Fourpenny Flyer (21 page)

So they waylaid Miss Pettie after the service, and after exchanging religious pleasantries Mr Sowerby asked her, as casually as he could, if she had chanced to hear anything out of the ordinary in Angel Hill the previous evening.

She was effusively friendly and no help at all. She had been prostrated with the most acute attack of the vapours,' she said. ‘The sky could have fallen, Mr Sowerby, and I would not have heard a thing.
Did
something unusual happen? You intrigue me, I declare.'

‘Nothing of any consequence,' Mr Sowerby said hurriedly but as smoothly as he could. ‘We heard that
there was a carriage being driven away at great speed. A rumour, I daresay.'

‘Ah!' Miss Pettie said happily and with perfect truth, since a pony-cart was not a carriage. ‘No, I did not hear a carriage, Mr Sowerby, you may depend on't.'

‘We will go to the Easters' house this afternoon,' Mr Sowerby said when Miss Pettie's own carriage had trotted away, ‘and we will beard the lion in his den.'

But the only lion in the Easter house that afternoon was Bessie Thistlethwaite, mild, gentle, puzzled Bessie Thistlethwaite.

‘Well now, sir,' she said. ‘I'm sure you could see the master direct if onny 'e was 'ere ter see yer. Which a' the young gentlemen was you wantin'?'

‘Mr John Easter, if you please,' Mr Sowerby said heavily.

‘Well now, sir,' Bessie said imperturbably. ‘Mr John is in London. Would Mr William be of any use to yer?'

‘Very well then,' Mr Sowerby said, trying to keep his temper which was being sorely tried by her bland expression, ‘we will see Mr William.'

‘Onny the trouble is,' Bessie said, happily, ‘Mr William ain't 'ere neither. ‘E's off a-visitin' Mr Honeywood is Mr William, and means to travel on ter London from there.'

‘Oh come!' Mr Sowerby growled, ‘enough of this shillyshallying. I would have you know, woman, that your precious master has stolen our child, and child-stealing is contrary to the law of the land.'

‘Dear me!' Bessie said mildly. ‘Then you'd better see Mrs Easter, if that's the size of it.'

‘At last,' Mrs Sowerby snorted. ‘Inform your mistress, my good woman, inform your mistress.'

‘Mrs Easter is in Hertfordshire,' Bessie said with splendid aplomb.

‘We will write to Mrs Easter,' Mr Sowerby said, his narrow face pinched with displeasure. ‘You have her London address, I presume.'

So Bessie had to hand over one of Nan's business cards as she couldn't think of any way to avoid it. But the moment her visitors were gone she wrote her mistress a letter of her own:

‘Thort you shd no Mrs Easter dear, Mr & Mrs Sowerby is on the rampage after Mr John and meens for to rite to ee. Pray give my fond love to Mr Billy and Mr John. I hopes the young lady took no arm from her jurnee. Yr obedt sert Bessie Thiss.'

And Thiss delivered it on Monday afternoon just as Nan was about to go into the boardroom to chair the quarterly meeting of her regional managers.

‘From Bessie?' she said surprised. ‘My heart alive! What's amiss?'

‘Not a great deal,' Thiss tried to explain. ‘It's by way a' bein' a warnin', as the surgeon said when 'e dropped 'is leeches in the salt.'

But she was already reading it.

‘I can't make head nor tail of it, Thiss,' she said. ‘What young lady? Do 'ee know who 'tis? Where is Johnnie?'

But her managers were filing into the boardroom and as sales had been falling for the third month in succession and they were all plainly anxious about it, she could hardly keep them waiting while she solved the enigma. However while Cosmo was introducing the newest recruit, who was to be in charge of their West Country shops and reading-rooms, she passed the letter across to John, signalling a query with her eyes and eyebrows. And she was pleased to see that he took it calmly, mouthing, ‘I will explain.'

When the meeting was over and the regional managers better inspired, she asked her two sons and Mr Teshmaker to stay behind in the boardroom.

‘Now then, Johnnie,' she said, briskly, holding out her hand for the letter. ‘What's all this?'

He was pale with apprehension, but he looked her in the eye and told her without hesitation. If she were going to be angry with him the sooner he faced it the better.

