The World From Rough Stones Page 7

  Thornton waited for silence and got it. "As I said, we discussed the contract last night and he says he's certain he can finish the driftway by Christmas, when the payment is due. He said we'd walk the entire tunnel together on Boxing Day."

  "He'd be bound to tell you that…" someone started, but Thornton's cautionary finger, held aloft, silenced them.

  "I must say…" he looked at each man there, "that, of all the people I know in any way fitted for this job, I'd trust most this fellow Stevenson. As a contractor."

  "Not as a person?" Prendergast was quick to take up the qualification.

  "I hardly know him as a person. But as a leader, a natural leader, an inspirer of men, he can have few equals."

  "He becomes more interesting by the minute!" Prendergast's dilettante tone

  clearly annoyed Payter.

  Thornton went on: "If you want your tunnel done on time and to specification—Stevenson's the one I'd back."

  "And to price?"

  "No man can guarantee that. I'll see he won't cheat or skimp, be assured."

  "You've still told us nothing about him," Sir Sidney complained. "What's his background?"

  "He may tell you, Sir Sidney. They call him Lord John, or Big Lord John, for he's well above six foot. Some have said he's the son of a peer, born the wrong side of the sheets, others that he's a felon gone to earth…er—so to speak…like so many of our navvies."

  "But where's the fella from?" Sir Sidney was out of his depth among all this speculation.

  "That's another curiosity. He talks like a north countryman. Yet Leeds men say he's from Sheffield. Sheffield men are sure he's from Barnsley…and so on. None will quite own him. And I once heard him speak as sweet as any gentleman."

  "Sounds a thorough rogue!" Payter was anxious to end all this airy talk.

  Thornton had no choice but to take each of them quite seriously. "Probably is," he agreed. "Probably is. Very probable. But he'll finish your tunnel on time and to the highest specification. And as close to the tendered price as man may get. Why should you want a saint into the bargain? Your pardon, reverend."

  Prendergast waved magnanimous circles around him. "Not at all. Accurately stated. Quite agree."

  Payter almost burst at every button. "D'ye think we might meet this…paragon?"

  "Indeed, Payter," Sir Sidney soothed. "You're being very patient. Mr. Thornton, be so good." He nodded at the door.

  Thornton quickly crossed the room and opened the door just wide enough to poke out his head and nod at John Stevenson, who sat there as unconcerned and smiling as if waiting to be called to a barber's chair.

  If the directors had expected a ganger, a man in moleskins tied with twine below the knee and with a knotted kerchief at his throat, they were doubly surprised at what they saw. He had no cane or gloves, and his hat would have been passed from a true gentleman to his servant ten years since, but the clothes proclaimed a substantial tradesman at the very least. And the man himself had the bearing of a king. Stevenson was pleasantly aware of the impression he made. If he realized that this was to be the most important interview of his life, he gave no outward sign of it. "Your servant, gentlemen,"

  was all he said.

  "Now I place you!" Sir Sidney told him.

  "Correct, Sir Sidney," the other said with a smile. "You were good enough to speak with me when last you inspected the driftway. So…" He pulled out a sealed parchment as soon as he reached the edge of their table. "I believe this is what you're expecting to see."

  Thornton was most astonished of all in that room. Stevenson's manner and speech was so different here. Only the irony in his eyes, an occasional suggestion of something close to scorn, united the ganger of last night and this wellfounded, handsome giant who now stood before them.

  Sir Sidney ruptured the seal, opened the note, and began to read. "Do be seated, Stevenson." His eye scanned the note faster than he could read aloud. For the benefit of all he uttered only the key phrases: "Bolitho and Chambers… maintained regular deposits…government bonds…ten years…speak for ten thousand pounds. Bolitho and Chambers? Who knows them? Payter?"

  "Not I," Payter shrugged.

  "I do, I believe," Prendergast said. "Bankers in Dowgate are they not? Let me see." He looked closely at the paper and held it to the light before he turned to Stevenson. "Extraordinary," he added.

