The Question

Book 25: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

In the last years of the nineteenth century the Morlands' fortunes are changing for the better, as Henrietta and Jerome find a true home at Morland Place, and Teddy ploughs his profits into restoring it to its former glory. But the reverses and cruelties of the Boer War and the death of Queen Victoria shake the foundations of a confident nation. The accession of King Edward seems to mark the end of the old, familiar England. Old certainties are being questioned, everything is changing, and the young generation of Morlands faces a new world, full of wonders but full of dangers.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 528

Sample

September 1898

The North Eastern Railway board meeting ended, and none too soon for Teddy Morland. He could never understand why certain
of his colleagues seemed to take pleasure in using ten words where one would do. In fact sometimes when the one word required
was ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they used a hundred and ten and never got to the one at all. Emerging into the warm hazy sunshine, and
finding that his behind was as numb as his brain, he decided to stretch his legs and walk up to his club for luncheon.


He belonged to several clubs, but his current favourite was the Yorkshire, which stood beside the Lendal Bridge, just above
the landing for the pleasure steamers that plied up and down the river Ouse. The Yorkshire was something of a landmark, and
facing it across the river was another, Botterill’s Horse Repository, a startling and ornate building in red and yellow brick.
Here the gentlemen who rode or drove into York could leave their horses. The stalls were arranged on several storeys, with
ramps leading up from floor to floor – the equine equivalent, Teddy supposed, of one of those new blocks of ‘flats’ one heard
about in London – and if York grew any more crowded, they would all end up living on top of each other, like the horses, he
thought.


The city within the walls was seething like a kicked bees’ nest. Building was going on everywhere, leaving a film of brick
and plaster dust on every surface: the very air you breathed felt gritty. The road was crammed with horse traffic and with
what seemed to Teddy an inordinate number of bicycles. The whole country had gone bicycle-mad this past year, but York was particularly infested: being almost flat and
in the middle of a plain it was eminently suitable to the machines. One whizzed past him now, pedalled by a ferocious-looking
boy with his cap pulled down hard above his eyes. The machine had a basket fixed above the front wheel and Teddy hardly needed
to look at the inscription on the cross-panel to know it belonged to Knowles the butcher.


Knowles had recently changed all his delivery boys from pony-and-trap onto bicycles. Everyone had sighed with relief at the
news, believing the change could only be for the better: the butcher always had the most villainous lads and the worst-tempered
ponies in Yorkshire. But Knowles’s boys had amply proved that a bicycle could be put to as much nuisance as a pony.


This particular lad had pulled up as he met the tail of the traffic trying to squeeze over Lendal Bridge. But now, as Teddy
caught up with him, he tired of waiting his turn, heaved his bicycle impatiently up onto the pavement, and ran straight into
an old gentleman coming the other way. The crash was impressive. The old gentleman, receiving the meat-basket full in his
bread-basket, went backwards a couple of feet and sat down hard, his rolled umbrella flying into the road and under the wheel
of a dray.


The boy and the bicycle fell sideways, the boy banging his head on the flagstone with a sound like a walnut being cracked,
and paper-wrapped parcels of meat flew out in all directions. A quick-witted dog that happened to be in the vicinity made
hay and grabbed one. It laid back its ears and ran for its life across the road, dodging under the nose of a chestnut vanner
and causing it to rear. The cart was full of cabbages and the tail-gate wasn’t properly fastened: as the horse went up and
the cart dipped backwards, the flap gaped open and cabbages rolled out like severed heads from a tumbrel and thumped into
the road.


Traffic stopped. Horses whinnied, voices were raised in exclamation, and the air was blue with carters’ curses. The old gentleman,
purple with fury, was exercising an impressive vocabulary on the boy’s character and prospects. A crowd of helpful people gathered to give advice, along with various loungers
and boys who were just enjoying the entertainment. Several more dogs had materialised out of nowhere, causing Knowles’s boy
to forget his immediate sorrows at the thought of what old Knowlesy would do to him if he lost the goods. He waved his arms
at the nearest dog and shouted, ‘Get out of it, you old fool!’ Unfortunately the old gentleman thought the words were meant
for him, provoking a fresh outburst of indignation, and earning the boy a box on the ear from a burly man in a cap who told
him to ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, you young limb!’


