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

by Mary E. Pearce

Building began at Hainault early in May and although Robert Clayton, the builder, came regularly to inspect its progress, it was his son Edward who organized and controlled the work and took responsibility for it day by day. Martin and the young builder, therefore, soon became well acquainted, and a warm friendship sprang up between them. Edward, for the sake of convenience, had taken lodgings in Chardwell, but as these were comfortless, and the food poor, Martin often invited him home to supper. In return Edward would entertain Martin and Nan at The Post House and afterwards the three of them would stroll together through the quiet streets or up the hill to the castle ruins.

  ‘I like this little town of yours. It’s got so much variety. There’s the grand new part around Trinity Square, built in the last century. There’s the older part, round the market place, with its narrow streets and alleyways. And then there’s the really old part, out on the Burr, which has a country village feel about it, especially on the green where you live. In fact I like the town so much that I’m thinking of buying a house here ‒ when something suitable turns up, that is.’

  ‘Whatever will your father say to that?’ Nan asked.

  ‘Oh, my father knows and approves of my plan. He thinks there’ll be a lot more work for us, all around Chardwell in the next few years. So it’s only common sense for me to make my home here.’

  ‘Permanently?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Well, that depends.’

  ‘Surely, being a builder,’ Nan said, ‘you could build yourself a house?’

  ‘Builders can never find the time. They’re too busy building for other folk. So I hope I can rely on you two, as my friends, to help me find a suitable place. A woman’s opinion, especially, will be of great value to me.’ Edward looked earnestly at Nan. ‘But only so long as you have the time and will not find it too tedious,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no! On the contrary. I love seeing inside people’s houses and this will be a good excuse.’

  ‘You will tell me honestly what you think of any house I take you to?’

  ‘It’s what you think that will matter, surely, seeing it’s you that will live in it?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes, you’re right, of course. But I may not know what I think of it until I hear somebody else’s opinion.’

  Work on the new Hainault Mill was going ahead rapidly. Day after day, week after week, loads of stone were delivered there, the carts going endlessly to and fro, up and down Rutland Hill and along the winding valley road, the empty ones passing the full ones, often thirty times in a day. Course by course, the mill walls grew; wooden scaffolding was erected; and on it the building-masons toiled, often from first light of day to last. Below, at their stone workbenches, the banker-masons were hard at work, cutting the dressings for windows and doors: the sills, the mullions; the lintels, the quoins; the fluted sections of the pilasters which would support the pediment. Soon the first iron pillars were raised and on them the iron brackets and beams that would carry the storey above, for everything in this new mill was to be as safe from the risk of fire as modern building methods could make it.

  Over the weeks, as the building rose, it attracted a number of visitors. Most of these were clothiers, of course, who came as a rule without prior appointment, and although Charles Yuart was always willing to show them round, he rarely allowed any one of them to take more than half an hour of his time. But one day when Martin was there, talking to his foreman, Tommy Nick, the Newton Railes carriage, with two ladies in it, came slowly along the valley road, turned into the busy mill yard and drew up at the counting-house door. Charles Yuart emerged at once, helped the two ladies down from the carriage, and spoke briefly to the coachman, Sherard, directing him to the mill stables.

  For a while the little group stood talking together, gazing at the surrounding buildings. Yuart, pointing, was obviously explaining the function of each, bending his head while he spoke because of the volume of noise all around: the clack and rattle of the looms; the high-pitched hum of the spinning-machines; and the thump-thud, thump-thud, of the great wooden mallets pounding wet cloth in the fulling-stocks ‒ a sound that travelled through all the buildings and reverberated across the yard. Miss Ginny was clearly complaining about it. She had raised her hands to her straw hat and was pulling the brim down at the sides to cover her ears. Yuart conducted the sisters away, bringing them out of the mill yard, into the open, where the worst of the din was diffused.

  They turned towards the new building, as yet only two storeys high, and encaged in its framework of scaffolding poles, but presenting already a striking appearance, partly because of its clean new stone, pale as biscuit in the sunlight, partly because of its mullioned windows, five on each side of the portico, and twelve in a row on the first floor, giving some idea of how the new mill would look when all five storeys were built.

