Off the Rails (27 page)

The journey home was unnaturally quiet. Toby never made a sound even though Nat smiled at him from time to time to try to encourage him and
Mary held his hand all the way. He just sat and looked at his boots. It was quite a relief to reach Shelton House and hand him over to their mother. She would know what was to be done with him. Which she did, easing him into the house with her arm round his shoulders, providing hot water for him so that he could go upstairs to the spare room and have a wash, and then persuading him to lie down and take a little nap. ‘You must be worn out with all you’ve been through,’ she said, ‘and sleep is healing.’

He slept until dinner time and wouldn’t have woken then if Jane hadn’t gone upstairs to call him for the meal. But he sat at the table looking
thoroughly
shamefaced and staring at his plate.

‘You are so good to me,’ he said, apologetically, when Nathaniel served him a gentle helping of Mrs Cadwallader’s meat pie.

Jane smiled at him. ‘And why should we not be?’ she said. ‘I seem to remember you sitting up all night with our Nat when he was so ill and carrying him down those terrible stairs when he could barely stand up and bringing us all home, which we’d never have managed without you. I’ll never forget it. We owe you a great deal.’

‘But I …’

‘We’re glad to have you,’ Nathaniel told him. ‘You are company for Nat and Mary.’

Although in fact in those first fraught weeks after the funeral
they
were company for
him
. Gradually and with a lot of patience, they turned him into one of the family, taking picnics with them, going to church with them and to the theatre, reading their books and discovering Charles Dickens, walking out into the fields with Nat and Mary. By the time he and Nat went back to Corpus Christi he felt as if he’d never lived anywhere else. ‘Although,’ he told Nat, ‘I shall have to look for a place of my own next vacation.’

‘Time enough,’ Nat said easily. ‘In any case you can’t desert us at Christmas.’

‘Why not?’

‘Milly’s expecting another baby,’ Nat explained, ‘and when
that’s
born Ma will be off to Foster Manor all the time and Mary and I will be orphans of the storm.’

That made Toby laugh. ‘You won’t.’

‘You watch,’ Nat said. ‘We shan’t see hide nor hair of her. Lost and lorn, that’s what we’ll be.’

‘Oh well,’ Toby said, laughing at him, ‘I can’t have you lost and lorn so I’d better stay and look after you.’

‘Good,’ Nat said. ‘Have you written an essay on Aristotle?’ And when Toby nodded. ‘Oh good! Could I see what you had to say?’

That Christmas was the best Toby had ever spent. Nathaniel came home on Christmas Eve with a fir tree in a huge pot, just like the Queen had in her castle at Christmas time and they stood it in the window of their
holly-hung
drawing room, dressed it with miniature candles and stars cut from gold paper and piled their presents at its feet, the way they’d seen it done in the pictures of the royal family. Toby was bewitched by it, as he told Mary as they were walking to church for midnight mass.

‘Your family are extraordinary,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, tucking her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow for warmth. ‘I know.’

‘Your father is so calm,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anyone with such an equable temperament. I can’t imagine him ever getting ruffled by anything – look at the way he took me into the family – and your mother is so loving and so busy looking after folk, she makes my head spin and Nat … Well, Nat is the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.’

She wondered what opinion he had of her but didn’t think it would be proper to ask. But after a few seconds, he answered her anyway.

‘And as for you, Miss Mary Cartwright, you are the most forthright girl I’ve even known.’

‘Is that a good thing or a bad one?’ she asked, teasing him.

‘Oh, a good thing,’ he told her earnestly. ‘There’s such strength in knowing your own mind and being prepared to speak out. I wish I could do it.’

‘Come along, you two laggards,’ Nat called back to them, ‘or the service will be over before we get there.’

‘Oh dear!’ Toby said. ‘Perhaps we’d better run.’

She laughed at him, her bright eyes shining in the gas light and her breath streaming before her like smoke, warm and forthright and alive to her pretty finger tips. Dear, darling Mary.

