole world,’ he said, beaming at his famous colleague, ‘that man is Mr Stephenson.’ His audience applauded with enthusiasm and, from that moment on, he had them agog for every word he uttered. He was cheered to the echo every time he paused to take breath and wine, and was given prolonged applause when he predicted that within a year there would be trains running from Edinburgh to York and from York to London by way of Derby and Rugby. ‘They will take no more than ten hours to complete the entire distance,’ he told his happy listeners, ‘and they will travel at a speed of over twenty miles an hour, just as you did this morning.’

When he finally sat down they didn’t just cheer, they beat the table with their fists until he was rosy with success.

The next speaker to be called upon was Mr James Meek and he seemed to be in an uncharacteristically sanguine mood. ‘London,’ he predicted, ‘will be the head of our railway, Edinburgh the feet and York the heart.’ The diners were delighted by such sentiments and waited to see what he would say next. He turned so that he was facing George Hudson and gave him a sly smile. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that the head will never be afflicted with apoplexy, nor the feet with gout, and that York will continue sound at heart.’

Most of his listeners thought that this was just a pretty conceit and applauded it roundly but George was peeved. There was no need to go on about gout – that was just spiteful when the man knew how badly he suffered with it – nor to make snide remarks about the soundness of York’s heart. There’s nowt wrong wi’ my heart, he thought, and I can stand on my own two feet no matter how much gout I’ve got.

‘The man’s jealous,’ he said to Lizzie under cover of the applause. ‘This is all on account of me being Lord Mayor two years running. Won’t do him a happorth of good. I’ve got his measure, don’t you worry. Nasty sly-faced bit o’ goods.’

The speeches continued, ten opulent courses were served and devoured, wine glasses were constantly refilled and by the time the great crowd rose from the table for their short stroll to the ballroom, many of them were almost too drunk to stand and the opening reel was a riot of trodden toes and cheerfully inebriated men who’d forgotten which way they were supposed to turn. Jane and Nathaniel retreated from the chaos after the first five minutes and sat peaceably at their table to watch the proceedings.

‘They’re so happy,’ Jane said, as Milly and Felix skipped by, gazing into each other’s eyes. ‘If he don’t propose to her now I’ll eat my hat.’ It was a torture to her to have to sit here and wait when her dear, dear daughter was so close to the question she wanted to hear and the answer she wanted to give. ‘Oh, he
must
propose to her now, surely to goodness. Yes, look, they’re going out into the grounds.’