  ‘Goodness! What a lot of windows!’ Miss Ginny exclaimed. ‘However many will there be altogether when the whole mill is up?’ But Yuart’s answer went unheard because she had now caught sight of Martin and broke in to say excitedly: ‘Oh, look, there’s Martin Cox! We wondered if he’d be here today. You will excuse us, won’t you, Charles? We simply must have a word with him.’

  Martin was in his shirtsleeves but now, as the visitors came towards him, he took his jacket from the branch of a tree and went to meet them, putting it on. The two young women seemed genuinely pleased to see him and smiled at him in such a way that he felt himself colouring boyishly.

  ‘Martin, how nice,’ Miss Katharine said, and gave him her hand. ‘This is a happy meeting indeed, though you hardly deserve to be greeted thus, for you promised to come and visit us and you have not kept your word.’

  ‘Miss Tarrant,’ he said, with a little bow, and then, as Ginny gave him her hand: ‘Miss Virginia. How do you do.’

  ‘Oh, how formal you are to be sure!’ Ginny said, with a bright, mocking stare. ‘That’s what comes of neglecting old friends. You hardly know what to say to us.’

  ‘Would it be too formal to say that I’m glad to see you both looking so well?’

  ‘Yes, too formal by half. He’ll have to do better, won’t he, Kate?’

  ‘Formality has its uses,’ Miss Katharine said, ‘and doesn’t necessarily mean that the feelings expressed are not sincere.’

  ‘We’ve come to see the new mill,’ Ginny said. ‘Would you like to show us round?’

  Martin, smiling, shook his head. He was all too well aware that Yuart, standing some way off, was glancing towards them impatiently.

  ‘That is Mr Yuart’s privilege and I should feel myself in the way.’

  ‘Very well. Be strait if you must. But you will still be here when we come out? Or are you so busy these days that you have no time to talk to old friends?’

  ‘I am not too busy. And I shall be here.’

  Scarcely twenty minutes later, Ginny emerged from the new mill alone.

  ‘It is, I suppose, Katharine’s duty to admire every single block of stone and every girder Charles points out to her, but it’s not mine and I’ve seen enough. Let us go for a walk somewhere, away from all this, where we can hear ourselves talk. We have a lot of news to exchange.’

  So they left the mill site behind them and strolled across the rack-ground where, on the rows of tenter-frames, some ‘pieces’ of olive-green cloth, forty yards long, newly removed from the fulling-troughs, hung drying in the warm summer air. From the rack-ground they followed the curve of the river bank and continued along the meadow reach, where comfrey and purple loosestrife grew; where clumps of meadowsweet scented the air; and where ducks came and went among the reeds.

  ‘Did you enjoy your three months in London last year?’

  ‘Surely you don’t need to ask that? How could anyone fail to enjoy a city which is known as the greatest in the world? ‒ Where there is always so much to do. ‒ Where you can see the Queen herself and all manner of eminent people.’

  ‘You saw the Queen?’

  ‘Yes. Twice. Once driving along the Mall and the
n, which was more exciting still, at the theatre with the Prince.’

  ‘What play did you see?’

  ‘Oh, I saw nothing of the play! I was too busy watching them. But I did hear the speech Macready made at the end ‒’

  ‘You actually saw the great Macready?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and dozens more. Not to mention the operas and concerts. I’ve heard the great Cotoni sing and I’ve heard Frederick Kosski play the viola …’

  ‘What about the city’s great buildings? St Paul’s, for instance, and Westminster Abbey?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course I’ve seen them. The Tower, too, and the Traitors’ Gate. The Houses of Parliament. London Bridge. I’ve been to all the great galleries. To Hampton Court and the gardens at Kew … Oh, yes, I went everywhere.’

  ‘Gloucestershire, then, must seem very quiet, and country life very dull after that.’

  ‘Yes. And yet no. I cried when I left the Wilsons’ house and felt so jealous of Anne and Marie who live there almost all the year round. But there’s something nice about coming home … And there’s no place quite like Railes after all … Now, if I could marry the right sort of man, I’d spend two or three months in town in the winter, travel abroad in the springtime, and spend the rest of the year in my own dear hills, in a large country house with every comfort money can buy, somewhere not too far from Railes.’