And what a joy it was to stand in the ancient church in that packed
congregation
, under the golden glow of the candles, side by chaste side, singing the old hymns. Oh my dearest, he thought, as they held the hymn book between them, I do love you. Not that he could tell her so. That wouldn’t do at all. After all, they were like brother and sister. Dear, darling Mary.

At that moment, Jane was glancing along the pew in their direction and she saw the expression on his gilded face and knew what he was thinking. I’ll wager you’ve not said anything to her, she thought, great shy critter that you are, and she made up her mind to do something about it. She didn’t quite know what it would be because there was a lot to do just at the moment with Milly’s new baby, who was an absolute joy, dear little man, and the christening coming and her mother ill and crabby with another
cold, but she would do it as soon as the occasion arose. It would be a perfect match.

George Hudson was giving thought to his affairs that Christmas too and as always his thoughts led to action. He was even further into debt than he’d been in the summer, many thousands of pounds short if the truth be told, and something would have to be done about it. As soon as Christmas is over, he decided, sitting by the fire in his huge drawing room at Newby Park, I will look for some solutions.

They were easy enough to find, especially to a man with his energy and determination. Within days he had discovered a new railway company that needed rails, which was most fortuitous when he had several tons of that very article lying in his stockyards. He sold them a thousand tons and made a very healthy profit. Then there were several thousand pounds that had been allotted to him by his various companies to pay the landowners whose land he had either bought or rented, and that could stay in his coffers for the time being, or at least until the new railways began to make money for him. But there was still a sizeable shortfall and he knew it would require something rather out of the ordinary to fill it.

It took him nearly a week to think what it could be and then he was astonished by his imagination and the strength of his daring. For it was daring. There was no denying it. He would print more shares for one of his companies, probably the Great North of England, and set the price at the highest rate that would be acceptable to new shareholders – and why not, they were his companies and his shares – and then he would persuade the new shareholders that he was offering them an exclusive bargain, which being a greedy lot and not particularly wise in the ways of the business world, they would jump at. A fool and his money are soon parted. Just to be on the safe side – because it was risky, he had to face that – he would get brother-in-law Richard on board to give it respectability. After all, he
was
the treasurer and he’d be glad of a few thousand to buy more pictures for that collection of his – and he wasn’t a man to think things through. I’ll go to York this afternoon and put it to him.

Brother-in-law Richard was in a happy mood that afternoon. He’d just heard from his art dealer that a rather special picture had come into the gallery and he was checking his accounts to see whether he had enough capital to buy it when George came breezing in with his proposal.

‘Capital idea,’ he said. ‘Count me in.’

‘I’ll buy an’ sell ’em for you,’ George offered. ‘Then all you’ve got to do is sit back and wait for a nice fat cheque to arrive.’ And I can take my cut which you don’t need to know about.

So the matter was settled and over three and a half thousand shares were bought from the Great North of England Railway at
£
15 a time and sold to the York, Newcastle and Berwick for
£
23.10s, which was a very
handsome
profit indeed.

‘We shall have our best Season yet,’ George said to Lizzie, when the money had all been gathered in, ‘and by the end of it I’ll have married our daughter to the best catch in society. You mark my words.’ He was George Hudson, the richest man in England, the King of the Railways and anything was possible.

But not quite everything, for there were doubts niggling in more minds than ever that year and one particularly disturbing one was troubling Richard Nicholson. He worried about it until it was keeping him awake at night. He’d heard too many disquieting things about share dealing since railway mania began and although he enjoyed living in a rich house and buying beautiful pictures, he didn’t want to think he was doing it illegally. He needed a good friend who would understand the situation and could advise him about what he was doing. But whom could he ask? His friends were good company but they knew as little as he did. In the end he wrote a long letter to Lizzie, who read it twice, couldn’t understand what he was talking about and decided she would have to go and see him.

Her visit didn’t do either of them much good, for even when they were face to face she couldn’t understand half of what he was saying, as she told her dear friend Jane later on in the morning.

