‘Oh, I don’t know! Some word! Some sign!’
Martin, setting down his glass, answered with a touch of impatience.
‘Ginny, what are you talking about? If you’re not sure about this marriage, then for God’s sake don’t commit yourself to it.’
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure enough. I want to be married and I feel safe with George. It’s just that everything has turned out so differently from how I used to imagine it. Such a wedding I meant to have! I had it all planned to the last degree. I never dreamt that when I married, neither Hugh nor Papa would be here to see it … and now, somehow, the wedding itself no longer matters one iota. I still can’t quite believe they are gone … And oh, Martin, I do miss them so!’
Gently he took her into his arms, holding her and comforting her while she wept against him with little choked sobs. Soon, however, the weeping ceased, and her arms crept up behind his neck. She raised her face, wet with tears, and, reaching up to him, urgently, kissed his mouth with unrestrained passion, her lips moving against his in a way that was sweetly, tenderly sensual.
‘There, you see, you knew all the time.’ And she kissed him again, with a little sigh, seeking and finding forgetfulness in the way that came most naturally to her. Then, hiding her face against his, she spoke in a whisper close to his ear. ‘Do you remember, two years ago, on the day our lessons came to an end … and you kissed me goodbye at the wicket gate? And Much Ado, when the storm came on, and we sheltered in the summer-house? You didn’t kiss me then, of course, but I’m quite sure you would have done if Kate and Hugh had not been there. I remember the feel of your hands on my body, warm through the cold wet stuff of my dress, and I thought then ‒’
‘What did you think?’
‘That you would make a very good lover.’
Still with great gentleness, but firmly, too, Martin disengaged himself. He removed her hands from behind his neck and held them clasped between his own.
‘You mean, if you could arrange it so, you would take Winter as your husband and keep me as your paramour? Is that what you are proposing?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘What, then? And why did you come?’
‘Because I’ve been thinking about George … Trying to imagine what it will be like to be married to him … At the same time I was thinking of you … of what I felt when we kissed that time … and I wanted to find out if I should still feel the same now.’
‘And do you?’
‘Yes, of course. You know I do. And I don’t feel like that with George.’
‘And yet you will marry him just the same.’
‘You need not speak to me in that tone or look at me in that critical way. I’m really quite fond of George and I mean to be a good wife to him.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Martin said.
‘Are you? Why?’
‘Because Winter, from what I know of him, is a thoroughly decent sort of man. He’s head over heels in love with you and he’s only getting half a loaf.’
‘Oh, what a vulgar thing to say!’
‘I’m a vulgar fellow.’
‘Yes. You are.’
But she was neither offended nor hurt. She had come to him in search of solace; some respite from the incumbent grief she felt for the loss of her father and brother; and, her nature being what it was, she had, for this interlude, found what she sought. Her face now was warmly flushed; there was a little smile on her lips; and her pale, tear-washed eyes, searching his face, had even a hint of mischief in them. ‘Martin, do you care for me?’
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
‘No, I’m not sure that I do. How much do you care? Tell me that.’
‘As much, or as little, as you deserve.’
‘That is no answer.’
‘It’s the best I can give.’
‘You will not commit yourself.’
‘No. I will not.’
‘I suppose you think I’m a hussy,’ she said.
‘I’m more concerned with what the neighbours will think.’
‘Meaning, it’s time I took my leave. Very well. You are right, of course. But aren’t you going to wish me well?’
‘I’ve already done that.’
‘Well, then, will you kiss me goodbye?’
Martin stooped to kiss her cheek but she turned and kissed him full on the mouth.
‘Surely there’s no harm in that? I’m not married to George yet.’
She collected her hat and put it on, letting the veil down over her face.
‘If you knew what the world looks like from behind this horrible stuff,’ she said, ‘you would pity me indeed.’
He accompanied her out to the green and helped her into the governess-cart. He stood watching her as she turned. Then he waved to her from the gate.