  "Quite extraordinary," Sir Sidney agreed. "It prompts one to ask the somewhat obvious question: Why, with the substance of a gentleman, have you felt it necessary to live as one of lower rank?"

  Stevenson's heart danced. It was all going exactly as he had plotted. Now was the time to go on the offensive. "You force me to be blunt, Sir Sidney, gentlemen. I came here not to seek your approval for my conduct but to secure your nomination as contractor to the Manchester and Leeds for Summit Tunnel. My bankers have assured you of my standing and I trust Mr. Thornton here has told you of my competence. I cannot, with the greatest respect, see that you need more."

  It was, as he well knew, more provocation than they would accept.

  "Damn you!" Sir Sidney spoke for them all. "We mean to have it, sir—if you mean to have this nomination. It is altogether too extraordinary…you intend not to explain?"

  "Very well!" Stevenson made it clear they had forced him to it. "Since you insist. Some years ago, like many others, like all here I dare say, I became convinced that the future lay with the railroads." That naturally brought a rumble of approval. "But not…your way. Not, at least, for me. The time will come when—and it will be soon, so you'll not find me a patient or complaisant man—the time will come when ye'll not be able to parcel out the lines to little men the likes of Skelm…furlongs here, fathoms there. Ye'll have to give the whole line—banks, bridges, drifts, stations, piles—the lot—ye'll hand it all to one man. And he'll set an army on: ten thousand men and more. And he'll buy cheap. If any supplier swell the price, he'll go into that supplier's trade and bankrupt him. And the railway company that ignores him will…not prosper either. I mean to be such a man."

  It was a far greater bid than anyone there had expected; and Stevenson had spoken with such quiet assurance, careful to meet each man there eye to eye, that for a moment no one spoke. The Reverend Prendergast cleared his throat delicately.

  "I'm sure that's most laudable, Stevenson…but…er…with ten thousand pounds?"

  Stevenson was ready for that. "No sir! With something worth ten times that. If not more. Experience! That's the real wealth I've put by these many years. Experience. Which of you gentlemen here could lay a course of brick neat and true on a twenty-six-foot span? Or gauge the powder to blast a wall of compacted sandstone or millstone grit? Which of ye could look at a hill, cube a cutting through it, look at a valley beyond, dispose of the muck by way of embankment—all in the mind, mark ye—and then quantify out both jobs in men and days? Time and money?"

  "But dammit, man…" Walter, representing the engineers, could not let this pass, "that's not your job, it's ours. We do all that long before we go to tender."

  "And you're never wrong?" It was not really a question, but to underline the message for them Stevenson went on: "Last year—last summer, I was on part of the Maidenhead line. There was one cutting wouldn't hold. Too steep. They had to shave down four degrees more. Another thousand cubic yards of muck and nowhere to put it. Contractor, poor old Tom Essex, took a big loss on that. I'll tell Mr. Thornton this: Ye need only be two per cent out in your estimate and in two furlongs that's a thousand yards of extra muck for a gang of twenty-five to waste four days dumping somewhere. Losses can soon mount. But not with me!"

  "And you're never wrong?" Thornton sought to turn Stevenson's own question upon him.

  "Not when it's my money says I'm right."

  "This is no doubt all very interesting," Payter cut in. "But it's hardly to the point."

  "Very true," Stevenson agreed. "My point, simply put, is this: I can now do every trade on the road—from surveying and quantities to plate-layi
ng. What's more, the men know it. Skelm, I grant ye, knew cutting and embanking as well as any man. But platelayers, brickies, stonedressers, chippies, smiths…they walked circles round him even when he was sober. No man s'll do that to me. And there's no man in England, gentleman or labourer, can say that and put five thousand…" he cursed himself for this mistake "er…let alone ten thousand pounds, where his mouth leads!"