‘It’s not like my Richard to fret hisself for nowt,’ she said, as the two of them took tea. ‘You know that, I’m sure, I don’t need to tell ’ee, but really, my dear, I mean for to say, he was so upset I had to come to York to see him. He said he had no idea which way to turn, what I’m sure I don’t either, although I might if I knew which the ways were, if ’ee teks my meaning.’

Over the years, Jane had learnt how to sift through the muddle of her friend’s utterances so she set about picking her way to the heart of this one. ‘What is troubling him?’ she asked.

‘It’s these shares,’ Lizzie confessed. ‘He’s got it into his head that they were sold for too much money although I told him that weren’t a bit likely, seeing it were my George who sold them and he’s allus had a such good head for business – George, I mean, not Richard, although I daresay he can handle
some
business well enough. He buys the most beautiful paintings.’

Her explanation made Jane’s heart skip a beat. Shares, she thought, and there’s summat wrong wi’ ’em or he’d not be fretting. And George is behind it. He’s been up to summat crooked and Richard knows what it is, or suspects summat. ‘What shares were those?’ she asked, keeping her voice calm with an effort.

‘I don’t know the ins and outs of it,’ Lizzie confessed. ‘’Tis all mumbo jumbo to me.’

Jane persisted. ‘But it’s shares he’s fretting over.’

‘Aye.’

‘Railway shares would it be?’

‘Aye. They were,’ Lizzie said.

‘And rather a lot of them you said.’

‘Aye,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘Over three and a half thousand so he said. Although, like I told him, if George wants to sell shares from one of his companies to another one it must surely be fair and above board, or he’d not do it, and anyroad he owns ’em both so what harm could there possibly be in it, if ’ee teks my meaning.’

Jane was taking her meaning with greater and greater understanding. He’s been share trading, she thought, and making a profit out of it. ‘And they were Mr Hudson’s companies, you say?’

‘Aye they were, so that meks it right, wouldn’t ’ee say? My George wouldn’t do anything wrong, I’m certain sure of that.’

‘No,’ Jane said, noncommittally. ‘Not if they were his companies, which they were, I’m sure.’

‘Oh yes,’ Lizzie told her eagerly. ‘They were the Great North of England and the York, Newcastle and Berwick. They’re both his.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

‘Tha’rt such a comfort to me,’ Lizzie said, setting down her empty tea cup. ‘I knew tha’d see the rights and wrongs of it straightaway if I told ’ee. Oh Jane, I
do
wish I could see thee more often.’ And she sighed. ‘But there ’tis.’

‘Tek some more tea,’ Jane offered. She was feeling guilty at the way she’d questioned her poor friend and tea was one way to make amends.

Lizzie shook her head. ‘I daren’t stay any longer,’ she said. ‘We’re off to London in a day or two for the Season, and tha knows what a stickler George is for everything running to plan. I must go for there’s things to be packed and if I’m not there it’ll be done anyhow, which wouldn’t do at all.’

After she’d gone, Jane sat in her parlour on her own, with her heart beating in the most deliciously tremulous way and gave herself up to her thoughts. For the first time in her life she had no time or desire to consider other people – not her husband nor her children nor her grandchildren, not even the latest baby or Toby’s love for Mary – for she was caught up in a moment of total and triumphant self-absorption, knowing beyond any doubt that her chance to take revenge had come, just as she’d always hoped it would. It had taken long enough in all conscience. She’d waited years for
it. Thirty-three years now she came to count it. A lifetime. And yet here it was at long, long last. She knew it as surely as she knew that her name was Jane Cartwright. I shall tell Mr Leeman, she thought, the first chance I get.

‘O
H DEAR
,’ Toby Henderson said, as he walked into the parlour at Shelton House the next morning. ‘Are you orphans of the storm again?’

Nat and Mary were sitting by the window, playing Bezique. ‘Where have you been?’ Nat said. It wasn’t like Toby to go sneaking off on his own. They usually all did things together. He’d been quite put out to find that he’d breakfasted early and gone.

‘Out,’ Toby said, trying to look mysterious and failing. ‘Is Mrs Cartwright not here?’

