The Old House at Railes: A heartwarming rags to riches Victorian family saga

by Mary E. Pearce

  Some of this stone they used themselves, and some they sold to other masons who also worked in a small way of business, in Chardwell and the district around. Recently these sales had been few but Rufus nevertheless insisted that the stocks be maintained and added to; and so, in any spare time they had, father and son worked in the quarry, breaking out the raw stone and reducing it to usable blocks. For work on farm buildings and cottages, rubblestone was mostly used, but for finer buildings, especially in towns, ashlar blocks were preferred, and often they had to be fine-dressed. Martin’s sister did much of this, achieving a handsome patterned finish by drawing a strong steel comb to and fro over the surface while it was still soft and ‘green’. Martin could not understand why they all had to work so hard and sometimes he grumbled about it.

  ‘Why must we always be cutting stone when all we ever use or sell is scarcely a twentieth part of it?’ And Rufus, shaking his head, would say: ‘Because one of these days our luck will change and when it does we must be prepared.’

  All round the outer edge of the quarry, where the ground fell away downhill, it was littered with the detritus of years: stone-dust and chippings and useless offcuts, swept away from the central area, together with those items of rubbish resulting from human habitation: old iron kettles and pots, eaten into holes by rust; fragments of yellow earthenware; ashes and soot and vegetable waste. For Rufus and his two children lived right in the quarry itself, in a lean-to cottage of rough weatherstone, built into the hillside, in a curving corner of the rock-face, well away from the quarry workings. Rufus had built this cottage himself, some thirty years before, when he had first come to the quarry as a young man of twenty-two. He had been a bachelor then and had built the cottage hurriedly, to suit a bachelor’s simple requirements. It consisted of one narrow room, divided at night by a rough curtain, and cooking was done on its open hearth. When Rufus had married, at the age of thirty-four, he had added a small scullery, and this was the only improvement he had ever considered necessary.

  In dry summer weather the cottage was hot ‒ unbearably hot at certain times ‒ but in wet weather it was quite the reverse, for the inner edge of the lean-to roof was only roughly jointed with mortar, and rain ran straight down the rock-face, which formed the inner wall of the cottage, to collect in puddles on the rough stone floor. In winter the place was always wet; even a good blazing fire on the hearth could do nothing to dry it out; and all through the summer months, even when the door and the window were open, the place still smelt of damp stone and earth, and still had a clamminess in the air, ‘like as if we lived in a cave,’ Martin would say to his sister sometimes.

  On these fine hot summer days, Nan would fetch out all the bedding and hang it over the line to air. She would lay their pallets out in the sun; the pillows, the curtains, the rushwork mats; and would turn them over, again and again. But even when dried and aired like this, everything still had a sour, musty smell; still felt clammy to the touch, soon after being taken indoors.

  ‘And always will have,’ Martin said, ‘so long as we live in this hole of a place.’ The cottage filled him with disgust. ‘If it weren’t for you,’ he said to Nan, ‘doing so much to freshen it up, we should all have taken the palsy by now, or be dead of consumption like our mother.’

  ‘Oh, Martin, don’t say that!’ Nan’s dark eyes were full of fear. ‘Such a terrible death poor Mother had! So much suffering, so much pain! I often think of it when I’m alone. Sometimes I can’t get it out of my mind.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Martin said, and inwardly he reviled himself for having spoken so brutally. ‘But I didn’t mean what I said. We’re a lot stronger than Mother was. We take after father. We’re tough as oak.’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s true,’ Nan said. ‘We’re healthy enough, the three of us. But this old cottage ‒’ She gave a sigh. ‘What wouldn’t I give to live in a place that was dry and clean and always smelt sweet. Down the hill at Fordover, or right in Chardwell itself, perhaps. That’s what I should like best of all ‒ a cottage right in Chardwell itself, where there were neighbours all around, and something going on all the time.’

  ‘Got any particular place in mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nan said, guiltily. ‘One of those cottages by the old church … with a bit of garden in the front … I always stand and look at them, whenever I go to tend Mother’s grave, and that’s where I’d live, if I had my way.’

  ‘With the church clock to keep you awake at night?’

