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

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘All right, Biffin. Haul away! Easy, now … That’s the style.’

  The old horse moved off, the slack of the chain jingling behind him; a slight jolt as it grew taut; and he leant to the collar, beginning to haul.

  ‘Gently, now!’ Martin called. ‘Ge-ently! That’s the style.’ Anxious to avoid too sudden a jerk on the pulley-hook, old and worn, he watched, alert, as it took the strain. ‘Gently, now. Tha-at’s right! Haul away! That’s the style.’

  The horse, long accustomed to the work, pulled slowly and steadily, and the lintel-stone rose in the air. Martin steadied it with his hand; judged the height with a practised eye; and called again to the horse.

  ‘Stand now, Biffin! Stand, boy!’

  The horse stood, perfectly still; the stone hung in its sling from the pulley; and Martin, still holding it steady, curbing its tendency to swing, looked again keenly at the great iron hook. It was holding well, he thought, and he turned away to fetch the cart. He took hold of the ends of the shafts and, facing towards the rear of the cart, wheeled it carefully into place between the four straddling legs of the gin, until it stood correctly positioned under the dangling lintel-stone.

  The stone was eighteen inches longer than the bed of the cart and would have to be lowered into it so that these eighteen inches jutted out of the rear end, from which the tail-board had been removed. Satisfied with the cart’s position, Martin now went round to its rear, ready to guide the stone into place. As he did so his heart gave a leap, for he saw that the old worn pulley-hook was very slowly opening out. In that same instant, too, he heard the tiny rasping sound of the sling-rings sliding down its curve.

  Steadying the stone with both hands, he called to the horse; quietly, in his ordinary voice, so as not to startle him.

  ‘Back now, Biffin. Ge-ently back. Easy, now. That’s the style.’

  Obediently, Biffin backed; the pulley cheep-cheeped in its block; and the stone slowly began to descend.

  ‘Gently, Biffin. Ge-ently, boy.’

  Looking up as he guided the stone, he saw that the hook was opening further; uncurling itself, slowly but surely, as though it had a will of its own. Then, quite suddenly, the stone lurched towards him, still suspended, but only just. Instinctively, he thrust against it, pushing it away from his chest. The pulley-hook opened out altogether, the sling-rings slid off and separated, and the lintel-stone crashed into the cart, smashing through its worm-eaten boards and shattering the axle-tree. As the rear of the cart tilted towards him, Martin, too late in stepping clear, was thrown onto his back on the ground. His left foot was caught under the cart and as the smashed timbers bedded down, so his leg was trapped underneath them, somewhere between ankle and shin. He felt the terrible pain of it go shrieking throughout his whole body. His senses clouded; he felt he was falling away into darkness; but then voices spoke his name and dimly he saw that his father and sister were bending over him.

  ‘Can’t move leg,’ he said, speaking through lips that felt like india rubber. ‘It’s caught fast.’

  ‘I know, I’ve just looked,’ his father said. ‘The axle-tree is lying across it ‒ at an angle, where it’s broke ‒ and all the rest is lying on that.’

  ‘Oh, Martin!’ Nan was in tears. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘You’ll have to fetch help from the farm.’

  ‘It’ll take so long!’

  ‘The boy’s right,’ Rufus said. ‘You run to the farm and tell them what’s happened. Say we need two strong men and get them to send for the doctor too. You can go faster than me. I’ll stay with Martin here.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. All right, I’ll go.’

  Nan ran off as fast as she could. Rufus fetched an old sack, folded it into a pad, and placed it under Martin’s head.

  ‘The tackle-hook gave?’

  ‘Yes,’ Martin said.

  ‘And I’m to blame. I know that. You said it should have gone to the smith.’ Rufus spoke in a husky voice. His face was pinched and grey with distress. ‘Is the pain very bad, my son?’

  ‘Bad enough.’

  ‘I’ll get you some of that brandy you brought up with the goods that time. It’ll maybe help a bit.’

  Rufus had gone but a few steps when there was a creaking noise from the cart that brought him hurrying back again. Under the weight of the lintel-stone, the broken timbers were still yielding. The pressure on Martin’s leg increased and he cried out in agony. Face contorted, eyes closed, he lay stiffly on his back, arching his body against the pain and pressing with his hands against the ground. When, in a while, he opened his eyes, his father was standing close to the cart, and he cried out yet again, this time not in a pain but in fear.

  ‘No! It’s too heavy! You’ll kill yourself!’

  ‘Don’t be so foolish,’ his father said. ‘The damned cart is still bedding down and if I don’t get you out of it you’ll very likely lose your foot.’

  He positioned himself carefully, his feet to the left of Martin’s trapped leg, and took hold of the lintel-stone where it jutted out at the end of the cart.

  ‘Now! Ready, are you? Right! Here goes!’

  With knees bent and shoulders bowed, Rufus, straining with all his might, lifted the stone a fraction or two up off the broken end of the cart. But the stone, thus lifted, began to move, and Rufus, with a little grunt, was forced to let it down again, bending low and bracing himself to stop it sliding towards him, down the cart’s steeply sloping floor.