Three weeks later a notice appeared in The Chardwell Gazette announcing her marriage to George Winter. The wedding had taken place in London, quietly, from the home of some family friends, and the couple had left immediately, to spend their honeymoon on the Continent.
‘Poor Martin,’ Nan said, calling on him soon afterwards.
‘Poor Winter is more to the point, for she will lead him no end of a dance.’
Chapter Seven
During the next few years there were people in the Cullen Valley who deplored the coming of the power-looms and the consequent growth of the woollen industry because of the increased noise from the mills and the greater volume of effluent pouring into the rivers and streams. These complainants, needless to say, were not connected with the woollen trade; but even they recognized that with its growth and prosperity, other trades prospered too. Chardwell in particular, after fifty-odd years of taking second place to Sharveston, was now showing signs of moving ahead, due to the impetus and example provided by one of its native sons, Charles Yuart of Hainault Mill.
Chardwell’s superfine broadcloth, out of favour for some time past, had now come into its own again, and at the Great Exhibition of 1851, cloth from three mills in the Chardwell area had been highly commended by the judges, and Hainault Pastello had received a medal. As a result, these four clothiers could rest assured that their best quality broadcloth would be snapped up eagerly by wholesale buyers in London, Manchester, and even Scotland. There was also a very good trade abroad, especially in America.
‘You certainly started something, Charles, when you brought the new looms into our midst,’ Lewis Bakerman said to him. ‘You stirred us all up and no mistake, and you’ve put Chardwell on the map.’
‘Yes, and we must keep it there. Not sit back with folded hands as though there’s nothing more to do.’
Yuart’s attitude to Chardwell was a mixture of scorn and loyal attachment. He often spoke in a scathing way of its narrowness and complacency but took pride nevertheless in his family’s long connection with it. This dated from 1705, when his great great grandfather, Pieter Youweerts, coming from Flanders to England, had settled in a cottage in Tub Street and installed two handlooms there. Yuart was proud of the town’s traditions and its reputation for fine cloth, and he felt it did not make enough of itself. He was ambitious on its behalf; he wanted to see it grow and develop; and many of his fellow clothiers, respecting him as a man of vision, looked to him as their natural leader, a role he accepted without demur. Already, in his early thirties, he was an active member of the Chardwell Chamber of Commerce and of the Cullen Valley Clothiers’ Association, and for two years running had occupied a seat on the Borough Council. He was energetic and go-ahead, and, following the recent cholera epidemic, had been tireless in promoting the Board of Health’s scheme for giving Chardwell a completely new drainage system and a much improved water supply.
Being the kind of man he was, he had already introduced modern ideas into his own household. There was a bathroom at Railes now; water-closets on both floors; and water, both hot and cold, was piped to all the bedrooms. The new wing had been built by this time, providing billiard-room, gun-room, and smoking-r
oom, with three extra bedrooms above. The staff had been increased, of course, and now included a butler and footman, while his two children, a boy and a girl, had a trio of nursemaids to care for them. There were more horses in the stables and more grooms to look after them. And in the grounds Jobe the gardener had all the help he could require.
Yuart enjoyed spending money. In particular he enjoyed providing those comforts and luxuries which, he felt, were his wife’s due, and which, for so many years, she had gone without. That Miss Tarrant of Newton Railes should have acted as governess to her brother and sister and managed the whole household with nothing more than a cook and four maids had, in the days of their courtship, filled him with fierce indignation. It could not be helped, of course: the family fortunes had declined; but he had made up his mind that once Katharine became his wife, all that would be drastically changed, and this promise he had fulfilled. At Saye House, in the first few months of their marriage, she had had everything she could desire. Now she had Newton Railes as well, and although this had come to pass because of a terrible tragedy, Charles could not help feeling that everything had worked out for the best. By marriage Newton Railes was his and he, unlike her late father, was in a position to bring the house, together with its gardens and park, into a state as near perfection as money, time, and care could achieve. This was his greatest gift to her; the one in which he took the most pride.