A stout, housewifely woman, meanwhile, had understood the dog situation, and there being too many of them to hit individually,
she pointed her umbrella at them and opened and shut it violently with a loud flapping noise. This didn’t do much to deter
the dogs, but it did startle a nearby cab horse, which shied and ran backwards, hitting the shaft of the cabbage cart and
making the vanner rear again. More cabbages bounced, the carter yelled at the woman, the boy howled, dogs barked, and an ex-cavalry
old gentleman with Crimean whiskers, who was descending from the cab with the intention of sorting out the mess in a proper
military way, got his ankle bitten by an over-excited cur and was soon adding to the confusion, hopping about on one foot
and whacking every canine in reach with his malacca.


Recognising a situation beyond help, Teddy slipped past the crowd on the parapet side and walked on. He felt inexplicably
invigorated by the incident. It had proved his contention that one Knowles’s boy could cause more trouble without even trying
than all the Mahdi’s tribesmen put together. If only the Government had thought to employ them in Egypt, he concluded, we
would never have lost Khartoum.


He was almost across the bridge when a skinny pi-dog dashed past him flying a chain of sausage links naked of their wrapping.
Close behind it raced three other hounds, mouths wide and tongues lolling, intent on a share of the booty. The whole circus
hurtled at high speed past the legs of a man who was walking slowly in the other direction, attempting to make sense of a map. When your mind is on other things,
it is a shock to be brushed on either side by a dog pack and whipped around the knees by a bolas of best pork sausages. The
man’s arms flew up, he overbalanced, and went down awkwardly.


This time there was no-one else on hand. Teddy stepped up to him with concern. ‘Good Lord, sir, that was a nasty fall! Are
you hurt? Allow me to help you up.’


The man looked bewildered. ‘What the devil was that?’ he exclaimed. ‘What sort of a place is this? Are you plagued with mad
beasts?’


‘There was an accident on the other side of the bridge,’ Teddy said. ‘A butcher’s boy dropped his basket and the local curs
have become – er – over-excited.’


‘Thought my last hour had come,’ the man said. He was still sitting on the pavement. Now he inspected the palm of his hand.
He let out an oath under his breath.


‘That looks like a nasty graze,’ Teddy said. ‘Hurt anywhere else?’

‘Nothing broken, I think,’ the man replied. Teddy offered him an arm and he used it to get to his feet. He was a spare, neatly
built man in his forties, not tall but very upright, with thinning hair compensated by a large chestnut moustache. His clothes
were the well-made tweeds of a country gentleman, and he stood brushing at them vaguely, still seeming dazed.


‘I say,’ Teddy said, ‘you’re rather upset. It must have been a shock to the system. Look here, my club’s only a step over
there. I was just toddling down for a spot of something. Why don’t you come in and have a brandy to settle your nerves? The
name’s Morland, by the way.’ He lifted his hat.


The man looked around for his own. It was restored to him, along with his map and pince-nez, by a passing boy, and he resumed
it in order to raise it in response. ‘Puddephat,’ he said. ‘That’s very kind of you, er, Mr Morland, but—’


‘Oh, not at all.’ Teddy interrupted what sounded like the beginning of a refusal. ‘My pleasure. Can’t have visitors to our fine city bein’ knocked about. Give you a chance to wash the grit out of that, too.’ He nodded towards the wounded hand.


‘Yes, perhaps that would be wise. Thank you, sir,’ the man said, and fell in beside Teddy.

‘I couldn’t help noticing that you were consulting a map,’ Teddy said, by way of making conversation. ‘Looked a bit lost.
Perhaps when you’ve got your breath back, I can help you. I’m a native of these parts, you know. I have a house just outside
the city – Morland Place, born there, ancient family seat and so on – but bein’ a town bird by nature, I prefer to live inside
the walls.’


‘Morland Place?’ said Puddephat. ‘I’ve seen that marked on the map. Indeed, there’s an entry in the guide book about it, isn’t
there? Quite a landmark hereabouts, I believe?’


Teddy was not immune to flattery. ‘Ancient stones, you know. Any age. Been Morlands on that spot for five hundred years.’