  ‘Have you not found him, then?’ Martin asked. ‘This rich husband you’re looking for, who will give you everything you want? Were there no suitable candidates even in London in all those months?’

  ‘No, there were not,’ Ginny said. ‘Most of the eligibles were either old or ugly or disagreeable. Those who were charming were mostly poor. And those few who were charming and rich were already married or engaged. But never mind. There’s plenty of time. And if all else fails, there is always George Winter of Chacelands, you know, to fall back on as it were.’

  ‘Is he still waiting for you, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He called on me twice in London and proposed each time, and then, no sooner was I home at Railes than he called on me there and proposed again.’

  ‘And still you refused.’

  ‘I said I felt I was too young to commit myself to him as yet.’ Ginny, meeting Martin’s glance and perceiving the scepticism there, gave an impish smile and said: ‘Well, I am only seventeen, after all, and it wouldn’t be very kind of me to enter into an engagement now, only to break it later on. But that is quite enough about me! Let us talk about you instead and the things that have happened to you this past year.’

  They came to a halt, facing each other, and she treated him to a long, cool look, assessing the changes that his new life had wrought in him.

  ‘Yes, you’re different from how you were … And yet somehow you are still the same … Your father left you a lot of money. I’ve heard all about it, you may be sure. And you’ve bought yourself a cottage somewhere out at Old Church End. You’re also doing great things at the quarry, with dozens of men under you, tearing the heart out of Rutland Hill, and everyone says you’re in a fair way to make a fortune out of it.’

  ‘Do they say that? Let’s hope they’re right.’

  ‘Charles seems to think so, anyway. He says every clothier in the district will follow his example in the next ten years and that means that you can be sure of a constant demand for stone. So! You will very likely be rich! How will you like that, I wonder?’

  ‘I think I could probably bear it, once I’d got used to it,’ Martin said.

  Ginny laughed; the kind of laugh that lit up her face and had no affectation in it; a laugh that made her blue eyes appear more deeply blue than ever, under the delicate flaxen brows.

  ‘You won’t hide all your money away and horde it the way your father did?’

  ‘No. I will not.’

  ‘Well, then, who knows?’ Ginny said. ‘If you should become really rich, ‒ and provided you don’t take too long about it ‒ I might end up by marrying you.’

  ‘Always supposing I were to ask you.’

  ‘That is not very gallant, Mr Cox.’

  ‘I imagine you get more than enough gallantry from all the fine young gentlemen of the district who wait on you every whip-stitch.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Girls can never have enough of such things. Surely even you must know that.’

  ‘When you do marry,’ Martin said, ‘will you expect your husband to treat you with gallantry all the time?’

  ‘Of course. I shall expect him to adore me and make a fuss of me and give me plenty of money to spend.’

  ‘Then I wish you luck in your search.’

  For a moment they stood in silence together, Ginny still regarding him with a look that was at once critical, detached, amused, and yet had a hint of warm pleasure in it.

  ‘I am just trying to picture how you will be in a few years from now, and to guess what sort of girl you will marry, when the time comes for you to choose.’

  ‘And have you succeeded?’

  ‘No. I have not. The future is too well hidden from us. It keeps its secrets most stubbornly.’

  They turned and walked back along the path, talking about Newton Railes; her sister’s forthcoming marriage; and her brother’s recent travels abroad.

  ‘Hugh was not well in the spring and Papa sent him to Switzerland. That is the fifth time he’s been to Europe whilst I have never been at all. Now why couldn’t I have been asthmatic and travelled abroad now and then? It really is very unfair …’

  With Ginny prattling on in this way, they returned to the site of the new mill, there to stand for a little while, watching as a great iron girder was winched up to the scaffolding platform level with the mill’s second floor.

  ‘How long will it be before the mill is finished?’

  ‘It should be ready by next May or June.’

  ‘Charles says it will be the biggest, most modern and efficient mill in the whole valley. It’s certainly a very fine-looking place. But I do rather wonder at you, Martin, helping to build a woollen mill, for I thought you saw them all as places in which the poor spinners and weavers are kept in a state of slavery.’

