CHAPTER 5–DECEPTIONS
For several years after Hannah left Hawking Manor the days in the land were stormy unlike the way they had passed in the previous decade. The sun rose and the sun set, it seemed, each day to new inventions and the working out of previously unimaginable ideas.
Henry completed his first two years with Sir Walford’s regiment and signed on for two more. Melissa came home. For three years she became Benjamin’s tutor. Hannah and Sidney married and a year later christened their first child. Anthony Holbrook, Lady Lydia’s husband, passed away. It was not quite a year after the bells had tolled for him that Lady Lydia and Captain Dranton were married, and eight short months after that a second daughter was born to the lady.
The Tories rose to power. Their man, Sir Robert Peel, became the new Prime Minister. The queen married Prince Albert. In the country the Penny Post was instituted. The first British census recording the names of the populace was undertaken, and the Chartists continued to be a menace in the minds of many. Railway mania swept the country. To the shaking of many citizens’ heads 5000 miles of railway track was laid down across the country.
Samuel made the Carstairs a partner in a steamship company. Meredith co-hosted a reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Merlin I and Merlin II with Lady Lydia, and Melissa met the man of her dreams.
A fancy horseless carriage. The first motorized vehicles similar to this one were seen for the first time in England in the times described. This one I saw in Nuernberg in 2008.
Life for Benjamin also changed. While he continued to spent time in the spring, summer, and autumn at Eagleridge, after his fourteenth birthday his parents enrolled him in a prestigious boys’ school more than 200 miles away from home. His friendships with Albert and Christopher continued to grow, but the number of carefree days together was fewer by far. On those occasions when he was at home he continued to avoid visits with the Penningtons to escape Louisa’s kisses, but Lady Lydia with her new husband and her two daughters and the Carstairs made frequent visits to each other’s homes which Benjamin enjoyed a great deal.
It was on one of those visits that he made a gift of a pony to eight-year-old Rebecca who feared large animals. Benjamin found that Rebecca, who had always been a beautiful little girl, had grown tall. She was very pretty, Benjamin thought, but much too timid. He encouraged her to do little things like petting a calf. And each time, once she conquered her initial fear, he found her to enjoy the activity and grow in confidence. One morning, as he was preparing to ride to Eagleridge, Rebecca came to bid him goodbye. She asked him after he mounted his horse, “Are you not afraid to fall off this big animal, Benjamin?” (more…)
Books and banter by W.H.Manke 