‘Five hundred years? Good heavens! You must be by way of being the – er – local squire, or lord of the manor?’

‘Oh, hardly that. But everyone here knows me. Only because I’m master of Morland Place, you understand,’ he added modestly.
‘Never done anything else to talk of. M’father, now, he was an engineer, helped to bring the railways to York. Built the tramway
for the army at Balaclava, too.’


‘Indeed?’ said Puddephat. His vagueness had passed, and his lean face and blue eyes were sharp with attention. ‘You interest
me greatly, sir. Railways and the army are two subjects close to my heart.’


Teddy beamed. ‘Look here, sir, why don’t you join me for lunch? The club has the best roast saddle of mutton in the Riding.
Famous for it. Then we can have a good, long chinwag. I’d be interested to know what brings you to York.’


‘I’d be delighted, sir,’ said Puddephat.

As the train came gasping and sighing round the majestic curve of York railway station, Lizzie would have liked to hang out
of the window like a schoolgirl for the first sight of her mother; but given the advanced state of her pregnancy, it was not actually possible, to say nothing of propriety. As
it was, she needed the help of the two gentlemen in her compartment just to get down. Ashley had wisely foreseen this, and
advised her against a ‘ladies only’ carriage for that very reason.


Having reached the platform, she was in danger of being thrown off her feet by the crowd. The 10 a.m. from King’s Cross was
an excellent train, but it had no dining car, so it made a half-hour stop at platform eight in York to allow the passengers
going through to Edinburgh to refuel themselves. Half an hour was not long for so many to be served, and the rush for the
dining rooms resembled a stampede.


Ah, but there was her mother at last, small and neat in her brown coat and the familiar old hat Papa called her rabbit’s ears,
because it had a large bow on the top whose two ends stuck up one on either side. How long had she had that hat? Since before
Papa went bankrupt, at any rate. There was no money for frivolities like new hats, Lizzie reminded herself, a little guiltily,
as she stepped into her mother’s embrace.


‘Darling, darling Lizzie! Oh, it’s so good to see you!’ They exchanged a fierce, quick hug. ‘So much to talk about – but let’s
get out of this crush first.’


Lizzie directed a porter towards her bags, which the helpful gentlemen had lifted down for her, and then they were walking
towards the exit.


‘So strange to see your name on your luggage as “Mrs A. Morland”,’ Henrietta said, linking arms with her daughter. Henrietta
had been born a Morland. She had married first Mr Fortescue, Lizzie’s father, and then Jerome Compton; and Lizzie, being first
a Fortescue and then a Compton, had married a cousin from America. ‘How is dear Ashley?’


‘Oh, he’s always well,’ said Lizzie. ‘He sends his love. He’ll be down on Saturday, of course.’

‘I’m surprised he let you travel all this way without a maid.’

‘Oh, Mother! Times have changed, you know. Besides, I’m a married woman, not a trembling young maiden.’


‘I know, darling, but I thought Ashley was rather old-fashioned in his ideas – in the nicest way, of course.’

‘Not quite so archaic as that! There wouldn’t have been anyone to spare, anyway. We only have Cook and Ellen, and Ashley needs
both of them to look after him. He says he could manage all alone in a log hut in the wilderness, but civilisation is more
complicated! I expected Uncle Teddy to be here with you. I know how he loves meeting people from trains.’


‘He’ll be over later. He thought we’d like to be alone together just at first.’

‘How kind he is!’

‘He is,’ Henrietta agreed. ‘The kindest brother in the world. Wait until you see what I have waiting for us outside.’

It was a pony phaeton, low to the ground like a victoria, painted black with scarlet wheels. There was a nice bay pony between
the shafts, its head being held by a boy.


‘Mother! You driving? How smart!’

‘Teddy thought I needed it – and I must say it has made a great difference. It did take up so much time to walk in, and it
meant I couldn’t carry things back but had to have them sent, which wasn’t always convenient.’


‘What an extravagant gift!’

‘It wasn’t new,’ Henrietta said. ‘He bought it cheaply from an old lady who’d died – well, from her son, I mean, of course,
don’t laugh at me – and Papa painted it for me.’