  ‘Not all of them are so bad as that and Hainault has always had a good name for treating its work-people pretty well.’

  ‘Your conscience is clear, then?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And what about all the extra noise the power-looms will make in the valley? Doesn’t that prospect trouble you?’

  ‘We shall get used to that, I daresay, just as we’re used to the noise there is now.’

  ‘You may be used to it but I am not, and I pity poor Kate when she gets married and has to live in Saye House, with the din she will have in her ears all day long from the town mills.’

  ‘It isn’t heard all that badly up in that part of the town.’

  ‘Badly enough, to my mind, and I’m thankful to goodness I live out at Railes, where we cannot hear it at all. Also, where we don’t get the smell, except now and then when the wind is contrary.’

  They walked on together, past the new mill, making their way carefully between the endless stacks of stone; of iron girders and pillars and brackets; of wooden scaffolding poles and planks; and so into the old mill yard, where Katharine and her betrothed stood talking together, and the carriage waited, with Sherard on the box.

  ‘Oh, dear! Have I kept you waiting? I am so sorry!’ Ginny said. ‘Martin and I went for a walk and I rather lost count of the time. We had a great deal to talk about and I have just been chaffing him for supplying stone to build a mill?’ With a smile of pure mischief, she explained herself to Charles Yuart. ‘Martin is something of a Chartist, you see, and thinks the poor weavers are harshly treated. However, he tells me that Hainault has a good reputation in this respect, and that your weavers are treated quite well.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Yuart said, a slight edge to his voice. ‘I’m glad to know that we have his approval.’ He turned and addressed Martin directly. ‘Purely as a matter of
interest, Mr Cox, ‒ if you were asked to supply stone to a clothier of whom you did not approve, would you refuse?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But probably not. Because my refusal would make no difference to the way the clothier ran his mill. He would merely go elsewhere for his stone and I should be out of pocket by it.’

  ‘Quite so, Mr Cox. I’m glad you take a realistic view of the matter and I commend your honesty in expressing it. It seems to me we are in agreement, that whatever we may feel about the poor, business considerations must come first. We who are engaged in commerce have a duty to uphold its principles, for if we fail in our endeavours, it is not only we who suffer, but all our employees as well.’

  ‘But surely,’ Ginny said archly, ‘it is the poor who would suffer most?’

  ‘My dear child!’ Yuart exclaimed. ‘Since when have you interested yourself in the poor?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not interested in them at all! My brother Hugh is the one for that. And when he goes into Parliament, he will probably introduce reforms that will make it quite impossible for you or Martin ever to become rich at all. What do you think, Kate?’

  Katharine, though she laughed, refused to be drawn.

  ‘I think you and I between us have taken up quite enough of these gentlemen’s time for today and we really ought to be going home.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we must.’ Ginny relinquished Martin’s arm but turned towards him appealingly. ‘Now do come and see us, won’t you?’ she said, and then, before he had time to reply: ‘Kate! He takes more notice of you. Tell him he has got to come.’

  ‘Martin knows he is welcome at Railes. He will come in his own good time, I am sure.’

  Katharine turned towards the carriage and Charles Yuart handed her in. Ginny followed, glancing into Yuart’s face and bestowing a dazzling smile on him.

  ‘Thank you for showing us the mill, Charles. It was really quite fascinating.’

  ‘I am glad you found it so, Ginny.’

  Yuart’s tone was gently sardonic and Martin saw an amused glance pass between him and Miss Katharine.

  The carriage steps were folded in and the door was closed; and while the two sisters settled themselves, arranging their wide-spreading skirts, Yuart stood with one hand on the ledge, exchanging a few last words with them, concerning a garden party they were to attend at Kingsnorth House. Martin, feeling himself out of place, stepped back a little, but stayed to watch as the carriage drove away. He raised his hand in salute; graciously, they acknowledged him; and Ginny, turning in her seat, gave a last, small, intimate wave, intended specially for him. When the carriage had gone out onto the road Yuart turned towards Martin.