Hannah McBride was weeping too. “Good-bye, dear Lydia. How I will miss you and the children.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind, Mama,” Lydia sniffed. “You could come with us.”
Hannah shook her head. They had gone over this more than once. She had never lived anywhere but Palmyra. All her friends were here. The store was her means of livelihood. This was her life. There was no point in going through it all again, so she changed the subject. “I am so glad you came,” she whispered. “It meant so much to your father.”
Nathan had come up to stand beside them. Lydia stepped back, and Hannah reached out and took Nathan’s hand. “Thank you, Nathan, for bringing my daughter back. And the children. My Josiah wasn’t much at words, but it meant more to him than he could say.”
“I know, Mother McBride.” He kissed her quickly on the cheek, then took Lydia’s elbow. “We’d best be going or we won’t make it to Canandaigua by dark.”
“Nathan?” Hannah was fumbling in the pocket of her dress. She pulled out a flat black pocketbook as he turned back to her. “I want you to have this.” She thrust it out to him.
Puzzled, he took it. It was thick and heavy. “What is this?”
She inclined her head toward it. “Open it.”
When he did so, his mouth opened slightly. Lydia stepped over to see better. She gasped. “Mother!”
Nathan couldn’t tell how much there was, but the purse was stuffed with bills. There were at least a dozen five-dollar bills—Vs, as they were commonly called—and at least that many Xs (ten-dollar bills). There was easily three, maybe four hundred dollars in his hand. He was shocked into silence.
“But Mama—,” Lydia started.
“Now,” Hannah scolded, “don’t you say a word. That’s part of your inheritance from your father. Josiah has left me well situated. And you have a long way to travel. I don’t want you letting my grandchildren go hungry because you don’t have enough money.”
“But it won’t take nearly—,” Nathan began.
“Besides,” she went right on, ignoring him, “you’ve worked at the store now for almost six months. Let’s just call it part of your wages.”
“I . . .” He was stammering, feeling like a fool. Had she heard him and Lydia expressing to each other their worry about how they were going to make their forty dollars stretch across half a continent? He didn’t think so.
Hannah suddenly went up on her toes and kissed Nathan on the cheek. “The money isn’t for that,” she said, “but if you could bring them back again in a year or two, Nathan, I would be forever grateful.”
“I will,” he said, feeling the wetness of her tears against his cheek. “I promise.”
He helped Lydia into the sleigh and poked the buffalo robe in around her. Then in a moment he was up and beside young Joshua. “Good-bye, Grandma,” the children called, waving.
“Good-bye, children.” As the driver picked up the reins, Hannah looked at Nathan. “By the way, the driver has already been paid for taking you to Buffalo.” As Nathan’s head jerked around, she gave a little wave of her hand, motioning for the driver to be off. He flipped the reins and the horses began to move. Nathan turned, waving the purse. “No,” he called, “not after this.”
She laughed and waved. “Remember, you promised to come back.”
The horses picked up speed and broke into a steady trot. The runners of the sleigh hissed over the snow-packed street. Nathan looked at Lydia, who was shrugging helplessly at him. He turned to the driver. The man nodded soberly. “It’s true, Mr. Steed. I have already been well paid. So you just settle back and enjoy the ride.”
The minute the door opened, Joshua shot to his feet. Rebecca came out first, but Mary Ann was right behind her. In three great steps he reached them. “Can I go in now?”
His mother nodded. “Yes. Congratulations, Papa.”
He nodded and smiled, then pushed past them into the bedroom. Caroline was half propped up with pillows and had the baby cradled in one arm. She looked drained, but glowed with happiness. He moved quickly to her, pulling around the chair that sat at the edge of the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m fine,” she answered, touched that he had inquired about her first. “Tired. But I’m fine. How are the girls?”
“Fine. Rebecca went to get them. They’re dying to see the baby. Savannah says she gets him first.” He looked at the bundle lying on her stomach. “So it’s a boy.”
She nodded and pulled the blanket back.
