‘Martin,’ she said, quietly, ‘are you here against your will?’
The question took him by surprise. He looked away in embarrassment.
‘Not against my will, exactly. But it was my father’s idea, not mine, and I don’t think it’ll work out.’
‘Why ever not?’ Katharine asked.
‘For one thing because I’m not wanted here.’
‘Have I made you feel like that?’
‘No, not you, but your sister has. And I reckon she’s in the right of it because I don’t belong in a place like this. I’m like a toad that’s got into the wine.’
Katharine smiled.
‘The toad will soon get used to the wine, so long as he’s hard-headed enough, and you will soon get used to us.’
‘I’ll still be a toad at the end of it.’
‘Not if you want to be something else.’
There was a pause. He looked at her. Some of his stiffness was slipping away.
‘Can you help me to be something else?’
‘I think, before answering that, I need to know just what it is that your father has in mind for you.’
‘I dunno what he’s got in mind. I wish I did. A chance to get on in the world, he says, but how and when is a mystery.’
‘Is that what you want? To get on in the world? It it that you’re dissatisfied with being a mason and a quarryman?’
‘No, I like my work well enough, but I wish ‒’
‘Yes, what?’
‘I wish I could feel it was all worthwhile. That we should get something out of it, better than we’ve had so far. The way we live up there at Scurr … I should like something better than that … a better life for my sister and me and … a better chance for us to grow.’
There was another, longer pause, and in the course of it Martin wondered if he had revealed too much of himself. But the young woman sitting opposite him, looking at him with her clear grey eyes, showed only interest and sympathy, and somehow he knew he was safe with her.
‘You can’t change my life, I know, but can you help me to change it myself? Can you put things into my head that’ll help me to make the best of myself? Help me to know and understand what other folkses’ lives are like, outside of the quarry, where I live?’
‘Yes, I think I can do that. You’ve got a perfectly good brain. It’s just a question of setting it to work along the most profitable lines.’
‘And shall you know where to begin?’ he asked, with a touch of self-mockery.
‘I shall have some better idea when you have done this task for me.’
She put a sheet of paper before him, on which, in a clear hand, she had written a few questions. She gave him some sheets of blank paper, a pencil, a sharpener, an india rubber, and an ebony ruler for drawing lines.
‘I want you to answer these questions for me, using as many words as you choose, and taking just as long as you like. I’ll look in again in an hour or so to see how you are getting on, but if you need me before that, I shall be next door with the twins.’
In a moment he was alone, staring at his list of questions, the first of which asked him: ‘What can you see from the window of this room?’ From his chair he could see little but when he stood up he could see much more: a terraced area of the garden, giving way to flat parterres; a man and a boy at work there, weeding out the flower-beds; and a yew hedge with openings in it, leading to the greater garden beyond.
He sat down again and read through the rest of the questions. There were four in all. ‘What can you see in this room?’ was one and ‘What books have you read?’ was another; and these were followed by: ‘State what you know about these people: Columbus; Dick Turpin; Alfred the Great; Lord Ashley; Lord Nelson; Robert the Bruce.’ He read the questions over again and looked around him, pondering.
Behind him, through the double doors, he could hear Miss Katharine’s quiet voice as she talked to the twins in the next room; and through the window of his own room, the casements of which were open wide, he could hear the sound of small birds chirping and fluttering in the creepers outside. Never in his life before had he sat in such a room as this, so full of sunlight and sweet-scented air, with objects of such interest in it, and just for a while he was content to let the cool, quiet pleasure of it soak into him, through his pores.
But Miss Katharine’s questions had to be answered. His alarm at the thought of making a mark on the first of these clean white sheets of paper had, somehow, to be overcome. ‘What can you see from the window of this room?’ Quietly he moved his chair so that he could look out even while sitting down. He drew the pile of paper towards him, picked up the pencil, and began to write.
Lessons in the schoolroom at Railes were based on a firm but flexible pattern and consisted of an hour’s formal instruction followed by an hour’s debate. This pattern had been laid down by their governess, Miss Sturdee, and Katharine, taking over from her, had followed it faithfully ever since. Her transition from pupil to teacher, therefore, had not caused any great change, and the twins had accepted it with grace, according her the same respect they had accorded Miss Sturdee, though their manner to her, inevitably, was more casual and relaxed.
Having helped them with their lessons from an early age, she assumed her new role quite naturally, and as they were already well grounded and possessed lively, intelligent minds, teaching them was easy enough. But Martin Cox was a different matter; the only instruction he had received was rudimentary in the extreme; and when, at the end of an hour, she read his answers to her questions, she found, not unexpectedly, that the rules governing grammar, spelling, and punctuation, had yet to be disclosed to him. These, then, must be her prime concern, and would form the major part of his lessons for some little time to come.