But there were other gifts as well: expensive jewellery and furs; holidays touring the Continent; a rented house in the West End of London, overlooking the Green Park, where, throughout a fortnight’s stay, fresh flowers from Covent Garden were delivered every morning at the door. It needed no special occasion for him to lavish gifts on her. He liked to surprise her at any time. But special occasions were specially marked, and on the fifth anniversary of their marriage, he gave her a carriage of her own: a handsome landau in midnight blue, its panels picked out in silver leaf; and a beautiful pair of thoroughbred bays.
Her sister, calling at Railes that day, viewed the carriage with admiration and was quite openly envious.
‘Charles is much more generous with you than George is with me. George is really quite mean sometimes. He questions me about bills and things and is really quite disagreeable.’
‘I suppose it is not possible that you are sometimes extravagant?’
‘Oh, you may tease if you wish, but I didn’t marry George just to go short of everything. And you, my dear Kate, are a fine one to talk, for what is this new carriage of yours if not a piece of extravagance?’
‘What indeed?’ Katharine said.
‘The stupid part of it all is that most of these wonderful gifts are only wasted on you,’ Ginny said.
There was a good deal of truth in this because Katharine’s personal tastes, on the whole, were simple, and extravagance for its own sake induced a feeling of guilt in her. She had spoken of this to Charles but he had brushed her objections aside.
‘Would you deny me the pleasure of giving you what I think you should have? I am only making up to you for the poverty of your early days.’
‘We were never so poor as all that. Certainly we never lacked the things that mattered most to us. Our childhood days were happy ones. My father made sure of that.’
‘Yes. I know. And I intend to make sure that you are even happier now.’
Chardwell found him generous, too, and early in 1852, when his father died, he presented Saye House to the township, to be used as a library and reading-room, open to the public, with an art gallery and museum and a number of lecture rooms. At a meeting of the Borough Council, the Mayor, formally accepting the deed of gift and expressing the town’s gratitude, proposed that Saye House should be known as the Charles Yuart Institute, and this was agreed unanimously. The Mayor further proposed that the Council should commission a portrait of this, the town’s foremost benefactor, which portrait should then be hung in the outer hall of the Institute. This motion, although carried, did not receive a unanimous vote, for there were a few councillors whose admiration for Charles Yuart stopped short of idolatry; who felt indeed that their elderly Mayor was under Charles Yuart’s thumb and that as a result the younger man’s influence was altogether too strong.
Certainly there was a group, composed chiefly of clothiers, who tended to dominate Council proceedings, and on one notable occasion, Councillor Edward Clayton proposed that ‘a small sum of money be subvented for purchasing a pack of playing-cards so that those of us at the lower end of the Council table may have some means of passing the time while all the most important decisions are being made at the upper end.’ Councillor Yuart’s response was brief and dry. ‘It seems we already have the Joker,’ he said, and The Chardwell Gazette later reported that this good-humoured exchange had caused much amusement around the Board.
‘Good-humoured be damned!’ said Edward, talking to Nan and Martin later. ‘There’s nothing good-humoured in what I feel for Charles Yuart, nor the other way around, and the sooner we have some new blood on the Borough Council the better pleased I shall be.’
In the Council elections the following year, Edward Clayton kept his seat; so did Dr David Whiteside; and so too did Charles Yuart, along with three of those clothiers who formed his staunchest following. Martin, twenty-four that year, was one of the new candidates, and, to his surprise he was elected: the youngest Councillor, it was said, ever to take his place on the Corporation of that ancient Borough.
‘And a good thing, too!’ Edward said. ‘You can help stop the clothmen from running the whole duck shoot!’