He leaned over, peering at the tiny round face, still partially flat and with red splotches from the birth. The eyes were screwed tightly shut, and there was the barest touch of dark black hair across the top of his head, no thicker than frost on a window. A great sense of wonder filled Joshua as he looked down into his son’s face. “He’s beautiful, Caroline.”
“He’s got a lusty set of lungs on him,” she said. “Did you hear him?”
“I did,” he said proudly. “In fact, he woke up some of the people across the river in Montrose.”
She laughed, reaching down to run the side of her finger across the fuzz of his hair. “Do you want to hold him?”
“Of course.” Carefully, he reached out and took the bundle into his arms. The baby gave one little whimper, then immediately settled down again. “Our little Charles Benjamin,” Joshua said, pulling the blanket down farther enough to reveal the tiny hands with the perfectly formed little fingernails.
“Do you still want to call him that?”
He looked surprised that she would suggest otherwise. “I chose Savannah’s name. Charles is fine with me.”
“I don’t want to call him Chuck. No one ever called my father Chuck. It was always Charles.”
“Then Charles it shall be.” He looked down at his son. “First one to call him Chuck gets a good pop from his father.”
Caroline watched father and son, feeling contented. It hadn’t been a particularly difficult labor, but she was almost thirty-four now and could tell it took more out of her than giving birth to Will and Olivia.
Joshua turned to her. “Know what I was thinking out there while I was waiting?”
“What?”
“He could easily live into the twentieth century.”
Her eyes widened. “If he lives to be sixty or more, that’s true.”
“Oh, he’s going to live to be ninety or more. I can sense it.” As she laughed at his pride, he sobered, speaking now to his son. “Imagine that, Charles Benjamin Steed. The twentieth century. And you’ll get to see it.”
Chapter Notes
Two missionaries from Nauvoo arrived in England in December, but John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff were the first of the Apostles to come. They arrived in Liverpool on 11 January 1840 and journeyed to Preston on 13 January as described here. On 17 January, a council was held and the assignments were given for the missionaries’ various fields of labor. (See
MWM,
pp. 106–9.)
Chapter Nineteen
By some quirk or twist of nature, Staffordshire, about thirty miles south of Manchester, had been blessed with rich deposits of pottery clay. For over a hundred years it had been a major center for the English pottery industry. A major factor in that happening came as the result of one man. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, a master potter in the area came to prominence. Brilliant, clever, and possessing a fine sense of art, the man began to experiment with different mixtures and firing temperatures. He developed a beautiful light blue porcelain, then found a way to lay white porcelain designs over the top of that. Expanding from the normal line of dinnerware, he developed decorative art pieces—vases, cameos, statuettes, pedestals, flowerpots, busts, and medallion portraits. In a very short time, the name of Josiah Wedgwood was world famous. Royalty around the world vied for his creations. People in Europe and America sought pieces of Wedgwood as visible proof of their own economic success. Eventually even the name for a particular color—Wedgwood blue—would honor the work of the craftsman. As much as any other man, he had brought the Potteries into the industrial age.
Consisting of six adjacent towns, the Potteries employed thousands of people in the digging, mixing, molding, decorating, and firing of the wonderful Staffordshire clay. Every town had its potbank yards, the factories where the clay was fired. Massive “bottle ovens” filled these yards, some three and four stories high. They spewed clouds of black smoke into the sky. The bottle ovens got their name because they were shaped like the top half of a whiskey jug. Fat at the bottom, they tapered off into rounded cones at the top, the chimney forming the mouth of the “bottle.” Derek Ingalls had heard about the Potteries, of course. Who in England hadn’t? But he never dreamed how extensive the factories were, and even now, after being here for six weeks, he found himself staring in wonder at the great ovens.
Derek looked across the street to the shop where some of the area’s finest Wedgwood was on display. He was tempted to cross over, but pushed it away. The small vase, not much bigger than a coffee cup but so exquisitely shaped, would still be there. It had been for six weeks and he didn’t expect it to be gone now. The reason he didn’t go look at it again was that it depressed him terribly. The floral design, laid in such delicate bas-relief over the powder blue surface, was so like Rebecca’s own loveliness. But the ten-pound cost—somewhere around fifty American dollars—was so astronomically beyond his means, that it only made him feel the worse each time he looked at it.
