The Trainmasters (2 page)

From there he could see practically without obstruction the stunning young woman in green silk talking animatedly with Matthias
Baldwin, the locomotive manufacturer. He reckoned that she was in her late twenties or early thirties. She was tall and quite
slender, and her hair was very nearly as black as Tiger’s smokestack.

“She is quite a beauty, Father, isn’t she?” Graham Car-lysle said, noticing where his father’s attention was directed.

Graham was twenty years old, and his father’s age was a year short of double that. In spite of his young years, Graham had
already spent considerable time in the company of a number of more than ordinarily beautiful members of the opposite sex,
many of whom were more than a little older than he was. His success with the ladies, and his seeming indifference to any kind
of permanent relationship to any one of them, often bothered—and even angered—his father, who steadfastly believed in the
Bible’s teachings regarding one man cleaving to one woman.

Still, he couldn’t quarrel with Graham’s assessment of the lady in front of them. “She’s the only beautiful thing on the platform,”
he said.

“I wonder who she is,” Graham said.

“Shall I tell you?” John Carlysle asked, smiling, pleased that he knew more than his son about this one woman, at least.

“Yes, tell me who she is,” Graham said.

“Her name is Kitty Lancaster,” John said.

“Have you met her?” Graham asked.

“Not yet, but I expect I will. I expect I’ll be meeting most of the people on that platform soon. Many of them control the
Pennsylvania Railroad.” John Carlysle was due shortly to take up a new position with the railroad.

“And she is a power at the railroad?” Graham asked, surprised that a woman might have a position here that only men might
take in England. He was new to America, however, and he was aware that it was a nation full of shocking novelties. So he was
prepared for very nearly any American outrage.

“Yes, indirectly,” John said. And then, noticing the confusion on Graham’s face, he added, “Actually, she has considerable
influence but no outright power.”

“Well, is she rich?” Graham asked with a grin. “And,” the grin vanished, “is she married? Is she then hopeless for me?”

“I’m sure she’s wealthy,” John said. “But I’m afraid she’s been married, lad, though Mr. Lancaster is no longer with us. He
was killed in the recent war with Mexico. The reason for her influence is that she is the daughter of Mr. J. Edgar Thomson,
the chief engineer of the Pennsylvania, and the man who is to be my superior when I start work with the railroad.” John was
scheduled to meet Edgar Thomson on Monday; he expected to discuss then his future duties and responsibilities at the line.

“She has influence just because she is his daughter?” Graham asked.

“No.” John smiled. “Kitty Lancaster has influence because she is his daughter,
and
she is a most unusual young woman. Or so I’m told.”

“I’m hungry,” said eight-year-old David Carlysle, interrupting.

“Don’t interrupt, David,” his father replied.

“That gives me very little room to maneuver,” Graham said with exaggerated, mock sadness. And the grin reappeared on his face.“It
would seem so.”

At that moment, John, who had been looking down at his sons, raised his eyes to the platform and saw that Mrs. Lancaster was
looking at him, as though she was aware she was being discussed, he thought.

“But I’m
hungry
David repeated.

“You’re
always
hungry,” Graham said.

John, meanwhile, nodded his head toward her, then dipped his hat. She gave a tiny nod in return, not sure whether she should
know him or not.

“Is the ugly little man next to her Edgar Thomson?” Graham asked.

“Please, Father,” David said.

John sighed. “Alex,” he said to his twelve-year-old son, “would you take your brother to a food seller and find some-thing
for him to eat.” He handed him a coin. “Here is twenty-five cents. That should do it.” Then he changed his mind and handed
Alex a second coin. “Perhaps you could find enough for the rest of us. But stay away a long time,” he said, looking pointedly
but fondly at his youngest son. “I’d like ten minutes of peace from David’s ceaseless cries of distress.” And then John returned
his attention to Graham. “What were you saying, Graham?”

“Who is the man next to Mrs. Lancaster, the one she is talking to with such fervor?”

“He is the builder of this engine: Matthias Baldwin.”

“Why is she there?”