  Payter, unmoved by any rhetoric, put the one question that concerned him. "Ambitions apart, Mr. Stevenson, you're confident of finishing the driftway by this Christmas? It's only a hundred and twenty days."

  It was time to work them to his plan. "Yes sir…ah…with the Board's cooperation." The traces of suspicion and even hostility he had read in their faces when he first joined them were gone. "At our present rate of working—never mind accidents—even at our normal rate, as Mr. Thornton will confirm, we s'll be nigh on three hundred feet short of finishing at the end of the year."

  The fact was clearly news to some of them, particularly Sir Sidney, who turned at once to Thornton. "That true?" he asked.

  "It is, sir. Mr. Gooch has known for some time the…"

  "Never mind that now," Payter interrupted again. "You have a plan to avoid that, Mr. Stevenson?"

  "Yes. We're working the drift at twenty-six separate faces—twelve shafts and the two ends. Twenty-six gangs. All we want is a foot a week more progress from half of them and we'll more than make up the deficit. So, for each gang I'll estimate a good five days' progress, depending on whether they're in shale or grit, but let's say for discussion sake it's five foot in five days. For every foot they do above the mark within each and any five-day period, I'll pay them a bonus day."

  The Reverend Prendergast snorted. "Pay them more and they merely drink more. What's your plan for that? How'll you stop their drunken randies?"

  "For every foot of underachievement they'll drop a day's pay. That's t'other part of the bargain. There'll be no more randies this side Christmas—though ye may get little work out of 'em the first fortnight in eighteen forty!"

  "God help the countryside!" Prendergast said; but he was clearly pleased at Stevenson's answer.

  "And if any man don't like it," Stevenson went on, "there's plenty of other work on the line. And plenty of sober navvy gangs abroad. There's three on the Bolton line I'd not mind…"

  "Whoa!" Sir Sidney took the bait. "Some of us have an interest in that line, too! We don't want to buy progress at Summit at the expense of the Bolton line!"

  Stevenson sat back in his chair for the first time, making himself something more of a partner, less of supplicant. "Ye see, Sir Sidney, it makes my point. There's why ye need a big contractor. Ye're waging a campaign with a lot of good captains and no general."

  "I do begin to follow." Sir Sidney was thoughtful, and others around the table nodded sagely.

  Only the Reverend Prendergast looked puzzled. "But see here, Stevenson, you're going to be badly out of pocket—paying out bonuses ahead of receipts, what?"

  "Thank you, Doctor," Stevenson said. It dawned on him there were depths to this man that belied his air of shallowness. "I was beginning to fear no one'd mention it. My proposal is that the Board adopt the same payment scheme with me as I intend to adopt with my lads. Payment by results instead of fixed dates. I daresay ye'd not be averse to paying the full sum if I gave ye your tunnel next week."

  They laughed, of course.

  Then while the clerk jotted furiously, he outlined the payment scheme that had not completely formed in his own mind until he sat in the anteroom, less than a half hour earlier. There was still plenty of bargaining over the details, to be sure, but they had conceded the principle without a murmur. Stevenson was hard put to conceal his elation. The Reverend Prendergast had resumed his air of supercilious detachment, but once or twice it was his interjection that allowed a concession to go to Stevenson.

  So it was all the more surprising when, just as the meeting seemed wound up and people were gathering papers and reaching again for the sherry, Prendergast dealt what might have been a body blow to Stevenson's acceptance by his fellow directors:

  "One moment, Sir Sidney. I would like to interpose one further condition. We have all met Mr. Stevenson and I'm sure I speak for all when I say we are most impressed. Most. It is an ending, I feel confident, to this nightmare of Summit Tunnel—the longest tunnel, and, in its potential at least, the longest nightmare, in the country!"

  "The world," Stevenson said.

  "Quite. I say we are impressed because we have met Mr. Stevenson and recognize in him those qualities that, I am sure, will carry him to the very…"

  "The point, man! What's the point?" Payter was angry again. He pulled out a

  fob watch, looked at it, and shook his head.

