The Baker's Tale (5 page)

Some of them came to the learning center, anxious and frightened. Others pretended to be rougher than they really were. Ruby greeted each one with a smile and told them how happy she was that they were there. Her manner and gender made learning a more comfortable experience for women. Men wanted to be in her presence. Children adored her.

There was a patience in her face that led those who had been anxious to take readily to her. And she had words of encouragement for everyone.

A young man about twenty years of age had a laugh that was more cheerful than intelligent. Given the fact that he had been a slow boy for the first two decades of his life, it seemed unlikely that he would ever become a fast one. Indeed, at his first session, he held his paper with the alphabet on it upside down, which seemed to suit his convenience as well as if he had been holding it right side up.

“You must never belittle yourself,” Ruby told him.

A stout bald gentleman with a cheerful face had a tendency to stand with his hands in his pockets and whistle while admiring the writing on the wall as one might contemplate a painting by Rembrandt.

“Your letters are beautiful,” Ruby complimented after he struggled through his first few letters.

And to a girl of twelve who had tears of frustration in her eyes: “Queen Victoria, who sits upon the throne, began her learning with the same alphabet. She started with ‘A' just like you. And it took her quite a while to work her royal way to ‘Z'.”

Then tragedy.

In Christopher's fortieth year, he began to feel pain and weakness that should not have been in a man his age.

There is a dread condition that prepares its victims for death. A disease that medicine has never cured and wealth has never warded off. It is an illness that sometimes moves in giant strides and sometimes at a sluggish pace but, whether quick or slow, is certain. A condition in which the outcome of the struggle between body and soul is so sure that, day by day, the mortal part of the sufferer withers away and the spirit, feeling death at hand, welcomes the end as a lightening load.

Ruby comforted herself with the hope that Christopher would recover, as he answered with a quiet smile each day that he felt better than the day before. But he continued to grow thinner, and his eyes sank deeply into his face until his look was that of the gaunt starving man I had seen when he and Ruby first stood in the cold outside my bakery window.

Marie asked often if there was something she could do for him. Christopher's answer was always the same.

“Nothing.”

For a while, he was strong enough to walk about with Ruby supporting him on her arm. They visited places that they remembered
from the past. Each one brought some earlier event to mind, and they would linger in the sunlight with a word, a laugh . . . a fear.

One walk led them to the churchyard where Ruby's mother was buried.

“Sometimes when I look at you,” Christopher told Ruby, “I see your mother's spirit in your eyes. When I die, I should like to be buried as near to her grave as they can make my own.”

Ruby gave her promise, holding his hand.

“I shall never be an old man. But if I could know before I die that you will grow up to be happy and that you will come and look upon my grave from time to time, not with tears but with a smile, I could take my leave contented. You are a wonderful young woman. I love you as a daughter. I have nothing to regret but that I will not be here longer for you.”

Each day, Ruby and Marie put Christopher in a chair by the window so he could feel the fresh air. But all the air that there is in the world and all the winds that blow could not have brought new life to him.

The little home in which they had laughed for years while planning happy futures was now somber.

“You are spending too much time by my bedside,” Christopher told Ruby. “It troubles me that I am burdening you.”

“I am here because I want to be. My earliest memories are of you sitting by my side and caring for me in a hovel that was a home only because you were there. I have known no father but you. Never was a parent more kind to a child than you have been to me.”

She had never loved him more dearly than she did now. But she knew that hope was gone and death was closing fast. He could no longer move from room to room without assistance. He was so emaciated that it was hard to look upon him.

“Come close so you can hear me,” Christopher told Ruby one night. “You are as good as any person of wealth and rank in the eyes of God. And in my eyes, you are better. My greatest fear after the death of your mother was that I should die and there would be no one to look after you. Now I know that you are loved and well cared for.”

Soon, he could no longer leave his bed, so it was moved beside the window. When the rays of the sun shimmered on the wall, Christopher knew that it was day. When the reflection died away and a deepening gloom crept into the room, he knew that it was night. More and more often, he lay still without talking until a word from Ruby or Marie brightened his face for a moment. Then the light would dim.