‘You don’t need to defend it to me,’ Lizzie said, understanding the tensions involved in her mother’s accepting gifts from
her uncle. ‘Was Papa upset?’


‘Oh – well – you know how it is. He would never show it if he was. Teddy got Papa to choose the pony, because he said he didn’t
know anything about horses – which is not true, of course, but tactful.’


‘It looks a nice little thing. What’s its name?’

‘I’ve called him Dunnock, after the pony I had when I was a little girl. He’s as good as gold.’ Henrietta smiled and added,
‘The children were so disappointed! They were quite sure he was meant for them to ride. But I let them ride him sometimes when I’m not going to use him. It has to be bareback, of course, because there’s no riding saddle for him yet, but
I think that’s the best way to learn anyway. I was tumbling on and off a pony’s bare back almost before I could walk.’


Henrietta saw the luggage stowed, paid the boy and the porter, and climbed in beside her daughter. Lizzie watched with interest
as her mother turned the pony and edged him through the press of cabs and drays, and managed the awkward right turn out of
the station yard into Queen Street quite neatly. ‘You’re very good at it,’ she said. ‘I’m lost with admiration.’


‘To tell you the truth, I’m quite proud of myself,’ Henrietta said. ‘Though I was “born on horseback”, as they say, I never
learned to drive until this year. But Dunnock is so good, he practically drives himself.’


They moved along slowly in the stream of traffic, with the friendly bulk of the city wall to their left, high up on its grassy
bank, the grey stones warming to honey in the mellow September sunlight. As in any city, the air smelt of horse manure and
coal-smoke from a thousand chimneys; but York added its own savours, sulphur and burnt soot from the railway, the tang of
roasting chicory from Smith’s factory in Layerthorpe, and the divine hint of warm chocolate, drifting down from the Cocoa
Works.


‘I always think,’ Lizzie said, ‘that if heaven smells of anything, it will be that.’

Driving was taking up all Henrietta’s attention, and they did not speak until they had turned onto Blossom Street and passed
the busy junction with Holgate Road. After that the traffic thinned considerably and the pony was able to break into a trot
at last.


Then Lizzie asked, ‘How is Papa?’ She had always called him Papa, right from the beginning. They were very fond of each other,
and while Lizzie took that for granted, Henrietta knew how lucky they had all been.


‘He’s well enough,’ she answered, ‘but he works too hard. He’s out now helping the men repair fences – part of the conspiracy
to let me have you to myself! But he doesn’t just supervise, which is what Teddy means him to do. He will always take off his coat and work alongside the men, no matter what they’re doing, and it isn’t what he was born to. I wish
he wouldn’t. He gets so tired, and I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself one day. He’s not a young man any more.’


Lizzie nodded. ‘I suppose it’s no good talking to him?’

‘I’ve tried, but he turns it away with a joke – you know how he does – and goes on just the same. Perhaps you could speak
to him? He takes more notice of you than me.’


‘Oh, Mother, how can you say so?’ Lizzie protested, embarrassed.

‘It’s true,’ Henrietta said. ‘You are much closer to him in some ways. You’re clever and you can talk to him on his own level.’
She smiled as she said it, to show it caused her no pain.


‘Well, I could try, I suppose,’ Lizzie said. She understood why her step-father drove himself. When he went bankrupt, they
all became virtually destitute, and had Uncle Teddy not invited them to come and live at Morland Place – which was standing
empty – they would have been homeless. Since then, Teddy had provided them with everything. Jerome, who had been born to money,
had had to get used to being a dependant. Lizzie had read enough to know that it touched a man’s pride to have someone else
provide for his wife and children because he had failed to.


‘It must be hard for him,’ she ventured cautiously.

Her mother slowed the pony as their turning approached. ‘I think the hardest thing of all for him to bear,’ she said, ‘was
your uncle Teddy paying for your wedding.’


‘Oh dear, poor Papa! But it was a lovely wedding, wasn’t it? Not grand, but – elegant, I think.’

The track was off to the right opposite Tyburn – the site of the old gallows – and led across Hob Moor towards Morland Place.
The pony put his shoulders into the collar and trotted along with a will, as horses do when they are heading for home, and
the phaeton bounced over the uneven track, forcing Lizzie to brace herself and hold on to the side. They were on Morland land
now. Once it had stretched for miles in every direction, but now there was only the parkland and the home farm left. All the rest had been sold to cover
the debts left by the previous master, Henrietta’s and Teddy’s late elder brother George.