‘The young lady is Miss Harriet Sowerby,' he said, ‘who is a friend of Miss Pettie's. She has been whipped and starved by her parents because she answered some letters which I wrote to her. They locked her in her room and wouldn't let her out of the house. I have rescued her and
taken her to stay with Annie.'

To his surprise and relief, she threw back her head and crowed with delight. ‘Oh Johnnie, Johnnie, you dear boy!' she said. ‘If you en't just like your father. He rescued me, so he did, the dear crittur, on the very day we met. What a fine good man you've grown up to be.'

Billy had been reading the letter too. Now he was rather worried. During the excitement of the rescue and the cheerful party at Mr Honeywood's afterwards it hadn't occurred to him to think of possible consequences. ‘It ain't against the law is it, Ma?' he said.

‘Cosmo must be the judge of that,' his mother said. ‘Licit or not, 'twas well done, Johnnie.'

‘How old is the young lady?' Mr Teshmaker asked. ‘If she is over sixteen she may live and work away from home with some impunity, and consequently a charge of child-stealing may be difficult for the parents to prove; if, however, she is younger than sixteen then child-stealing may well be a charge we have to face.'

John had to admit he didn't know how old she was. ‘I intend to go to Rattlesden and visit her on Saturday,' he said, glancing at his mother to see if she would approve of that too. ‘I will ask her then, if you think it sensible.'

Mr Teshmaker was as cautious as ever. ‘It would be helpful to know,' he said. ‘However, I would not advise you to alarm her with much questioning. Let us reserve judgement until the parents have written. Then we will see what may be done.'

‘I have given Miss Sowerby my word that she need never to return to her parents' house,' John said. ‘I do not intend to go back on my promise.'

‘What
do
'ee intend?' Nan asked. ‘Do 'ee mean to marry the girl?' Her tone was half mocking so that he could deny it if he wished, but she already knew what he would say.

He answered her most seriously. ‘Yes, Mama. I do.'

How exactly like his father, Nan thought. He don't stop to think whether she'd suit the family. He rescues her, he loves her, he'll marry her. And she made up her mind at once not to oppose him but to support him in every way she could, dear loving crittur that he was.

‘I'm glad to hear it,' she said. ‘He'll be beating you to the altar, Billy, if 'ee don't look sharp.' Billy thought it very likely because Matilda was still keeping him at arm's length with her teasing, and he was no nearer to the point when he could propose than he'd been on the day they met. ‘Have you asked her, John?' Nan said, turning to her other son.

His eyes were very dark in his pale face. ‘No,' he said. ‘Not yet. She should recover a little first, don't you think? She was most unwell when I took her to Annie's. And this matter should be settled.'

‘It should,' his mother agreed, admiring his sensitivity. ‘Is she like to agree, think 'ee?'

‘I hope so,' he said fervently, ‘with all my heart.'

‘Then you must also hope that she is at least sixteen years old,' Cosmo Teshmaker said, ‘and that her parents will consent to it. Which I must confess don't look particularly likely at this juncture.'

‘They'd be blamed fools to turn down such a match,' Nan said, ‘Bein' they en't monied folk or gentry. Leastways none I've heard of.'

‘Her father works in Mr Cole's bookshop,' Billy said.

‘Well, there you are then.'

‘They may be aggrieved,' John pointed out soberly, ‘and refuse their consent by way of revenge.' This business was becoming more fraught with difficulty the more he thought about it.

‘Fortunately,' Cosmo Teshmaker said, ‘the law is designed to serve the rich, and there are many ways round trouble, Mr John, if you have the wherewithal to open the routes.'

The Sowerbys' letter arrived two days later. It was a furious epistle, signed by both of them and written at great length and with extreme venom. The gist of it was an accusation of child-stealing, for which crime they said they intended to take the Easter family to court. ‘No matter what this may cost,' they wrote, ‘we mean to have our dear daughter returned to our care before she is utterly ruined.'

‘Much of this is mere bluster,' Cosmo said. ‘Howsomever
'tis my opinion we should avoid coming to court if that is at all possible. I suggest we meet these people and endeavour to find some compromise.'

‘She is not to go back,' John said. ‘I have written to her assuring her of that.' And had such a charming letter back, thanking him so touchingly ‘for all your care and concern'.

‘No more she shall,' Nan assured him. ‘Arrange the meeting, Cosmo. Write and tell 'em their daughter is safe and well and has found herself a good position with the family of a man of the cloth. That should quieten 'em. Then suggest a time and a place when we may all meet.'