  ‘Father, don’t do it!’ Martin cried. ‘For God’s sake leave it alone!’

  Rufus made no answer. He was breathing heavily and his face was darkly suffused with blood. On forehead and neck his veins stood out, and his eyes had the blind, baffled look of a man lost in the sense of his own weakness. But he was determined to lift the stone and determination gave him strength. Doggedly, he changed his position: took hold of the lintel-stone; and again, straining with all his might, raised it from the bed of the cart, this time shifting it gently sideways so that, instead of sliding towards him, it was wedged against the cart’s side. For three seconds he held it there while Martin, with a squirming movement, rolled himself over onto his side and, using his right foot as a fulcrum, dragged his damaged left foot from under the wreckage of the cart.

  ‘All right, Father! I’m out! I’m out!’

  Lying back, propped on his elbows, he saw his father let go of the stone; saw and heard it drop into place; then saw and heard how the cart gave, yielding and splintering yet again under the force of this second impact and smashing the other end of the axle, so that stone and shattered timbers sank together in a cloud of dust, settling down close to the ground.

  For a time Rufus remained quite still, arrested in the very position he had assumed while lifting the stone, his legs bent, his spine in a curve, his head sunk between his shoulders. He had no strength now to straighten himself; his legs were yielding at the knees; and as Martin wriggled towards him he sank very slowly, slowly, down until he was sitting on the ground. It happened that he came to rest beside one of the poles of the hoisting-gin and he leant against it, instinctively, wedging the lower part of his spine against it while the rest of his body crumpled and shrank. And all the time he was struggling for breath, his tortured lungs labouring, squeezed as they were by his overtaxed heart.

  Martin, who had humped himself round until he sat close to his father, looked at him in horror and fear, appalled by the darkening of blood in his face; by the way the swollen veins stood out, pulsing, on his temples and neck; above all by the terrible pain rending him as he struggled for breath.

  ‘Oh, Father!’ the boy cried. ‘Why did you do this to yourself? I told you, told you, to leave it alone.’ He reached out and touched his father’s hand. ‘Bear up, Father, if you can. The doctor is coming. He’ll be here soon.’

  Rufus heard. He turned his head. And he was making an effort to speak when the killing pain transfixed his heart. His right hand flew from Martin’s grasp and became a claw, clutching his chest, while
his left arm moved in a powerful spasm, arching itself in mid-air. His face now was dark blue; his eyes bulged; and his mouth became a mis-shapen hole, gasping to let out a long, silent scream.

  Martin watched, helplessly, his own face contorted with pity and pain. Sobbing, he felt he could no longer bear to watch what his father was forced to bear, but turning away would be treachery. His father’s eyes were fixed on him, pleading with him in some way, and he felt he had to answer that plea, if only by sharing the agony. At last a faint sound like a drawn-out sigh and the suffering was over. The grizzled head fell forward, the hands fell limply away, and the body, which suddenly seemed very small, sank slowly to one side, away from the pole of the hoisting-gin, into Martin’s outstretched arms.

  So when, in a while, Nan came, bringing help from the farm, this was how she found them: her father dead she saw that at once ‒ and her brother holding him close in his arms, rocking him gently to and fro and weeping, weeping bitterly.

  The farm-hands laid the body out on the quarry workbench and covered it with a canvas sheet. They carried Martin into the cottage and laid him on the bed. They then went to see to the horse, still harnessed to the hoisting-tackle, and to deal with the lintel-stone, which they levered out of the cart to the ground, for the sake of safety. By this time the doctor had come and the two men departed with a brief word to Nan.

  ‘If you need us again, you have only to ask. But we’ll stop by later to see that you’re all right.’

  The doctor, on hearing that Rufus was dead, did not ask to see the body ‒ that could wait, he said brusquely ‒ but went straight into the cottage to examine Martin’s injured ankle and to hear his account of the accident.

  While Martin talked, the doctor was busy with a pair of scissors, opening up the trouser-leg and cutting away the leather boot. This, Nan had been nervous of doing, and now, as she stood watching, she let out a cry, appalled at the way the ankle and leg began immediately to swell, stretching the thick woollen sock so that it became taut on the flesh. The sock, too, had to be cut, and the flesh when revealed was a terrible sight, being darkly contused, purple and black, all the way from the knee to the toes. But although the bruising was severe and there was damage to the tendons, the doctor’s given opinion was that matters could have been much worse.

  ‘At least there are no bones broken. That’s something to be thankful for. And in fact, from what you’ve told me, you are a very lucky young man. If that cart had fallen right down, with a ton-weight of stone on top of it ‒ well, I hardly need tell you that your father undoubtedly saved your foot.’

  ‘Yes, and killed himself doing it.’

  ‘He knew what danger there was to his heart. I had warned him clearly enough. It seems, therefore, that he made his choice.’

  The doctor, very matter-of-fact, now advised them on the treatment Martin’s injured leg would need: cold compresses applied at frequent intervals, and the leg to rest on a number of pillows in a way that would elevate the foot.

