London - Edward Rutherfurd [519]
“Tell Silversleeves,” he called, as he led the old earl out, “to report to my house immediately.”
Moments later, his carriage had rattled off, apparently towards Westminster. Once out of sight, it made a little detour and headed away in another direction entirely. And so it was that it was not little Horatio Dogget but the rich old Earl of St James who found himself, that day, in the sanctuary of kindly Mrs Penny’s house on Clapham Common, by Lavender Hill.
“Damn!” said Lord Bocton, when he heard his father had escaped. “We should have chained him up.”
The Great Reform Bill finally passed into law in the summer of 1832. Apart from giving members of Parliament to the new towns and abolishing the rotten boroughs, it gave the vote to a fair spread of the middle class. Women, regardless of their status, of course, still could not vote.
With her brother gone, and only her mother and herself to think about, Lucy had wondered for some months now whether she could afford to stop working for Silas. She had considered many prospects, including working in the little factory her mother had left. She had even wondered if she could get some assistance from the cousin she had learned about at Clapham. But after making three separate expeditions there in the spring, she had been unable to find any trace of her or her family.
The issue was resolved for her quite unexpectedly one summer day when, arriving as usual for work one morning, she was greatly surprised to find Silas standing by the mooring without his boat.
“Where’s the boat?” she asked.
“Sold it,” he replied. “In fact, I don’t think I’ll be needing you any more, young Lucy. I’m doing something else now.” He led her back to an alley where a dirty old cart was standing. It contained nothing. “I’ll be going round with that, collecting,” he explained.
“But collecting what?”
“Rubbish,” he said with satisfaction. “Dirt. People will pay you to take it away. Then you make a huge heap of dust in a yard somewhere – see? I got a yard near here. Then you sift through it and see what you can find.”
“So it’s like what you did on the river?”
“Yes. But there’s more money in dust than in water. I’ve looked into it.” He nodded. “You can come and help sift if you want, but I’ll only pay you pence.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“You and your mother’ll be hard up.”
“We’ll manage.”
“Maybe I’ll help you,” he said, then turned away.
For Eugene Penny the year brought one expense; but it was an expense which, fortunately, he could afford.
The stay of the old Earl of St James with the family had been, by far, the most trying three weeks of Penny’s life. On some days the old man was lucid and demanded to go home. Eugene himself had been forced, physically, to restrain him, which he found embarrassing. At other times the earl was docile, but once or twice, in a confused state, he threatened Mary Penny with violence. It was a relief when Meredith finally came and removed him to a quiet place in the West Country.
From then on, Eugene had been so busy at the bank that he had hardly had time to think of anything else, until, one day, walking down Fleet Street, he had seen a stooped and sad-looking figure in scuffed shoes shuffling along towards St Bride’s, and suddenly recognized with a pang of horror and of guilt that it was his godfather, Jeremy Fleming.
It was two years he realized since he had been to see him. Why had he not done so, when he had received such kindness at his hands? He had been busy. That was no excuse. And what in the world had happened to him?
Fleming’s story was soon told. “It was Wellington’s Beer Act, you see, in 1830,” he explained. “You remember, when everyone was complaining