Oh, my darling Rebecca. How I would love to bring it home to you.
He walked on, not looking back, head down in dejection.
As Derek moved along, past the factories and into the residential section of Hanley, back toward the home of William and Ann Benbow, his spirits fell even further. Would they be leaving this place? Would they be saying good-bye to the members and the new converts they had made in the past month and a half?
It had been a wonderful six weeks. The people were warm and generous, even in the midst of their own poverty. England was undergoing hard times at the moment, even more than when Derek had been here, and there was widespread unemployment. The Potteries drew thousands of people looking for work. Often men, women, and children worked around the clock in the potbank yards, nearly suffocating from the heavy smoke or fainting from working too close to the great ovens. They made barely a pittance for ten- and twelve- and fourteen-hour days, and yet they gladly shared their food and their homes with the missionaries from America. Derek had grown very close to many of the families.
They had already baptized forty people, and looked forward to further success as they continued their labors. Then all of that had changed three days before when Theodore Turley returned from Birmingham. He spoke in glowing terms of the richness of the harvest there and urged Wilford to go and labor in that place. To Derek’s surprise, Wilford had been willing to entertain the idea. He would leave Derek and Turley to continue the work in the Potteries, while he went on to Birmingham by himself. Derek had been greatly relieved to hear that he could stay.
Then yesterday, during the worship services, Wilford had shocked everyone with an announcement as he got up to speak. “As we were singing the opening hymn,” he said, “the Spirit whispered to me, ‘Brother Wilford, this is the last meeting you will hold with these people for many days.’ ” That brought cries of dismay from all around. Wilford himself was saddened and shocked, but he was sure enough of the impression that he turned the sermon into his farewell address.
Last evening, as the missionaries sat around the table with William and Ann Benbow, discussing the implications of what all of this meant, there was no agreement. Turley saw the prompting as confirmation that the Apostle should go to Birmingham. The Benbows urged him to go even farther south than that. William had a brother, a well-to-do farmer in the Herefordshire area, southwest of Birmingham. John Benbow and his wife, Jane, were members of a group called the United Brethren. The people who belonged to this group were earnest seekers after the truth, and William and Ann were sure there would be a positive response from the group to the message of the restored gospel. So strongly did William feel about it that he offered to pay Wilford’s way to Herefordshire. So, in typical fashion, Wilford decided to turn it over to the Lord.
He had left early this morning, saying that he would “go in secret before the Lord” and find out what he should do. Derek was returning from an errand for the Benbows, and hoped he hadn’t missed Wilford’s return. He wanted to be there when the answer was announced.
As he rounded the corner and started down the street toward the Benbow home, he saw Theodore Turley hurrying toward him. Turley looked up, then started waving. “Derek! Oh, good. Wilford is just back. He has his answer.”
They were all a little breathless as they finally got settled in the parlor. Wilford waited until all were seated, then he rose slowly. “Brethren. Sister Benbow. As you know, I have sought to know God’s will concerning this work. And he has given me the answer and showed me what it is I must do.”
Every eye was on him now. William Benbow leaned forward, his hands clasped together. Turley was poised on the edge of his seat. Without thinking about it, Derek found himself clutching the arms of his chair.
“It is the Lord’s will that I shall go immediately to the south of England.”
Turley leaned forward eagerly. “So to Birmingham as you planned?”
Wilford shook his head slowly, then turned to William Benbow. “No, the Spirit whispers that we are to go on beyond that. On south to Herefordshire.”
Benbow leaped up. “Wonderful!” he cried. He turned and took his wife’s hands. She was nodding happily. Then he turned back to Wilford. “I shall take you there myself and give you introduction to my brother.”
“Thank you, Brother William.” He turned to Turley. “Brother Theodore, I should like you to remain in Staffordshire so that the work here does not suffer.”
“Of course,” Turley said immediately.
Derek held his breath, waiting. Finally, Wilford turned to him and smiled. “Brother Derek, the Spirit whispers that you are to accompany me.”