‘Let us suggest that it take place here in London at the end of September,' Cosmo said. ‘It will put them at a disadvantage to have to travel and delay of a few weeks will do no harm. It might do positive good. Waiting often cools tempers.'

So it was agreed. And John left the boardroom buoyed up by the marvellous feeling that he was a loved member of a powerful, supportive family. It was a new experience for him and one that filled him with importance. Who would have thought it? Especially as his actions in this matter seemed to have verged upon the criminal.

He would have felt even more important and cared for had he known that his mother went straight from her work later that afternoon to discuss the whole matter with her friend Mr Frederick Brougham, the lawyer, and that Mr Frederick Brougham, the lawyer, had agreed to act on his behalf, although ‘with an ulterior motive, since I mean to ask a favour, now that I have some hope of a positive reply'.

Nan was intrigued and amused. ‘Ask away,' she said.

‘I plan to hold a little dinner party here on Thursday evening for some of the more discerning of my friends,' Mr Brougham said. ‘And a good dinner party needs a fine hostess if it is to be truly successful. Since my wife died, mine have been rather lacking in that capacity, as you will understand. Would you do me the honour of joining me as my hostess for the evening?'

‘'Twould be a pleasure,' she said, grinning at him, ‘but 'twill link us together in uncommon public fashion. En't you afraid of gossip?'

‘In this city?' he observed drily, ‘tongues wag at the slightest provocation. You and I must be above such nonsense. So what say you? Your company at my table would be much appreciated.'

And so it was, for besides having considerable style, she was a witty creature and, being at the centre of the newspaper world, singularly well-informed, a highly suitable hostess for Frederick's highly civilized home in Bedford Row. And to her great pleasure, the first of his guests to arrive was an old friend of hers, Mr Francis Place, who had once been a breeches-maker but now sold books from his shop in Charing Cross Road and wrote extremely radical pamphlets urging reform. And the second was another. And the fifth and sixth were Sir Francis Burdett, the Member of Parliament for Westminster, and his elegant wife, both of whom she already knew and liked. This was going to be a very good evening.

It was certainly a heavily political one, for, in all, the guests included four Members of Parliament and their wives, and all eight were Whigs and highly radical. They were criticizing the Corn Laws before the first course had been served, declaring they were laws made ‘by the landowners to benefit the landowners' and were now, according to one gentleman, ‘making the rich richer and the poor poorer'.

‘But not without opposition,' Frederick Brougham pointed out, smiling across the table at Sir Francis and Mr Place.

‘Opposition is of little interest,' Mr Place said seriously, ‘while those who are oppressed have no representation. Until we have achieved full adult suffrage, an annual parliament and voting by ballot, we shall achieve no change. The poor will continue to starve.'

‘Oh come,' one of the ladies protested. ‘There is relief for the poor, is there not? They may go upon the parish.'

‘When there were a mere handful of destitute families,' Frederick said, ‘the parish could sustain them with relative ease. But now, I fear, those who are unemployed are numbered in their thousands. Mechanical threshers put whole families out of work, the parish cannot possibly
afford to feed them and the government does not consider it any part of its business to enquire what is to become of them.'

Sir Francis Burdett nodded his head in agreement. ‘The growing number of the poor constitutes a real threat to the stability of our economy,' he said. ‘We should not forget what happened in France a mere twenty-seven years ago. It could easily happen here.'

‘Let us hope that reason will prevail,' Frederick said.

‘That's a thing I shall see later this evening,' Sir Francis told them, ‘for delegates from all the Hampden Clubs are come to London to press for reform and I am to chair the meeting.'

‘I trust you will urge moderation,' Frederick said.

But the delegates were in no mood for moderation.

By the time Sir Francis joined them in the long dark hall behind the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, the place was so full it took him more than five minutes to struggle through to the rostrum. Every seat at every table was taken, and men stood crammed together in every other available space, leaning against the walls or crouching on their haunches beside their seated companions, or standing together in a close-packed phalanx of broad back and passionate argument. Potboys squirmed themselves between the tables taking orders and carrying heavy trays loaded with tankards, and sweating in the heat, for what little air there was in the hall was much-breathed and clouded with wood smoke and the blue fumes of tobacco. It was high time to call the meeting to order and begin.