One of the subjects under discussion at this time was a scheme proposed by Charles Yuart, for the purchase of a piece of land to be made into a public park, for the recreation of the townspeople. The scheme included a suggestion that the park should be named after the Queen; that a letter should be sent to Her Majesty, requesting her gracious permission; and that with this letter the Council should send a gift of that superfine broadcloth for which Chardwell was noted all over the world. Yuart said that he would be honoured to donate the said bolt of cloth, which would be woven specially on one of the newest Hainault looms.
During the preliminary debate, he had won a fair degree of support for his scheme, but some councillors averred that its chief object was merely to gain the attention of Her Majesty ‒ known to favour the creation of public parks ‒ and thus promote the clothiers’ own private interests. Alderman Lewis Bakerman, of Daisy Bank Mill, retorted that anything promoting the interests of the cloth trade was bound to be for the general good, and that with this particular scheme the townspeople would reap a double benefit, since the park would provide them with much needed amenities, including a band-stand and tennis-courts. Here Councillor Dr Whiteside joined the discussion.
‘The amenities you mention are not needed nearly so badly as those which would be provided by the building of a new hospital. This is a subject that has been raised here more than once ‒’
‘Indeed, don’t we know it!’ somebody said. ‘And each time you have been reminded that Chardwell already has a hospital.’
‘Yes, we have a hospital. ‒ A cold, dirty, unhealthy place, formerly a dyeworks. There are just three nurses there, all of them elderly, all untrained, and one almost totally blind. There are bugs in the walls of that hospital and rats in its drains. The place is meant for the poor, of course, but they go there only in dread, knowing they will probably die there. That is what hospital means to them ‒ a place of death.’
‘Can it not be improved?’
‘No amount of improvement would make it adequate to its purpose. What is needed is a hospital built to appropriate specifications, equipped and staffed to meet the needs of our growing population, not merely to provide a place where sick people are sent to die, but where, with proper medical treatment and care, they stand some chance of recovering. The recent outbreaks of cholera have shown how ill-equipped we are to deal with any epidemics of a serious nature. They were, I feel, a warning to us, and as Chairman
of the Board of Health, I would say this ‒ we ignore that warning at our peril.’
Following the doctor’s speech there was further discussion, as a result of which it was found that support for each of the two schemes was now roughly equal: seven in favour of the hospital, eight in favour of the public park, with three as yet undecided. Among those supporting the hospital scheme were Edward Clayton and Martin Cox.
‘Well, of course, they would, wouldn’t they?’ said Sidney Hurne, of Brink End Mill. ‘The one a builder and the other a quarryman? ‒ Obviously it is in their interest to foster a scheme that involves the erection of an expensive building, and I would ask Messrs Clayton and Cox whether they have already calculated their bill-of-costs for the material and work involved?’
Edward, though angry, remained quite calm.
‘Anticipating that the matter of cost was bound to be raised at this meeting, yes, I have with me a sheet of figures drawn up by Mr Cox and myself, in consultation with Dr Whiteside, and will pass it round for the Board’s perusal.’
While the paper went from hand to hand, Edward spoke a few more words.
‘At this stage the figures quoted can form only a rough guide but I would like to make two points: that Mr Cox has in fact offered to supply all the building-stone required at cost price and that I have offered my own services as a contractor at a discount of twenty-five per cent. These points are noted at the foot of the page.’
A number of councillors murmured their appreciation of this and the Mayor, presiding over the meeting, offered Councillors Clayton and Cox its formal thanks. A moment later the paper was in his hands and he was pursing his lips over it.
‘Nevertheless, with all due respect, six thousand pounds is a great deal of money and, bearing in mind that most of it will have to be raised by public subscription, it compares badly with the two thousand five hundred pounds which the public park is expected to cost.’
Dr Whiteside answered him.
‘Two thousand five hundred pounds spent on something the town does not really need is a greater extravagance, surely, than six thousand pounds spent on something essential to its general health.’
The Old House at Railes: A heartwarming rags to riches Victorian family saga Page 21