  ‘And the rooks cawing away in the elms!’

  ‘Where the chapmen and hawkers come to the door …’

  ‘And it’s not far to go to the pump on the green … Oh, just to think of living there!’

  ‘What about the smell of the brook when Jervers Mill, or Cranshaw, perhaps, empty their fulling-stocks into it?’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t mind that at all! I should just close the windows and door until it had blown away on the wind!’ Nan gave a little tremulous laugh. ‘Oh, Martin,’ she said wistfully, ‘do you think it will ever come to pass? Father says it will one day. He says if we’re patient and trust in him, we shall end by being as well-to-do as ever we could wish to be.’

  ‘Yes, but he never says how or when. “All in good time.” ‒ That’s all he says. But you shall have a decent house one day! And yes, at Chardwell Church End, if you choose. Cos if Father doesn’t bring it about, I shall bring it about myself.’

  ‘How shall you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems I’m the same as Father in that. But I’ll do it somehow, come what may, and I’ll swear to it on the Good Book if you like.’

  Martin and his sister were very close; they could always find something to talk about and were almost always in accord; and the bond between them was, at this time, their one and only source of comfort; the only thing that brightened their lives and gave rise to laughter now and then. Martin, although two years younger than Nan, felt strongly protective towards her, because her life was so drab and dull. He felt he was lucky compared with her, for at least his work took him out and about, down into the valley towns or out to the villages around. But the only change Nan ever had was her Friday morning walk into Chardwell to buy their meagre groceries. She rarely left the quarry at other times and when her father and brother were away, she saw not a single human soul from early morning, when they left, until they returned in the evening, and that, during the summer months, was often as late as ten o’clock. It was small wonder, then, that she should listen so eagerly to whatever they had to tell her, and, since Rufus despised idle chat, it fell to Martin to pass on to her whatever news he had gleaned in the day.

  On that warm summer evening, however, on getting home from Newton Railes, Rufus himself was inclined to talk, dwelling with keen satisfaction on the arrangement he had made with John Tarrant.

  ‘It may be the making of your brother,’ he said. ‘He’s about as bright a boy as you could meet in a day’s walk and he only needs the right chance to make him into the kind of man that’ll carve out a place for himself in the world. It was a good idea of mine to mention the matter as I did, and Mr Tarrant took it up almost in the winking of an eye.’

  Martin had little to say on the subject and Nan could see that he had his doubts; and later, when they were alone for a while, she spoke to him about it.

  ‘Don’t you like the idea of going to Railes for lessons?’

  ‘No. I do not.’

  ‘But you have said oftentimes that you wished you could have gone to school.’

  ‘School, yes,’ Martin said, ‘but not with people like them, in a place like Railes.’

  ‘But you like the family, surely? You’ve always spoken as though you did.’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe I have. But after what father told me today, about Mr Tarrant not paying us for another three months or more, I dunno that I feel the same. Why should people of that sort get us to work so hard for them and then keep us waiting for our money?’

  ‘I don’t know. But they a
lways do. Father has said so many a time.’

  ‘That don’t make it nearer right. Not while we have to live as we do, in a place like this, scarcely fit for pigs.’

  ‘Oh, Martin, don’t talk like that! It’s such a stroke of luck for you. If it was me, I’d be over the moon!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I reckon you would.’ And he looked at her in silence a while, touched by the fact that this sister of his, even while envying him, could still be so pleased on his behalf. ‘It’s a pity you can’t go instead.’

  ‘What you learn at Railes,’ Nan said, ‘you will be able to pass on to me.’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘What are they like, Mr Tarrant’s children? They have spoken to you and Father, haven’t they?’

  ‘Miss Katharine has spoken to us a few times, about the work we’ve been doing there, and so has Master Hugh the same. But the other one, Miss Ginny she’s called, she don’t never speak to us. She just walks past with her nose in the air.’

  ‘And what about the house? Is it very fine?’

  ‘It’s not just fine, it’s beautiful. And there’s something else about it, besides … It’s hard to say just what it is … but a feeling about it, that’s special somehow.’

  ‘A happy feeling?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. How did you know?’