‘No idea where she is,’ Nat told him. ‘She’s as bad as you. She’s been out as long as you have and she can’t be at Foster Manor because they’ve all gone to London. Went yesterday.’

‘That’s a pity,’ Toby said. ‘I wanted her to be the first to hear my news.’

They were instantly intrigued and Mary asked, ‘What news? Is it
something
special?’

‘I’ve taken rooms,’ Toby told her. ‘In Coppergate.’

Neither of his friends reacted in the way he expected. Mary was
open-mouthed
with surprise and Nat was cross. ‘What do you mean, rooms?’ he said.

Toby blushed but persevered. ‘To live in,’ he said. ‘Lodgings. Rooms of my own.’

‘What nonsense!’ Nat said. ‘What do you want with a room of your own? You’ve got a perfectly good room here.’

‘I know that,’ Toby said, his blush spreading like fire, ‘and you mustn’t think I’m not grateful …’

‘That’s exactly what I
do
think,’ Nat said and he stood up and left his cards to prowl about the room. ‘There’s no call for it.’

‘No, truly, Nat,’ Toby said, trying to follow him. ‘I’m uncommon grateful. Always have been, always will be. I don’t know what I’d have done if Mr Cartwright hadn’t taken me in. I’d have been lost. I
was
lost. I
know that. But I must make shift to support myself. You
can see
that, can’t you? I’ll not be much of a priest if I can’t support myself.’

Nat snorted. ‘I can’t see any such thing,’ he said. ‘There’s no call for it.’

But Mary was speaking too, almost at the same time. ‘Are you going to be a priest?’

Toby looked from one to the other, not sure who to answer first. He chose Mary because her question was answerable. ‘I should like to be,’ he told her, ‘if the Church will have me.’

‘I’m sure they will,’ she said, trying to comfort him. He looked so uncomfortable and Nat was glowering as if he was going to lash out at him at any moment. ‘You’ll make a very good priest. You’re so gentle.’

The blush was burning his neck. ‘Well, as to that …’ he said. ‘What I mean to say …’ But then he stopped because he didn’t know
what
he meant to say – except for the words that were roaring in his head and he couldn’t say them and certainly not in the middle of a row.

Mary was upset by his confusion. ‘Why were you asking for Mama?’ she said.

‘I thought she might like to come and see them,’ Toby confessed. ‘The rooms, I mean. Do you know when she’ll be back?’

‘We might if we knew where she was,’ Mary said. ‘Would I do instead?’

Oh she would, she would. ‘Yes, please,’ he said.

‘I’ll get my bonnet,’ she said.

‘Ridiculous nonsense,’ Nat said as they left the room. ‘First Mama cutting off without telling us and now this. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I truly don’t. It’s just a puzzle.’

He would have been even more puzzled if he’d known where his mother was and could have heard what she was saying.

Mr Leeman’s office was a wide, well-lit room above the corn chandlers and the chairs he kept for his clients were well upholstered and very
comfortable
. So many of the people who came to consult him had difficult matters to discuss and he’d found it made things easier for them if they were at least sitting comfortably. Mrs Cartwright had settled into her chair like a nesting bird.

‘Well now, Mrs Cartwright,’ he said encouragingly. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Actually,’ Jane said, enjoying herself. ‘’Tis more a matter of what I can do for you.’

‘Is it so?’

‘You will doubtless know the rights and wrongs of what is called
share-dealing
?’

‘Indeed.’

‘And you are still interested in the business affairs of a certain Mr George Hudson.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Then I can tell you that one place where you might care to look would be the accounts of the Great North of England and the York, Newcastle and Berwick.’

He sat up in his chair, smiled at her and waited.

She told him everything she had found out, being careful not to accuse the odious Mr Hudson of anything but simply letting the facts speak for themselves. As they did, extremely loudly.

‘It seems to me,’ Mr Leeman said, when the tale was told, ‘that there has been, shall we say, some illegal trading here but it may take a case in Chancery to prove it. With your permission I will pass on your information to a gentleman called Robert Prance who, I should tell you, is a shareholder of the York, Newcastle and Berwick and a member of the Stock Exchange, and will know better than I what sort of malfeasance we have here.’