“I can do nothing for myself,” he said. “Once, I could, but that time is gone. For ten and three years, this has been my happy home. I shall leave it soon, but do not be sorry for me, dear Ruby. You have made my life very happy.”

It is a dreadful thing to wait for death, to know that hope is gone and recovery is impossible. I have seen many people die. Little babies and great strong men. I know when death is coming.

“He will have every comfort possible,” Ruby, Marie, and I pledged. “And one of us will always be with him. He shall not die alone.”

Death came on a crisp autumn afternoon when the ground was coloured by fallen leaves and many more hung upon the trees in tints of red and gold.

“Come close,” Christopher said to Ruby. “I want to see your face one more time.”

“Do not leave us. Please do not leave.”

“I will be with the angels. I have had the most blissful rest today, better than sleep. And such a pleasant happy dream. I almost think
that, if I could rise from this bed, I would not do so. Someday, we will meet again. I feel the truth of that so strongly that I can bear to part from you now.”

His eyes were bright, but their light was of Heaven, not earth. He moved his lips, but no sound came. Then he fell into a deep slumber from which there was no waking.

There was a burial service. Christopher was laid to rest in the churchyard near his sister's grave. Thinking of him now, many years later, I fancy him standing before me with Ruby at his side. She is three years old. They are shivering in the cold. She is clutching his hand, and her blue eyes are raised toward his face with love and wonder.

Book 2

CHAPTER
4

E
dwin's parents married for love.

John Chatfield was a teacher in Portsea, giving him a status in life midway between England's upper and lower classes. Rebecca Hyde was the governess in a family that Mr. Chatfield visited from time to time. Mr. Chatfield took notice of Miss Hyde and paid an increasing amount of attention to her. Eventually, he proposed marriage and she accepted. Two years later, in 1832, Edwin was born.

As Edwin was breathing the first breaths of his life, his mother was breathing her last.

“Is there nothing that can be done?” John Chatfield begged.

The doctor shook his head. Death was at her pillow.

Edwin's mother reached weakly toward the infant and, in a faint voice, pled, “Let me hold my child.”

The doctor placed the infant in her arms. With a trembling hand, she caressed her son's cheek, pressed his tiny hand against her mouth, and imprinted her lips upon his forehead. The
shadow of a smile crossed her face. Then her breathing stopped, and her soul drifted out upon the dark eternal sea that rolls round the world.

The doctor chafed her breast and hands, but the flow of her blood had ceased.

She died like a child that had gone to sleep. Edwin would never again know a mother's loving touch. He would never hear a mother's voice singing to him. He could only dream in future years of a mother's arms round him. But for a moment, she had loved him.

As a young boy, Edwin had a solemn sweetness and a calm shy smile. When twilight fell, he would walk outside with his father, look up at the sky, and wait for the first clear shining star. Whichever of them saw it first—and almost always, it was Edwin—would cry out, “I see a star!”

A sketch in ink of Edwin's mother hung in the home. The graceful head of a pretty woman was all that he knew of her looks. Once, he asked his father if he had met his mother before she died, for he could not remember if he had or not.

“You met her one time when you were very young,” his father told him.

“Was she happy when she saw me?”

“Her whole face lit up in a smile when she saw you. And she said to you, ‘Edwin, I love you.'”

“I don't remember.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Where did she go?”

“Come and sit beside me, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a wonderful mother. She had a son named Edwin and dearly loved him. But she was taken very ill and died and was buried in the ground where the grass and flowers and trees grow. No one will see her again. But she loved both of us very much.”

Once, Edwin asked his father if he could take the picture of his mother off the wall and hold it. Then he kissed her on the cheek.

“I feel bad for everyone that they have to die,” he said.

Childhood is a time for a hopeful vision of things that are so real in one's imagination that few realities achieved thereafter are stronger. Edwin grew up with the dreams of childhood and airy fables that are so good to be believed when young and so good to be remembered when older.