Lizzie looked about eagerly to see what changes there had been. When she had left to marry Ashley and live in London, Teddy
had just begun restocking. His idea was that Jerome should farm the place on his behalf – acting as his land agent, in a sense
– in return for which Teddy would make Henrietta an allowance equivalent to the salary he would have paid Jerome, if Jerome
had not been a bankrupt and therefore unable to take a job.


It was quite astonishingly tactful of Uncle Teddy, Lizzie thought, who was a simple man and unused to mental subtleties. He
had also made a great point that it was a shame and a sin to let good land lie wasted, and that Jerome would be doing him
and the world at large a service by overseeing the agricultural activities for him. The trouble was that Papa was intelligent
and had a subtle mind. The fact that what Teddy had said was quite true did not make it any less obvious that he, Jerome,
was being rescued, propped up, bailed out – and tactfully managed into the bargain!


Poor Papa, Lizzie thought. It was always so much easier to be the generous benefactor than the grateful dependant. The Bible
said that it was more blessed to give than to receive, but she had her reservations about that. Giving was generally more
fun, besides bolstering one’s self-esteem. It took a particular sort of grace to be always receiving, especially when one
was a born present-giver. Jerome had always had a genius for presents, but now he hadn’t even been able to give Lizzie her
wedding. If his sense of humour didn’t support him, Lizzie thought, he’d be sunk indeed.


Here was Morland Place at last, sitting squarely inside its moat, looking as if it had grown up out of the ground rather than
been built by man’s hands. Lizzie had not been born and raised there, had lived there for not much more than a year, but she
had heard her mother talk about it all her life and it was a special place to her. Ashley’s mother – Henrietta’s eldest sister Mary – had been born there, and he had grown up with stories of it too. It was one of the things
they had in common.


They crossed the moat, passed under the barbican, and into the yard. ‘You go on in,’ Henrietta said, ‘while I put Dunnock
away. Emma will be in the kitchen getting lunch.’


Lizzie went in through the buttery door and down the corridor to the kitchen. It was just as she remembered it, the cold flagstone
floor, the high ceiling with its smoke-blackened beams, the vast, ancient stove squatting under the arch of the great fireplace,
the big copper pans hanging on the wall, and the smell of something delicious in the air. In the middle of the floor was the
scrubbed table where the work was done and where they had so often sat to talk and eat and be comfortable. The kitchen, where
past mistresses of the house would not have dreamt of setting foot, had become in these poorer days the heart of the place.


And there was Emma, dear Emma, putting down the cloth in her hands and hurrying forward, her round red face one enormous smile.
‘Oh, my! Oh, my!’ was all she could say.


Lizzie hugged her. ‘Dear Emma! How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m well, always well. But look at you – as full as you can hold! Oh, what a happy day this is.’ She let Lizzie go and
reached into her apron pocket for a handkerchief. Emma Holt had first come to them thirteen years ago, fresh from the country,
as a housemaid. She had mutated into nanny as the children had been born, and when they had all become homeless and destitute
she had stayed with them, saying only to Henrietta, ‘However would you manage if I was to leave you?’ As the answer to that
was, ‘Very badly indeed,’ there had been no further argument. So here she was in Yorkshire, far away in miles and years from
her native home in Norfolk.


Still, her accent had not changed – to the astonishment of the local people who had never heard words pronounced the way Emma
pronounced them. ‘Well, so hare you are, my dare, hoom to hev your baby,’ she marvelled, when she had dried her eyes. ‘That’s
a wonder Mr Aashley let you goo.’


‘He didn’t like it,’ Lizzie confessed, ‘but I told him it was traditional for girls to go back to their mothers to have their
first child, and he never argues with tradition. But I don’t suppose he’ll let me go for the next, so you must make the most
of this one.’


‘Next indeed! Don’t count your chickens, miss!’

‘I’m not going to have a chicken, Em, just a dear little baby.’

Emma chuckled. ‘Oh, you! Always funning me.’