“For the sake of the ceremony I suppose. Mrs. Lancaster will probably christen the Tiger by smashing a bottle of champagne
across its…” He paused, searching for the right word. And then it came to him, “
Prow
. So she rates being present at the center of the stage.”

“Lucky for us that she is so near,” Graham said.

John Carlysle smiled. He couldn’t agree with Graham more.

In England, John Carlysle had been a railroad man. In fact, he was one of the finest construction engineers in Britain. He
had been trained at the University College in London, where he was one of the first to take a degree in the new discipline
of civil engineering, and he was a member of both the British Institution of Civil Engineers and the prestigious Society of
Civil Engineers, which had been in existence since 1771. Carlysle’s most recent accomplishment was the new line from London
to Bristol. He had been in charge of that line from its first surveys to the laying of the last tracks. And he had finished
the job on time and under budget. Once completed, Carlysle had been offered the job of building a line from Dublin to Belfast.
But he had refused, for John Carlysle knew that he had no future in England. He had reached the limits not of his talents,
education, and abilities but of his birth. He was the son of a blacksmith; and before he was a railway man, he had started
out in life as a blacksmith. He had studied and worked hard; he had learned upper-class manners, language, and social graces;
and he had come far. But not far enough to satisfy his deepest longings.

From the first moment he worked on a railway, John Car-lysle dreamed of owning and operating his own railroad. And as the
years passed his dream grew grander. He wanted a railroad empire like the one his master and mentor Sir Charles Elliot was
manifesting in England. Sir Charles had built or acquired lines from London west to Bristol and Penzance and north to Leeds
and York. And if his designs materialized, as John was certain they would, Sir Charles would soon own connections with Birmingham,
Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow.

But Sir Charles was an aristocrat. He was born into the right family, he had attended the right schools, he had fought in
the right regiments, he was friends with the right people, and he had married the right woman. Sir Charles was brilliant,
talented, and ambitious—
and
all the right doors easily opened to him.

John Carlysle was at least Sir Charles’s equal in intelligence, talent, and ambition. And yet he was only too aware that in
England a dream such as Sir Charles’s was unrealistic for a blacksmith’s son. He could manage Sir Charles’s, or someone else’s,
railroad empire; but he could never own one.

Yet in America little was impossible.

Two years earlier John’s wife, Julia, had died of cholera. Julia had been a superb wife and mother—as warm and caring as she
was beautiful; and John had been very much in love with her. She adored her new home in England. It would have been as painful
for her to leave it as to leave her own body. So John had laid aside his personal ambitions and worked hard for Sir Charles.
But after her death, the country of his birth began to lose its hold on him. And he started to dream again.

The crisis for John came in the fall of the previous year, 1851. He had known Sir Charles’s daughter Diane since she was a
child, and as she had grown up, their paths had crossed constantly and naturally, for Sir Charles had liked John very much
and had often invited him to his city and country homes.

John and Diane also liked each other very much, even though they stood very far apart in the rigid British class structure.
And yet, soon after Julia’s death, Diane naturally and almost unconsciously fell into the role of the leading woman in John’s
sons’ lives. She did not try to replace Julia or mother them, which she and John knew was impossible and out of the question.
Rather, she became a kind of aunt to them; the boys adored her.

The increasing closeness of John Carlysle and Diane Elliot did not escape Sir Charles’s notice any more than it escaped John’s
or Diane’s. While they were not ready to act on their growing fondness for one another, Sir Charles was. One rainy, drab,
chill day in November, John received a card from Sir Charles asking him to appear the following evening at his club. There
would be supper, the card added.

John had been troubled before he received Sir Charles’s card, and was in greater turmoil afterward. He had not yet decided
what to do about Sir Charles’s offer regarding the Dublin-Belfast line. He didn’t know whether to take the position or make
a break with his mentor and sail to America where he could start fresh—
and
empty pocketed. He hardly had more than enough cash to pay for his own and his boys’ passage.

