The Eden Passion (74 page)

As the echo of the whispered vow hung heavy over the quiet room, Andrew realized that he had no further objection. There wasn't a force in the world equal to that avowal.

He saw John glance toward Aslam, as though reminded of his presence, though in truth the little boy had never left his place at the end of the table, had listened to every word that had been said.

Gently John reached out and ruffled his hair. "You'll help me, won't you, Aslam?" he asked, and in characteristic fashion answered his own question. "Of course you will. I'll make you a partner one day, so that fifty years from now, the richest man in all of London will have dark skin."

Suddenly he threw back his head, laughing. "Oh, God, how marvelous that would be."

Aslam watched intently, his patrician features breaking into a smile, as though he was well aware of the joke he shared with John.

John reached for the little boy and invited, "Come, one quick game of chess before bed."

Andrew watched along with Dhari and Elizabeth as the two headed into the drawing room. But a few steps this side of the door, John stopped, as though a pressing thought had just entered his head. He did not look back, his voice low, as though on this point, he wanted no rebuttal. "The corporation, Andrew," he began. "I want it in my name."

"Of course," Andrew agreed. He'd never entertained any other possibility.

"In my name," John repeated. "But I want the 'Eden* dropped."

Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew saw Elizabeth start forward. As though John had sensed the objection, he repeated himself, in a voice without margin. "I want the 'Eden' dropped."

Andrew saw Elizabeth retreat, no match for the will of the man standing in the doorway. To Andrew it seemed a petty request. After all, it had been Edward Eden's foresight in signing over the Ragged School properties to John that was making this entire venture possible. "Are you certain?" he began.

"I'm certain," came the strong reply. "I want the 'Eden' dropped. My father was well known in the city. I don't want my competitors to get us confused. Edward Eden was the philanthropist. I am not."

He waited to see if there would be objection coming from anyone. Then on a fresh burst of energy he led Aslam into the drawing room, proclaiming, "Be on your guard tonight. I'm feeling victorious."

With that, the two disappeared around the corner, heading for the gaming table.

Andrew looked back toward Elizabeth. The disappointment on her face was astonishing. But at last she was calm, looking back at him with a bewildered expression, as though she were suffering from the sensation of riding on the tail of a comet, wondering whether it would rise to the rarefied air of the heavens, or plunge to earth.

London, Late January 1858

In spite of the mountainous problems pressing upon him, John glanced about the drawing room, which now bore no resemblance to a drawing room, and thought, quite simply, that he'd never felt more alive, thought too how much he missed Jack Willmot. With the hiring of the workmen ahead of him, he needed one good professional foreman. In short, he needed Jack Willmot.

From his cluttered desk near the window, he looked out at the wintry day, amazed at the line of men stretching around the corner. The firm had run four simple adverts for men from separate trades who wanted employment on a continuous-wage basis. He'd expected perhaps fifty to appear for the interviews. He glanced again out of the window, seeing at least double that number, a continuous line of burly unemployed men, slapping their arms and stamping their feet against the cold.

Although he hated to do so, he called to the young clerk at the desk near the end of the room. "Hold them a moment longer. I expect Mr. Rhoades at any moment. I want him to be here."

The young man nodded, a bright eager fellow named Archie whom Andrew had recruited from somewhere.

John cupped his hands about his forehead and stole a look upward at what once had been Elizabeth's drawing room. Early on, that first week, all the furniture had been moved out. Now a solid row of filing cabinets lined the far wall, the room stripped of all furniture save for his desk, and over there, Andrew's, and the clerk's desk at the end of the room.

The same day that the carpet had gone into storage, John had had several large display boards delivered, which now stood about the room bearing large maps of central London, and pinned to the largest, the magnificent drawings done by the architect Mr. Lewis Chis-well of "The New Elizabeth" which shortly would rise out of the congestion around Paddington Station.