‘Of course,’ she said, staying composed, although her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unnaturally bright.

‘I will keep you informed as to any progress,’ Mr Leeman promised as they shook hands.

And then she was out in the crowded street among the unknowing
shoppers
with their workaday bonnets and their dust-hemmed skirts and their laden baskets, under a sky full of scudding cloud and with the beautiful stone tracery of the Minster rising high and dependable above the rooftops, and she was trembling with excitement because the moment of her revenge had come at last.

Mary and Toby were walking in the fields beyond the city walls. They’d visited Toby’s rooms and Mary had found the right things to say about them, although secretly she hadn’t been impressed because they were rather cramped, and now they were taking a stroll in the sunshine.

‘Now then,’ Mary said, when they were well away from the town, ‘you must tell me what’s the matter with Nat. He’s been like a bear with a sore head ever since he got up. And don’t say you don’t know for I can see you do.’

‘It’s not really my business,’ Toby said uncomfortably. ‘I mean, he might not want me to say anything.’

Mary wouldn’t accept that. ‘If you know you must tell me,’ Mary said. ‘We can’t put things right for him if we don’t know what’s wrong.’

He was caught between loyalty to his friend and love for his lady. ‘Well
…’ he said. ‘If I tell you, you must give me your word it will go no further.’

‘You have it. Naturally.’

‘He’s worried.’

‘Worried?’ he sister said in disbelief. ‘What about, for pity’s sake?’

‘He doesn’t know what he wants to do when he comes down,’ Toby explained. ‘I’ve made it worse for him, I’m afraid, on account of I’ve known all along.’

‘Well, how silly,’ Mary said trenchantly. ‘He can do anything he wants. He’ll have a degree and Papa to encourage him. If you ask me, he’s making a fuss about nothing. He should try being a girl. We only have
three
choices open to us.’

He wasn’t sure whether she meant him to laugh or to take it seriously so he decided to be serious. ‘Which are?’ he asked.

‘To be a servant or a governess or a wife,’ she said, succinctly. ‘He should try that.’

‘That’s very …’ he said and then stopped to find the right word. He could see how strongly she felt about it and he didn’t want to annoy her. ‘Confining.’

‘Exactly so,’ she approved. ‘Confining. That’s exactly what it is. We might as well be tied up in swaddling all our lives.’

‘Does it truly seem so bad?’

‘To be a servant?’ she asked. ‘Up all hours at everybody’s beck and call. I can’t think of anything worse.’

‘But the other two might be …’ And then he stopped in alarm, with his heart racing, because if he went on they would be talking about marriage.

She ignored the possibility of being a governess. ‘’Twould depend entirely upon what sort of man were asking you to marry him,’ she said. ‘Some would be totally impossible. I’d rather be married to a pig.’

She looked so pretty and so cross with her cheeks so pink and her eyes so bright, he was emboldened to take the conversation further. ‘I can see you wouldn’t like a pig,’ he said. ‘But what sort of man would you prefer?’

‘He would have to be gentle,’ she told him. ‘I couldn’t stand a bully. Gentle and sensible like Papa. And trustworthy and clever. I wouldn’t want to be married to a dunderhead. Think how boring that would be.’ And she grinned at him. ‘I don’t want much, you see.’

The grin ripped away his restraint. ‘Would I fit the bill?’ he asked.

‘You?’ she said and she sounded so surprised he gave up hope on the instant.

‘No, no,’ he backtracked, suffused with blushes. ‘I was joking.’

‘Never joke about marriage,’ she told him sternly. ‘’Tis too serious a matter.’

‘No,’ he said again. ‘You are quite right. It is.’ And he quoted the marriage service:
‘An honourable estate … not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly.’

Their conversation had moved on to quite another level. They had forgotten to walk but stood quite still, facing one another beside the newly green fields under the turbulent clouds. ‘If you were to marry,’ she said, ‘would you take your vows seriously?’

‘I would mean every word,’ he said.