But, uncertain though his grammar might be, his answers nevertheless showed that he had some feeling for words: an appreciation of them as tools and a certain zest in using them. This was in part explained by his list of the books he had read: Life of Nelson; Life of Wren; Holy Bible (‘parts, that is’); Robinson Crusoe; Ivanhoe; and The Pilgrim’s Progress (‘three times’). Describing what he could see in the room, he had merely listed its contents, but, describing what he could see from the window, he had blossomed into sentences: ‘Gardiners talking instead of working’; ‘blackbirds bizzy feeding their yung, hopping about among the shrubs’; and ‘a spanyel has just cum on too the terris with three pupys and has now layed down with them, letten them crawl over her.’
His general knowledge, too, although erratic, at least showed a bent for positive thought. Dick Turpin he briefly dismissed as ‘a High Way Man and a Thurrow Rogue’ and Columbus as ‘a marriner who set out to prove the World was Round and discuvvered America to Boot.’ But he had written a whole page on Nelson and his death at Trafalgar; and half a page on Lord Ashley, ending with these words: ‘A good man even though he is a Lord whose done good things to help the Poor.’
Katharine, having read this aloud, sat back in her chair and looked at him.
‘It seems you have no high opinion of lords, even though Nelson was one.’
Martin frowned.
‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. What I really meant was, lords don’t often help the poor, but this one did.’ And, after a pause, he said: ‘Words are contrary things sometimes. They don’t always say what you want them to.’
‘They will do in time,’ Katharine said, ‘when we’ve had a few lessons together, and you have learnt a few simple rules; and it seems to me we can’t do better than begin with those straight away.’
While Katharine was giving Martin his lesson, Hugh and Ginny, in the schoolroom, were engaged in private study, but promptly at eleven o’clock Hugh put his head round the music-room door and announced that “bever” had arrived.
‘Shall we bring it in here and have it with you?’
‘Yes, do,’ Katharine said.
She moved books and papers aside, and the tray was set down in front of her. On it were biscuits an
d fruit cake, and a jug of freshly made lemonade with balm leaves floating in it. Katharine began cutting the cake, and Hugh poured the lemonade. Ginny, sitting down opposite Martin, fixed him with a bright blue stare.
‘What have you learnt so far? A for apple pie, I suppose?’
‘No,’ he said, looking away.
‘What, then?’ she asked.
‘Never you mind.’
‘Oh, really!’ Ginny exclaimed. ‘Making conversation with him is like trying to get blood from a stone.’
‘Conversation,’ Katharine said, ‘should not take the form of a catechism.’ She put a plate in front of the boy, on which was a large slice of cake. ‘But it is our custom here, Martin, to discuss the subject of our lessons together.’
‘Do I have to?’ Martin asked.
‘No. But I should like you to show the twins that our hour together has not been wasted.’
‘So!’ Ginny said, returning to him. ‘What, then, have you learnt so far?’
‘Verbs, mostly, and nouns,’ he said.
‘What about adjectives?’
‘Yes, them, too.’
‘And do you really know what they mean?’
‘I reckon I do.’
‘Very well, let me try you out. What am I, for instance? ‒ Noun, verb, or adjective?’
Martin looked at her stolidly.
‘Seems to me you’re all three of them.’
‘How can that be?’
‘Well, biddy’s a noun, isn’t it? And saucy is an adjective. And if the biddy teases folk, the way you keep doing with me, well, then, I reckon that’s a verb.’
For an instant Ginny was speechless, her discomfiture made worse by the fact that her brother and sister, far from being sympathetic, were laughing openly at the way Martin had turned the tables on her.
‘There! Are you satisfied?’ Katharine asked.
‘Do you mean to let this lout be just as rude to me as he likes?’
‘I’m sure Martin will stop being rude when you are no longer rude to him. Now let us be peaceful together and enjoy our refreshments. Martin, you are not eating. Don’t you like fruit cake?’
‘Yes. I like it very well.’
He picked up the large piece of cake and took two or three bites from it. He chewed for a while with bulging cheeks. Ginny watched him with distaste. She ate her own cake very daintily. Katharine, while talking to her three pupils, cut another piece of cake and laid it on Martin’s plate. This too was quickly eaten and so was a third, followed by a number of biscuits, all washed down with lemonade. A fourth piece of cake was firmly refused.
‘I reckon I’ve had enough,’ he said.
‘I should just think you have,’ Ginny muttered. ‘Great greedy, gobbling thing.’
Katharine, however, observing him, did not think it was pure greed. She suspected that he was undernourished in body just as he was in mind and this precisely at an age when both were growing and developing fast. ‘No wonder he’s so fine-drawn,’ she thought. ‘The boy is in danger of outgrowing his strength. Something will have to be done about it.’
When he left at half past twelve, at the end of his first morning’s lessons, she lent him two books from the schoolroom shelves: Gulliver’s Travels and Crabtree’s English Dictionary. She also gave him a commonplace book in which she had set him a few tests for him to do in his spare time. This would help to nourish his mind, but what of physical nourishment? ‘I must have a word with Cook,’ she thought.
Katharine’s concern for Martin Cox was aggravated by feelings of guilt, and these feelings were renewed during the course of a conversation that took place at lunch-time that day, when her father enquired how she had got on with her new pupil.