  ‘Because, whenever you speak of it, that is the feeling I get from you. ‒ Of peacefulness and happiness. Of light and space in summertime, and comfort and warmth in winter. A feeling of safety and trustfulness … Isn’t that how it makes you feel?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know why I feel like that. I’ve never felt it anywhere else. And I haven’t even been inside ‒ only into the kitchen, that’s all. But somehow I feel I know every room … I dunno why. I can’t make it out.’

  ‘You’re bound to like having lessons there, then. Surely you will?’

  ‘But where will it lead me to, I wonder, and what will come of it in the end? That’s something I can’t figure out ‒ just what Father’s got in mind.’

  ‘It’s bound to lead you somewhere, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes, but where?’

  ‘Out of this cottage, for a start, I hope.’

  ‘Ah, well, if it does that …’ A little gleam came into his eyes. ‘If only it gets us out of here … gives us a better life somehow … then it seems I must do as I’m told and be sure and make the most of it.’

  He went outside and across the quarry to where his father was already at work, chipping away with his scappling axe at one of the big raw lumps of stone. Martin took up his own axe and set to work on the next lump, chip-chip-chipping away, knocking off its protuberances, until one side of it began to be roughly straight and flat. This was easy, mechanical work, which left his mind free to roam, and, Nan having imparted some of her own bright optimism, his mind was less gloomy now and his thoughts were better company.

  Just before half past eight on Monday morning, Martin arrived at Newton Railes. He had come a few minutes early, hoping to see Miss Katharine alone before his lessons actually began, but: ‒ ‘Miss Katharine is busy just now,’ the maid said, as she took him upstairs to the schoolroom. ‘She will join you as soon as she can.’ So Martin, on entering the room, found the twins already there, sitting at a table in the window, conversing in French, with a map of France spread out before them. They broke off as he came in, but Ginny, looking him up and down, then made some remark in the same language, the nature of which was plainly derisive. He was dressed in his Sunday best: a brown serge suit, too small for him, and a new pair of boots, much too big; and as he stood inside the door, hindering the maid from closing it, he suddenly saw himself through their eyes: a gawky figure, ungainly and rough, with too many inches of scrawny wrist showing below his jacket sleeves. He had taken off his cap, and his thick straight brown hair, although Nan had trimmed it the night before, was falling untidily over his brows.

  ‘Come in, Martin,’ Hugh said. ‘Hang your cap up on that hook and take a seat here with us. My sister Kate is not here yet. She’s somewhere down in the domestic regions, dealing with some sort of contretemps.’

  ‘He won’t know what contretemps is,’ Ginny said, and although she pretended to lower her voice, it was plain she intended Martin to hear.

  ‘He will now,’ Hugh said, ‘and it will probably stick in his mind as the first new word he ever learnt on setting foot inside this room.’ Then, as Martin sat down at the table, he said: ‘We’re studying the French Revolution at present and we were just discussing the fate of King Louis. My sister here feels nothing but loathing for the revolutionaries and what they did, but I was arguing, with Tremille, that the Bourbons brought it on themselves. What is your opinion, I wonder?’

  ‘Who were the Bourbons?’

  ‘The monarchy.’

  ‘Then I think you’re in the right of it.’

  ‘Why do you?’ Ginny demanded.

  ‘Because of the way they treated the peasants, grinding them underfoot all those years.’

  ‘And what about the way they treated King Louis? Do you condone regicide, too?’

  ‘I don’t know about regicide. I only know they chopped off his head.’

  Brother and sister both laughed but Hugh’s laughter, as always, was utterly innocent of spite. Martin recognized this and, although mortified by his blunder, found it possible, with Hugh, to speak about it comfortably.

  ‘Seems I just learnt another new word ‒ and my lessons haven’t begun yet.’

  ‘I suppose you think,’ Ginny said, ‘that if you learn enough new words, that will make you a gentleman?’

  Martin did not answer her but sat erect in his high-backed chair, his hands clasped together on the table. After a moment she spoke again.

  ‘Isn’t that why you’ve come here ‒ so that you may acquire some polish? It seems a tall order to me and I don’t envy my sister her task. But what good will it do, anyway, and what do you hope to gain by it?’