‘We will manage all right between us, won’t we?’ Lizzie asked, on the tail end of a qualm. Ashley had been eloquent about
the convenience of London, with a doctor on practically every corner, gas lighting, domestic boilers and water that came out
of a tap. Morland Place, by comparison, was rather primitive.


‘Course we will,’ Emma said. ‘Didn’t I see your ma through four times? And my oon mother half a dozen, ’fore I left hoom.’
Henrietta came into the kitchen, and Emma went on, ‘There now, hare’s your ma, and we can sit down to lunch. I made you a
nice steak and onion pie, seeing as you woon’t have eaten since I don’t know when, and that long journey besides.’


Emma’s steak pie was a legend, and Lizzie didn’t like to point out that since the train had left King’s Cross at ten o’clock,
she had not had to get up early, so had only finished breakfasting at nine – and it was barely half past two now.


The pie was wonderful – crisp golden pastry, tender steak, rich gravy to soak into the mashed potatoes – but perhaps Lizzie had not done
enough since breakfast to work up an appetite, for half-way through she began to feel uncomfortably full. Her fork moved more
and more slowly as the three of them sat around one end of the kitchen table, talking and eating. At last she was forced to
admit defeat and say, ‘It really is delicious, Em, but I simply can’t manage any more. I’m sorry.’


Henrietta looked at her with quick concern. ‘Are you all right, darling? Perhaps you ought to go and lie down.’

‘I just feel rather full. I think I will lie down for a bit, though – sitting isn’t very comfortable for me.’

‘Your bed’s all made up ready,’ Henrietta said.

‘Oh, I don’t want to go to bed. I’d miss all the fun. Can’t I just lie on the sofa while you talk to me?’

At that moment there were footsteps in the kitchen passage, and Jerome Compton came in. He was tall and dark and had been
devastatingly handsome in his youth. To his women-folk he was handsome still, though his hair was greying and his eyes were
netted with lines of laughter and sorrow. But they were still very blue, and his smile had all its old enmeshing charm as
he raised his hands defensively and said, ‘I know, I know, I’m not supposed to appear until teatime, but I couldn’t wait any
longer to see my favourite girl.’


‘It nearly is teatime,’ Henrietta observed. ‘We’ve been sitting here well over an hour.’

‘Tea?’ said Lizzie, with a groan. ‘We’ve only just had lunch.’

‘What, are they stuffing you like a Christmas goose? You certainly look it,’ Jerome laughed, holding out his arms to his step-daughter.
‘Come and kiss me – if you can get near enough. You look like a little girl dressed up with a pillow.’


Lizzie stood up and felt a momentary dizziness, held the back of the chair for a moment, and then crossed the room to his
embrace. She had reverenced rather than loved her own father, a severe and ascetic man; but Jerome was dear and close, like
part of herself. She kissed his lean cheek and then rested a moment, her head against his shoulder and his face against her
hair. He had always been there to comfort her; to cheer her and make her laugh.


Jerome stroked her head, and she felt the roughness of his palm snag her hair. She straightened up, took hold of his hand
and turned it over. It was hard and calloused, with a long half-healed scratch across the back, an ugly black bruise on one
nail, and ingrained dirt along the side of the forefinger. It was no longer a gentleman’s hand. She looked up with a little
shake of the head, and he smiled ruefully, but there was hurt there too. She lifted the hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘I
like it better like this,’ she said, so that only he could hear.


‘Little liar,’ he said tenderly.

They were interrupted by another arrival: a big brindled hound appeared in the doorway. He paused cautiously, aware that something
was different; and then, recognizing who it was, flung himself on Lizzie, whip-tail lashing, jaws grinning in his silent joy
of reunion.


‘Dear old Kithra!’ Lizzie cried, catching his rough head in her hands. As she bent down he put a foreleg over her arm and
washed her face enthusiastically. He had been her puppy, but she had had to leave him behind when she got married, for he
was not the sort of dog who would have been happy in London. ‘I’ve missed you, you big old fool. Ugh, don’t lick my face!
Oh, you bad dog, what have you been rolling in?’


‘Cow dung,’ Jerome said. ‘He has a passion for it. He’s been out with me all morning. He attaches himself to me