  "The point, sir, is that our shareholders have not been so privileged." He smiled at Stevenson a smile of reptilian calm. "As far as they are concerned, viewing this affair entirely from the exterior, we have had one contractor default despite sureties for ten thousand pounds—and what do we do? Wonder of wonders, the very same day, we appoint another with sureties for…? Ten thousand pounds! It looks ridiculous, don't ye see? It smacks of panic."

  "But half the tunnel's done," Stevenson protested. He should have found a way of interrupting earlier, but Prendergast's helpfulness during the bargaining had allayed any fear of opposition from that quarter.

  "And paid for! And paid for!" Prendergast countered. "So all should be equal. If, despite all his qualities, Mr. Stevenson should also default—which the heavens forefend—I merely say if—if he should default, it will be all our heads on the block!"

  Sir Sidney cleared his throat to speak, but one of the others put the mind of the meeting in two words: "He's right."

  Payter fiddled with his fob chain. "I'm sorry I was hasty, Doctor. Once again we're in debt to your acumen."

  Stevenson still fought but with little hope of winning now. "Will ye be asking for sureties against volcanic eruptions and a second Universal Flood? Where d'you stop once ye've set foot on this path. Faint hearts never yet built a railroad!"

  Sir Sidney, true man of putty, wavered: "There is something to be said for that, too."

  "But more to be said on Prendergast's side," Payter cut him short. "What were you about to propose, Doctor?"

  "We must make some extra requirement. Some token merely, but there must be some extra. I propose we require Mr. Stevenson to furnish sureties for an extra…what?…thousand pounds? No more than that. And I propose we appoint him contractor pro tempore for…fourteen days? And such appointment to be confirmed with no other new condition upon production of such extra surety. Shall we say a thousand?"

  Stevenson forced himself to smile.

  "At any subsequent inquisition," Prendergast concluded, "we could save our necks by pointing to this extra restriction. Not even the canal faction could say we had acted imprudently."

  "That strikes me as eminently reasonable," Sir Sidney added. "Stevenson?"

  Of course he had to put a bold face on it. "I'm considerably relieved, Sir

  Sidney. I thought Dr. Prendergast was about to suggest doubling my surety. But if your office can give me a note, on company paper, itemizing our agreement, I'll have no difficulty finding an extra thousand pounds. I'm confident of that."

  "Excellent! I'm sure if you call by, tomorrow, you may pick it up. Yes?" Sir Sidney looked at the clerk, who nodded. "Yes. There! So, Mr. Stevenson, thank you for your attendance. May I say on behalf of the Manchester and Leeds that we look forward to a happy association."

  "And mutually profitable!" Prendergast added.

  "Indeed," Stevenson agreed. Then, because some kind of speech-in-reply seemed expected, he added: "I'll thank ye now Sir Sidney, gentlemen. But, by your leave, I'll put off any speechifying until the day of the celebration run."

  "Put a date to that!" Payter challenged.

  Stevenson shot each a final glance before he spoke. "Aye. I'll put a date to it: Christmas ei
ghteen thirty-nine. Your servant, gentlemen."

  It was a good exit, but even before the door had closed behind him he was wondering how on earth he'd get a genuine surety for a thousand pounds. His forged note of hand…he'd never dare take that to a banker. He was beginning to wish he'd risked more last night and told Thornton he had eleven rather than ten thousand. Yet there was something wrong with that, too. He felt sure that Prendergast would have found some pretext to raise the requirement still further. He'd badly underestimated that man. For some reason—and it had nothing to do with the Manchester & Leeds—Prendergast had wanted to get his extra condition carried; everything else had been subordinated to that one purpose.

  He stood at the street entrance, wondering whether to go down Hulme Hall Lane to the pie shop or straight up to the station and wait for the train to Littleborough. The door at the head of the stair slammed and Thornton, like an excited schoolboy, came bounding down, three and four at a time.