Lowering his hands and leaning back in his chair, John gazed in admiration at the elegant structure. A "domesticated and practical Blenheim," Chiswell had called it, incorporating all the theatricality of that great estate with the exigencies and needs of a modern hotel. "Think of all the ordinary people who would like to pass a night at Blenheim," he'd joked with John.

Now, for an exorbitant tariff, they could. John gazed upon the drawing, an intricate composition of Baroque movement, arched windows, the segmental colonnade of the main front and the interplay of convex and concave forms. In a way, it was an intensely emotional design, eliciting either instantaneous adoration or revulsion.

Fortunately the board of directors at the Metropolitan Equitable Investment Association had fallen into the former classification, had been so smitten with the idea of royal lodgings for affluent commoners that they had readily lent him fifty thousand pounds of the Association's money plus another twenty-five thousand pounds from private investors.

Thus armed, he had been able to listen to Chiswell's suggestion of Italian marble for the large reception rooms. Although he'd spent hours studying the drawings, he looked at them as though seeing them for the first time. They were impressive. It would be a landmark.

Suddenly he heard the front door burst open, and saw Andrew in the archway, his arms bulging with portfolios, a scowl on his face. "My God, John, we mustn't keep those men standing out there any longer. Why didn't you start?"

"I was waiting for you," John called back, in high spirits, ignoring the scowl. "Did you find him?" he asked urgently. "The man named Hazlitt?"

"I found his boardinghouse," Andrew muttered, moving to the warmth of the fire. "According to his landlady, he is in France. Seems there's a Frenchwoman—"

"Damnl" John exploded, leaving his chair and striding toward the window, where he saw the line of men still growing. He had been

counting on Hazlitt, though he'd never met the man. In his search for a professional foreman, the name Hazlitt had come up again and again. Employed for years by Thomas Cubitt, and largely responsible for the efficiency of his crews, John had heard that the man had taken only occasional jobs since Cubitt's death in 1855. J onn na d hoped to hire him, knowing better than anyone the need for a strong voice of authority to keep the workmen in line and extract their best labors.

"Surely he's' not the only foreman in London," Andrew soothed.

"Then find me another," John muttered.

"I thought that tomorrow I might call on Thomas Brassey. His files are extensive and—"

"No!" Abruptly John turned from the window, amazed that Andrew would make such a suggestion. "I want nothing from Thomas Brassey," he went on. "If it weren't for Thomas Brassey, Jack Will-mot would be here instead of lying at the bottom of the Black Sea."

"I'm sorry," Andrew murmured. "We'll find someone. Perhaps one of the men outside,"

John appreciated his understanding, but doubted seriously if there was a mentality in that frozen hungry line of men capable of performing the duties of a foreman.

"Let's get it over with," he said, dreading it, the inevitable process of selecting some, rejecting others, all in need. To the young clerk at the end of the room he called out, "Let them in, two at a time. Take their names and experience. And don't forget. I want only skilled workmen. If they're just looking for a week's wages, send them packing."

The young man nodded. As he disappeared into the entrance hall, Andrew drew close to the desk. "Chiswell finished the last of the drawings today, including the elevational designs." He pointed toward the portfolios on his desk. "They're marvelous. As soon as this is over, I'll show them to you. The detail in the individual chambers is elegant. London will never have seen anything like it."

Sitting behind his desk, John smiled. The praise was good, especially coming from Andrew, who'd seemed hesitant at the beginning. With every passing day, Andrew's enthusiasm had increased, and now it was he who kept John bolstered when the problems mounted. And how they had mounted, and with what skill Andrew had solved most of them, from negotiating to retain the freehold to buying up additional properties, thus giving them the space they needed on which to erect the Elizabeth. He was a skilled solicitor and a good

friend, and the awareness of both softened John's newly awakened loss of Jack Will mot.

As the front door opened again and the cold draft of air raced across the floor, preceding the two disreputable-looking men who appeared, hats in hand, John and Andrew were both seated behind their desks, ready to commence the hiring.