  As Martin remained stubbornly silent, she turned to her twin.

  ‘He’ll never be a gentleman, will he, whatever he learns here with us?’

  ‘That depends,’ Hugh said, ‘on what you mean by “gentleman”.’

  ‘Now you’re just being tiresome. Everyone knows what a gentleman is.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘Well, it certainly isn’t someone like him, who works for a living,’ Ginny said. ‘It isn’t someone with rough, red hands and dirty, broken fingernails, who talks broad Gloucestershire and dresses in outlandish clothes.’

  Hugh, looking at Martin’s face, saw the dark colour rising there.

  ‘Don’t be upset by what Ginny says. She’s just showing off, that’s all.’ Then, in his lazy way, he said: ‘What do you think a gentleman is? Have you any ideas on the subject?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got ideas, all right!’

  ‘Out with them, then. I’m all ears.’

  ‘A gentleman,’ Martin said, speaking with angry emphasis, ‘is a man who can afford not to pay his bills.’

  Hugh threw back his head and laughed, but his twin sister was highly incensed.

  ‘Oh, what a horrible thing to say! Just because our papa owes you for the work you’ve done! And what would become of people like you, it were not for people like us, always giving you work to do? You would very likely starve! Coming here, great hobbledehoy, asking to have lessons with us, and then saying a thing like that! It’s nothing but impertinence ‒’

  ‘I never asked to have lessons here.’

  ‘Your father did, on your behalf.’

  ‘Maybe he did, but that’s not me. I wouldn’t have asked. Not for anything. I’d sooner swallow a cake of soap.’

  ‘You could always leave. No one’s stopping you.’

  ‘I will in a minute, if you don’t watch out.’

  ‘A minute is just sixty seconds, so if I start counting now ‒’

  ‘Ginny, stop it,’ Hugh said. ‘Papa will be sorely vexed wi
th you if you drive Martin away.’

  At that moment Katharine came in, carrying some papers and books.

  ‘Good morning, Martin. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m afraid you must think me very rude.’ She stood at the table, looking at him, noting the dark flush in his face and the way his lips were tightly compressed. ‘May I ask what’s been going on?’

  Martin, avoiding her gaze, mumbled an answer, inaudibly. Hugh spoke up on his behalf.

  ‘We were having an argument. Ginny began it, needless to say, and Martin here, not knowing her, allowed himself to be provoked.’

  ‘If you had heard what he said ‒’ Ginny began.

  ‘I’d rather not hear it,’ Katharine said. ‘Schoolroom squabbles, whatever their cause, must be put aside once lessons begin, and as we are already late ‒’

  ‘That’s not our fault,’ Ginny said. ‘We’ve been here nearly half an hour.’

  ‘Precisely why I do not intend to waste any more time,’ Katharine said. She took two sheets of paper from the sheaf in her hand and placed them on the table, one in front of each of the twins. ‘Those are some points for you to study, on the aftermath of the Revolution, and how it affected the rest of Europe. We’ll discuss them together in a little while. Meantime, Martin and I will adjourn to the music-room to discuss a programme of instruction for him.’

  ‘I wish you joy of it, I’m sure!’

  ‘Get on with your work,’ Katharine said.

  The music-room was next to the schoolroom, connected with it by double doors, and was furnished in much the same simple way, with the addition of an upright piano, a ’cello, a harp, and two music-stands. The table under the window was spread with a cloth of dark green velure and on it stood a tall vase filled with green ferns and white marguerites. Katharine moved the vase to one side and sat down at the table. She invited Martin to sit opposite and when, with some awkwardness, he did, they looked at each other in silence a while, Katharine’s gaze openly searching, Martin’s less steady, less frank, less sure. For although they had spoken together before, on many occasions over the years, and especially during the last three months, the circumstances were now changed, and each had a new assessment to make, a new relationship to form. And although Martin felt more at ease with this older girl, sensing her kindly interest, he was still in a state of resentment at the way the younger one had behaved; still painfully aware that among these people, so fine, so assured, he appeared ignorant, clumsy, uncouth. Katharine could see something of this; could read his feelings in his face; but she could not read the whole of his mind and something in his manner troubled her.