There was the greater question of what to do about Diane. He knew Sir Charles well enough to understand that even though the
older man was very fond of John, he would never approve of John marrying his daughter. And although he cared greatly for Diane,
John was not sure that he did in fact want to marry her. Nor was he sure that she wanted to marry him. There were moments
when he yearned for her as much as he had ever desired Julia. And there were other moments when he thought he would be better
off making a fresh start on his own in America. Shouldn’t she, he often thought, live her own life in her own land with her
own kind?

When John arrived at the club, he found Sir Charles in a private room sipping claret in front of a roaring fire. Sir Charles
was a slight man, slender nearly to the point of gauntness. Except for a fringe of sandy-gray hair, he was completely bald;
and with his hollow cheeks and deep-set gray-green eyes, his head appeared as cadaverous as the skull on a pirate’s flag.
But Sir Charles’s personality was anything but corpselike. He was as charged with power and energy as one of his own locomotives
driving full-out along his main line.

John Carlysle was a full head and a half taller than the older man, and he was as square and sturdy as Sir Charles appeared
light and fragile. Sir Charles looked like antique polished porcelain, while John was as scarred and scuffed as a well-worn
boot. John had been through many accidents and many battles in the course of his career as a railroad man. Every construction
crew he’d managed had been a wild bunch. Every track in England had seen its share of train wrecks.

“John,” Sir Charles said after the servant escorted him into the room, “it’s good of you to come.”

“It’s my pleasure, Sir Charles,” John said.

“Claret suit you?”

“Of course.”

Sir Charles inclined his head, and the servant poured the wine from a decanter into a stemmed crystal goblet. He carried the
goblet to John on a silver tray.

“Sir,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Sit, John,” Sir Charles ordered, motioning to one of the pair of leather wing-back chairs facing the fire. “I must talk with
you about important matters,” he went on. His voice was serious, almost dark with foreboding. “I’d rather do that now, before
the alcohol has made my mind over mellow. Then we shall eat. Does that suit you?”

“By all means,” John said, very curious to know the cause of Sir Charles’s intensity.

“Now,” Sir Charles said when they were settled in their chairs, “I have a number of profound matters on my mind, and they
all, I fear, intertwine. That is a problem,” he paused, pondering, “but that also may prove to suggest a solution.”

There was a long silence.

John took a sip of his wine and then looked at Sir Charles. Sir Charles returned the look. His eyes were chill and impenetrable.

The silence continued.

“I’ve displeased you?” John said at last.

“Displeased me? What makes you say that?”

“I can’t otherwise understand why you are reluctant to tell me what is on your mind, Sir Charles.”

“No, John, you haven’t displeased me. You are—and you will always be—one of the best men I know. If anything, you have flattered
me.”

“How have I done that?”

“You have chosen my daughter.”

John Carlysle’s eyes remained locked with Sir Charles’s.

“Now you flatter me, sir,” John said. “I wish I were as certain as you are about what I feel toward Diane, and what she feels
toward me. Of course I am very fond of her.”

Sir Charles laughed. “It’s only a matter of time, boy. What stops you now is that you see the difficulties standing between
the two of you and marriage. In time your passion —or your love, whichever you choose to call it—will seem to be greater than
those difficulties…”

“And?” John asked.

“And I have asked you to take charge of the building of the Dublin-Belfast line,” Sir Charles said, changing the subject.

“What is your answer, John?”

“Sir Charles, for God’s sake!” John Carlysle said, raising his voice to a near shout. “What does that have to do with Diane?”

“I told you my thoughts about you are intertwined. Bear with the vagaries of an old man, please John, and give me an answer,
would you?”

In that instant, he made up his mind. “No,” he said, in a voice like muffled drums.

“No? Are you sure John?”

“Very sure, Sir Charles. I can’t—won’t—do it.”

“Good!” Sir Charles smiled broadly. “Then I’m right. I do know you! You’re acting exactly as I predicted!”

“Sir Charles?” John Carlysle said, stunned. “What do you mean?”

“You thought you would surprise me, John Carlysle, my son. Well, you haven’t.” And then he roared with laughter. “Next you
were going to tell me that you planned to sail to America and make your fortune there, et cetera, et cetera.”