John waited while the clerk took down their names and experience, recalling how often he'd done this for Thomas Brassey. It served one best to put aside all humanitarian tendencies and let only the conservative instincts hold sway. They were a clever lot, the poor and unemployed, capable of spinning heartbreaking fiction. Every one had an ill wife, crippled children and a hungry white-haired old mother. Unfortunately, as John knew all too well, most of the fictions were true.

For over an hour John and Andrew sat at their desks, enduring the stream of unemployed workmen. Their hiring goal for this first job had been three hundred men. By four o'clock in the afternoon they had less than half that number, always holding out for the most skilled, the most experienced, the healthiest. At some point, Archie had taken pity on the shivering men, and had tactfully suggested to John that they let as many into the warmth of the house as the entrance hall would hold, the others outside moving in to take their places as space permitted.

John had agreed, though now he was well aware of the crowded foyer, literally packed with frozen, hungry men.

Shortly after four, he glanced out of the window, amazed to see the line still growing, men with white slips of paper in their hands looking for the proper number where the hiring was going on. It was obvious that they would never see them all today, and it was equally obvious that someone would have to step outside and tell them so.

A hard task that would be. Most of the men he'd seen today were hungry to the point of desperation. From where John sat by the window, he'd already seen examples of shoving, men quarreling over their places in line, afraid that the quota would be filled before they had had a chance to apply.

All at once he heard a loud voice coming from the entrance hall, then the low rumbling of men arguing together.

"Damn," John muttered beneath his breath.

"What is it?" Andrew inquired.

At that moment John saw one of the men reach out, his massive hand shoving the man in front of him, and with one violent move-

ment he jerked him out of sight beyond the archway. Suddenly a yell shattered the silence, the sound stirring the other men out of their lethargy, and as the entrance hall erupted into cries and shouts, John left his chair running.

Foolishly he tried to shout over the din, but to no avail, He was aware of Andrew behind him, apparently stunned by the sudden violence which had erupted in the entrance hall.

"We must stop them," Andrew gasped, and he too tried to push into the circle of men, and for his trouble was shoved roughly back.

John encircled the brawling men, calling to Andrew to see if Elizabeth had a weapon in the house. At first Andrew seemed not to hear, and as John was on the verge of shouting again, he saw the front door burst open, saw in silhouette a giant of a man filling the door, and thought with increasing anxiety that the din had reached the pavement and the remaining men would come streaming in.

For a moment the mountainous man stood there, his features obliterated by the glare of daylight behind him. Then he was pushing the men aside as though they lacked weight and substance, his massive arms effortlessly clearing a path until at last he stood over the three men fighting. He reached down and lifted the main offender to his feet by the scruff of his collar. Without warning he drew back his arm and pistonlike delivered a blow to the man's jaw that sent him sprawling, knocking over several others in the process.

John watched the remaining two men start forward. The large man turned with deliberation, grabbed their shoulders and with one resounding thud knocked their skulls together and tossed them toward the slowly retreating group of men.

The mood in the confined area was still ugly, and John was on the verge of stepping forward and dismissing the lot of them when the big man spoke, talking to the sullen workmen as though they were misbehaving schoolboys. "Now, what you done here, mates, wasn't exactly proper, was it? We all come here looking for a chance to work, and you act like you was in a dockside pub."

With growing amazement, John saw the men nod, self-conscious as schoolboys. John had yet to see his face, though at that moment, the large man said, "Now, someone here is due an apology, and I think that the sooner we . . ."

With that, he turned toward the archway, his massive features catching on the light from the drawing-room windows, his shock of red hair as luxuriant and thick as the rest of him. The face was vaguely familiar, the features growing more so, incredible features, or

their exact duplicate, which John had last seen in the hospital ward at Scutari.

"Alex?" John whispered. "Alex Aldweil?"

A grin broke on the man's face. "Eden, is it?" he inquired in turn. "'Course it is, the young man from the hospital, with a thousand questions."

With a laugh, John extended his hand and bridged the distance between them and felt his arm being pumped vigorously up and down.