Cold Is the Dawn by Charles Egan

Author:Charles Egan [Egan, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, History, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781781326602
Google: m9dLDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1781326592
Publisher: SilverWood Books
Published: 2017-07-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Brooklyn Eagle, New York. December 1848:

The Cholera. In 1832, when we were visited by the Cholera, it made its entrance by way of Canada. It has now approached us at a more southerly point. It is said that it has made its appearance simultaneously in New York and New Orleans. The weather appears to be favourable for the propagation of the disease, and our city is in just the condition to be inoculated with it at an early day. We suppose no place was ever so outrageously filthy. We hear it said that the streets have not been relieved of their filth thoroughly since just before the last election and that heaps of muck and mush are standing in them, from month to month.

When Luke took Winnie and Liam to Lackan, it was bitterly cold. As they walked across to the terminal of the New Jersey Railroad, Luke wondered what their lodgings in Lackan might be like. He suspected the company-operated lodgings would not be of the same standard, nor have a landlady with the same concern for her lodgers. Mrs. Gleeson had been concerned about the baby travelling in such cold, but Winnie assured her Liam would be held close and warm.

At every stop, Winnie walked up and down the platform, carrying Liam, Luke following. She compared the engines at the front of each train, commenting on the size of their boilers. Luke was amazed at her interest.

‘How can they pull so many carriages?’ she asked.

‘That’s what boiling water does,’ Luke said, ‘and anthracite to heat it too. But they start slow, only slowly building up speed.’

‘And the tracks here? That was the class of thing you were working on in England?’

‘It was. Much of it too, hundreds of miles. But for the most part, we weren’t laying the tracks, we were digging the cuttings and building the embankments with the clay and rock we’d dug out. Hard work, I can tell you.’

At Philadelphia, they changed for the train to Schuylkill. Luke bought the tickets, and they barely made the train in time.

From time to time, Winnie breastfed Liam, not concerned about anyone else in the carriage. She had given up trying to wean him for now. What surprised Luke though was her silence for most of the journey. For hours, she sat looking out the window, taking in the landscape. Even the frozen swamps of New Jersey fascinated her. She compared the trestle bridges with the iron bridges, and when the train began to climb, she stared ceaselessly at the snow-covered hills and forests, while Luke played endless games of penny pontoon with other passengers.

Sometimes, when she was more talkative, they spoke of Carrigard. Brockagh too. She was concerned about her own parents, whom she had not seen since she had married Luke. In the end, there had been no time.

Luke wanted to get Winnie and Liam settled, and ensure his own employment. He was still nervous of coal mines, having little idea of what it was like to work in one.

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