He often asked questions beyond his age about the order of the world. His mind was always full of thought. At church on Sundays, rather than listen to the sermons that droned on and on, he would look at the pulpit and imagine what a good place it would be to play in and what a fine castle it would make with another boy coming up the stairs to attack and Edwin throwing the velvet cushion with tassels down on his head.

He was taught to read at an early age. He and his father read Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales together. Then came Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest and Robinson Crusoe standing alone with dog and hatchet, surveying his domain. When the wind blew at night and rain was driving against the windows, Edwin sat by the fire, reading of shipwrecks and knights and civilizations long gone. His books were like friends. He read them over and over. They were treasures to him.

Because his father was a teacher, Edwin entered school at an early age. The other boys were from wealthier families.

“What class are you?” one of them asked.

“I am an Englishman,” Edwin told him.

He and the other boys studied the lineage of the kings and queens of England from the Normans through the Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, and Hanoverians.

Queen Victoria, Edwin learned, was born in 1819. Her father died one year later, whilst George III sat upon the throne. Three kings of England died thereafter, two of them leaving no legitimate children. On 20 June 1837, at the age of eighteen, Victoria ascended to the throne.

Edwin's father instilled in him the belief that it is a great satisfaction to know that you have done the best you can. As a schoolboy, Edwin was far beyond his peers in learning. He was handsomely formed with the grace of youth and a serious but engaging manner. The other boys liked and respected him. He had the aura of one who would be successful someday.

As Edwin grew older, his character was marked by sincerity, constancy, and candor. Few grown men were as thorough as he in his work or as trustworthy. With each year that passed, he grew more and more handsome. There was majesty in his eyes.

While in school, Edwin had thought of becoming a teacher. But his father wanted a more prosperous life for him. “I should like it,” he told Edwin, “if you were to become a man of business.”

A chain of referrals and introductions followed. Edwin, it was promised, would do credit to any employer who brought him on. In 1850, at age eighteen, he travelled by coach from Portsea to London to meet with a man named Alexander Murd.

Murd was a wealthy coal merchant with mines in Yorkshire and Lancashire. He had been born to wealth and, having received a substantial inheritance, married a larger one. His financial holdings included enough shares of stock to be on the Boards of Direction of several companies.

Murd's office was in a building entered by passing through a courtyard that was shut off from the street by a high wall and strong gate. A brass plate that held his name was affixed to the front door.

Edwin was brought into Murd's private room.

Murd rose from his desk and extended his hand. He was about forty-five years of age, handsome and elegantly dressed. They shook hands, and Murd commented favorably on the young man's references. Then Edwin sat, and Murd began to question him about his past and his goals for the future. Once he had learned what he wanted to know, the conversation shifted.

“I am a man of business,” Murd told Edwin. “No more, no less. But it is an important business that contributes to the strength and grandeur of England. At the start of the eighteenth century, three million tons of coal were produced annually in England. A century later, the number was ten million. This year, seventy million tons of coal will be extracted from the ground. Coal is the lifeblood of our nation. It fuels factories and warms homes. Railroads and ships are dependent upon it.”

As they talked, Murd weighed Edwin's appearance and manner. The young man had a keen mind and a gracious way about him. Nothing in his attire could have been changed to his advantage except for a finer grade of cloth. His expression was one of readiness to be questioned and to answer straight. He was, Murd noted, remarkably self-possessed for one so young. Indeed, there was a grace about him that a British Lord might not have been able to teach his son in forty years.

Murd very much wanted to employ him.

“Enterprise, careful planning, and effort are the keys to success,” he told Edwin. “I am a careful man. I know my affairs thoroughly and expect that you will do the same. You are to be in the office each morning at nine o'clock. And better before than after.”

Working for Murd required that Edwin move from Portsea to London. He found lodging in small but comfortable chambers that were plainly furnished and nicely kept.

Murd had no partner in his business, only subordinates. Numerous men were employed in the field to ensure that his mining operations functioned properly. Land likely to bear coal was identified and purchased. The coal was extracted from the ground by miners. Then it was sold and transported throughout England.