‘He is very teachable,’ she said. ‘He also has a mind of his own. But ‒’
Before she could say any more, her sister Ginny interrupted.
‘He certainly needs to be taught his manners. And I think you ought to know, Papa, that before Kate came into the schoolroom, Martin Cox was making remarks about your owing his father money.’
‘Indeed?’ Tarrant said, with a lift of his brows. ‘And how did that subject arise?’
‘It was all Ginny’s fault,’ Hugh said. ‘She was jeering and sneering at him for not being a gentleman and just out of interest I asked him what he thought a gentleman was. And he said, “It’s a man who can afford not to pay his bills”.’
‘Then, as you so rightly say, Ginny was obviously to blame. And the boy is quite correct, of course, for people of our sort can almost always get credit and can let it run on pretty much as they please.’ Tarrant turned to his younger daughter. ‘But I am grieved to hear that you have behaved like this, my child, especially when I asked you to help the boy as much as you could.’
‘I did try to be nice to him, Papa, but he is such a lump of a boy, and looks at one with such a scowl, that it’s really rather difficult.’
‘Then you must try harder,’ Tarrant said.
After lunch, when he went to his study, Katharine rose and followed him there, wanting to speak to him alone.
‘It is about this wretched matter of the money you owe Rufus Cox.’
‘It isn’t just Rufus I owe money to. It’s various other people as well. But yes, what about it, my dear?’
‘I wondered, as the Coxes are so very poor, whether you need keep them waiting like this?’
Tarrant smiled.
‘You don’t need to worry yourself. Rufus is not so poor as he seems. In fact, according to local gossip, he’s a very warm man indeed.’
‘But is the gossip true, do you think?’
‘I have reason to believe it is, for I heard by way of an old friend, whose name I had better not divulge, that Rufus puts his savings to work by loaning sums to needy men at an interest of six or seven per cent. So your solicitude on his behalf is somewhat misplaced, as you see.’
‘My solicitude,’ Katharine said warmly ‘is not for Rufus Cox himself but on behalf of that boy of his.’
‘Yes,’ Tarrant said, soberly. ‘His son and daughter, I’m afraid, derive no benefit whatsoever from their father’s usury. And I doubt very much if they suspect he is anything but the poor man he seems.’
‘I think it is monstrous!’ Katharine exclaimed, and her voice, normally so quiet and equable, became for a moment almost harsh. ‘That he should deny himself the common decencies of life is one thing but denying his children in the same way ‒’ She broke off and took a deep breath. ‘If what I gather is true, they don’t even live in a proper house, and from what I have seen of Martin this morning, I feel sure he’s not getting enough to eat.’
‘That may well be true. But whether I pay Rufus now or in three months’ time, it will not make the slightest difference to the way he and his children live. As for this business of the boy’s education, I don’t know what’s behind that. It may be that Rufus has got ideas … or it may just simply be that he likes to feel he is getting something for nothing. But if Martin really wants to learn …’
‘Yes, he wants it most passionately.’
‘Then we are already helping him to the best of our ability. Except, perhaps, in the matter of food?’
‘I thought, if you agree, Papa, we might do something about that too.’
‘Excellent,’ Tarrant said, and patted her arm. ‘I leave it to you, my dear Kate, to do whatever you think best.’
Just after one o’clock Martin arrived at Dipsikes Farm, where Rufus had that morning begun building a new cowshed. The boy took his working-clothes from the cart and changed in the barn. He joined his father in the yard, where they ate their lunch of bread and cheese.
‘Well, and how did you get on?’
‘I dunno. All right, I suppose.’
‘What’ve they been learning you?’
‘English grammar, first of all. Afterwards, geology.’
‘Geology? What’s that?’
‘About the stone and other things that make up the earth’s crust.’
‘Not how it got there,’ Martin said. ‘Not what made it in the very beginning, hundreds and thousands of years ago, or how the fossils got into it, that we come across oftentimes.’
‘What’re you talking about?’ Rufus said. ‘I told you that my own self ‒ about the earth being under the sea. I told you when you was tuppence high and kept asking questions about them old shells.’
‘Yes, but that was all you told me, and there’s a whole lot more than that.’
‘Geology!’ Rufus exclaimed. ‘All you need to know about stone is what I’ve learnt you all these years. And what does Miss Katharine know about that? She’s not a mason that I ever heard. Nor she don’t work a quarr, neither. Strikes me she’s been wasting your time.’
‘It was your idea, sending me there.’
‘Yes, well, I must’ve been touched.’
‘Am I to stop going, then?’
‘No, we’ll persevere for a bit. Give it a fair crack of the whip.’ Rufus, munching his last crust, cocked an eyebrow at his son. ‘You don’t seem to’ve minded it much, for all the tarnal fuss you made about going there. You look a lot less hipped, anyway, than when you went off this morning, first thing. Now don’t take all day eating your bait, cos I’ve got some geology here for you to do, and you’ve got a bit of time to make up, having taken a half holiday.’
The Old House at Railes: A heartwarming rags to riches Victorian family saga Page 4