‘And so would I,’ she told him.
‘For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part
. Every single word.’

They were caught up in the magic of the old well-tried vows and standing so close together it was as if they were bound by invisible threads.

‘I love you,’ he said.

She bit her lip but said nothing.

Having come so far, he simply had to go on. ‘If I thought you would accept me,’ he said, ‘I would ask you to marry me.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’ And she
did
know. She’d known for a very long time – without realizing what she knew.

He caught her hands and kissed her fingers, but very gently so as not to alarm her. ‘And if I were to ask you now, would you say yes?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think I would.’

He held her hands between his own and bent his head to kiss her on the lips. It was a clumsy kiss for neither of them was quite sure how to go about it but they were both well pleased with themselves.

‘Now you will have to ask Papa,’ she told him.

‘Now,’ he said, venturing to tease her a little, ‘we must go home or your mama will be wondering what has happened to us.’

Her mama was wondering what had happened to all of them, for she’d come home to an empty house and all she got out of the parlour maid was that Mr Toby and Miss Mary had gone out to look at ‘some rooms or other’ and that Mr Nat had gone storming out two minutes later ‘what I’ve no idea where to, ma’am’.

‘I turn my back for five minutes,’ Jane said, ‘and the sky falls.’

But their absence brought her back to her senses. By the time Mary and Toby came ambling back towards Bootham Bar, deep in conversation and arm in arm, as she noticed with great satisfaction from the parlour window, she was ready to receive them and hear their news. Which was just as well, for Mary was calling her as soon as she set foot in the parlour.

‘Mama! Mama!’ she cried, running towards her mother. ‘What do ’ee think? Toby’s asked me to marry him.’

‘I think ’tis the finest thing for the both of you,’ Jane said, and added, teasing, ‘If you’ve accepted him.’

Toby did his best to be formal, asking, ‘When will Mr Cartwright be home? I mean … I should have spoken to him first. I
do
know that.’

But Jane dismissed all formality and swept them both into her arms to be kissed and congratulated. Oh, what a day this was turning out to be.

It took a change of mood when Nat came sloping back to the house wearing his thunderous face. He did his best to take the news as graciously as he could, kissing his sister and thumping his friend between the shoulders and telling them both he was very happy for them, but his mood was dark nevertheless. It reminded Jane of how he’d been when Felix had first visited them with Milly. I must do summat about it, she thought, but not now. Later, when Nathaniel is back home. Mary knows what’s the matter, if that odd expression she gave him is anything to go by. But Mary kept her
knowledge
about her brother to herself, as she’d given her word to her fiancé.

In London, George Hudson’s second Season was even more dazzling than the first had been. Prince Albert had become a regular guest at his
extravagant
parties and, once again, Albert Gate East was the place to see and be seen. Even his fiercest critics had to admit that a party thrown by the Railway King was sure to be a major event, although some of them
did
wonder privately how he could spend so much money and still remain solvent. But the money was being well spent. By the time the Season was half over, he had persuaded his daughter to accept the hand of the most prestigious suitor in the capital. His name was George Dundas and he was twenty-eight, which was a highly suitable age for marriage, and splendidly wealthy since he was a member of the renowned Zetland dynasty, no less. And as if that weren’t enough, there was his occupation, which was Member of Parliament for Linlithgowshire, and that was not only socially commendable but politically useful.

‘He couldn’t be bettered,’ he said to Lizzie on the morning the
engagement
was announced in
The Times
. ‘I’ve done well for our little girl. It cost but it was worth it.’ It had been a moment of pure triumph when Mr Dundas came calling to ask for his consent. ‘Let all those carping fools say what they like, we’ve really arrived now.’

Some of those carping fools were actually very influential men. Two of them were writers who had a wide following and a considerable reputation and what they said was outspoken and cruelly to the point. Macaulay called him
‘a bloated, vulgar, insolent, purse-proud, greedy, drunken blackguard’
and Charles Dickens said he wanted to
‘throw up my head and howl whenever I hear Mr Hudson mention
ed’
.