The London office was small in contrast to the total number of company employees. The staff in London, in addition to Edwin, consisted of an accountant, two clerks, a secretary, and office boy. The accountant—a tall angularly made man named Arthur Abbott—held rank over the others. His complexion was so pale, save for a red eruption here and there, that he looked as though he had been put away in a lumber closet twenty years before and someone had just found him.

Murd had a somewhat haughty manner. A solemn hush prevailed among the staff each morning as he passed through the outer office. When it was chill outside, the office boy was upon his heel to take his coat and hat on the instant of arrival.

Men of business came to the office in a steady stream. Murd had mastered all the points of their game. He studied their play and registered their cards in his mind. He was crafty in finding out what positions they held, but never betrayed his own hand.

Edwin was as punctual as the sun in keeping his hours. He blended steadiness with industriousness and determination. Unlike many young men who dash through their tasks with a certain distinction but in a less than thoughtful manner, he fully considered the implications of each step he took. His commitment to understanding the length and breadth and depth of every piece of work entrusted to him was as impressive as his dispatch in accomplishing it. He was as far from intrusive as an employee could be. Yet nothing less than a complete understanding and mastery of each assignment satisfied him.

Also, there was within Edwin an inborn power of attraction that led people to like him.

Time passed. Edwin turned from eighteen to nineteen, then twenty. In autumn of 1852, a chance encounter—at least, Edwin believed it was chance—led to his meeting Alexander Murd's daughter.

Murd was working from his home that day and sent word to the office that he would like Edwin to visit to discuss a business matter. Edwin travelled by omnibus to Grosvenor Square—the aristocratic part of London where Murd lived—and presented himself at the door.

The house was spacious and grandly furnished. Murd was rich. How rich, Edwin did not know. But it was clear from his home that he had amassed a fortune large enough to satisfy several wealthy men for a lifetime.

A servant led Edwin to Murd's study. The walls were lined with engravings, each one representing a different month of the year. Murd sat behind an elegant desk fashioned from mahogany with leather and inlaid wood covering the top. He spoke with Edwin about several transactions that were being negotiated. Their meeting lasted less than an hour. As they were concluding, there was a knock on the door and a young woman about Edwin's age entered. She had rounded cheeks, a pointed nose, and disagreeably sharp eyes. Murd introduced her as his daughter, Isabella.

Isabella, who smelled of scented soap, looked at Edwin approvingly. They exchanged pleasantries. Then the same servant who had escorted Edwin to the study escorted him back to the front door.

The following day, Murd called Edwin into his private room at work.

“Mrs. Murd and I have invited several couples to our home for dinner on Saturday evening. My daughter has suggested that you join us.”

The invitation, Edwin understood, was both an honour and a command. Over the next few days, he wondered what he should wear, whether he should bring a gift—flowers, perhaps—and what the rules of conduct would be.

The evening at Murd's home began in the parlour, which was elegantly furnished in burgundy and gold. The other guests were a bank director, the chairman of a public company, and their wives.

The bank director—a man named Maurice Allard—had as much hair on his head as an egg and was grossly overweight. The influence of good living had expanded his face so that its curves extended far beyond the limits originally assigned to them. His chin had a shape best described by prefixing the word “double” to it.

The chairman of the public company—Frederick Haight—was closely shaved and expensively clothed, glossy and crisp like a new banknote. He laughed in a metallic sort of way and had a half-smile that was not at all expressive of good humour.

Neither man, it seemed from the conversation, was likely to make a mistake against his own financial interest in any matter over which he presided. Nor was Edwin inclined to assume kindness on their part.

Isabella followed Edwin constantly with her eyes. She was expensively dressed, but her clothes and jewelry amounted to little more than the polishing of an unattractive surface.

After an hour in the parlour, Murd led his guests to the dining room. Candles burned in elegant silver candlesticks, in decorative sconces, and on an ornate glass chandelier that hung from above. Ancestral portraits on the walls proclaimed, “Each of us was a passing reality and left this coloured shadow as a remembrance of who we were.”