  ‘It will probably be two or three weeks before you can put that foot to the ground, but when I get back to the surgery I’ll send someone out to you with a pair of crutches for you to use. I will also send some medicine which I hope will help to reduce the swelling. You two young people, I’m afraid, will have much to do in the next few days, dealing with funeral arrangements and so on, and you’ll need to hire some form of transport.’

  The doctor then went outside to examine their father’s body. In a few minutes he returned, sat down at the table, and wrote a certificate of death.

  ‘It is hardly suitable that the body should remain outside. Nor can you possibly have it in here. But with your permission I will call on Jessop the undertaker and get him to deal with the matter at once. He will arrange for your father’s body to be removed to a suitable place to await burial.’

  ‘But won’t we have to see Mr Jessop to discuss the funeral arrangements with him?’

  ‘Yes. But first you must see your parish priest. There’s also the business of registering the death. I’ll write these things down for you. I hope you will find that people are helpful but if you have any problems you can always come to me.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor. That’s kind of you.’

  Having seen the doctor off, Nan fetched a bowl of water and some pieces of white flannel cloth, and returned to where Martin lay on the bed. She soaked the pieces of cloth in the bowl, wrung some of the water from them, and placed them one by one on his leg. Martin lay quietly watching her but when she reached his ankle, the touch of the cloth made him cry out, for this was where the pain was worst and the flesh most tender.

  ‘Oh, Martin, I’m so sorry!’ She looked at him with anguished eyes.

  ‘Not your fault. Can’t be helped. And it’s better now. It’s soothing it.’

  ‘Is it truly?’

  ‘Yes. I swear.’

  He put out a hand to comfort her, and with loving care she completed her task, covering his foot with the last two cloths. Her own face was as white as his because she, scarcely less than he, was in a severe state of shock. For a little while they were silent together, two young people alone in the world, drawn together more closely than ever because of what had happened that day, but still numbed by the magnitude of it. At last Nan spoke, composed now, though her voice was still tremulous; still unsure.

  ‘Poor Father, lying out there. I can’t really believe he’s dead. Poor boy Martin, too, that you should have seen him die like that. It seemed such an ordinary morning at first … and a good one, too, what with Father feeling so much better … He was standing at the window there, watching you dealing with that stone, and he said he was praying every night that he would soon be himself again so that he could get back to work … And now, ‒ oh, Martin! ‒ now he’s dead. Whatever are we going to do?’

  ‘The first thing for you to do is to make some tea,’ Martin said. ‘I need it. So do you. We’ll feel better after that and then we’ll be able to think it out.’

  They had never had to make decisions before. Now, in a day, they had to learn. But they came to it, in their own way, by talking matters over between them, and with Nan writing out a list of all those problems and questions which, at the end, remained unresolved.

  ‘We needn’t worry about money yet,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve still got more than eighteen pounds left in father’s moneybag. We can pay for the funeral out of that … And hire a trap, like the doctor said … We’ll still have plenty left to keep ourselves for some time to come … And there must be more money put by, I’m sure, though where it is and how much it might be, I’ve no more idea than the man in the moon.’

  This soon led them both to the thought that they must look into their father’s box: a small wooden chest, iron-bound, always locked and jealously guarded, and kept under the bed where Martin lay. So Nan drew out the box and placed it on the chair where she had been sitting. She went to her father’s jacket, which hung on a hook on the back of the door, and found the key in an inside pocket. With trembling fingers, ‒ and a strong sense of wrongdoing, even now, at prying into her father’s affairs ‒ she unlocked the box and raised the lid.

  But there was no money inside; only a collection of their father’s work-books, each tied round and round with string, and an envelope on which was written: ‘This here is a summery of my Will and Tesstament. The Will Proper is in the keeping of Mister Sampson Godwin, Solissiter, of Sage Street, Chardwell.’ The summary of the Will, when opened, yielded no detailed information but gave, in simple direct terms, a statement of their father’s wishes. ‘I, Rufus Frederick Cox, leave Every Thing I pozess to my dear Son, Martin, safe in the knollige that he will always provide for the Cumfort and Needs of his Sister.’

  Martin, when Nan read this aloud, gave a little sardonic smile.

  ‘So! We’ll have to wait a while longer yet before we know how rich we are. But I am to provide for your “comfort and needs” ‒ which is more than Father himself ever did.’

  ‘Mar
tin, you ought not to say things like that.’

  ‘I am only speaking the truth. And the truth doesn’t suddenly change just because someone is dead.’

  ‘It’s a question of showing respect.’

  It was a new experience for him, to see inside his father’s work-books, and while Nan went about her chores, he lay all morning deeply absorbed, reading the neatly written notes of ‘Work Undertaken’ and ‘Stone Supplied’, interspersed with remarks in which he could hear his father’s growl: ‘Stubbs demanded discount on stone. Gave him ½ per cent. Added this to his labour bill.’ And, scanning the details of ‘Account Rendered’ and ‘Payment Received’, he learnt for the first time in his life something of his father’s costs and charges, though his father’s method of accounting was such that Martin had to study the figures hard before he could make sense of them. There were regular entries, too, of a kind he did not understand at all: ‘Received from Mr King £2.6.8’; ‘Received from Mr Bennett £1.15.0’; names of men who, he was sure, had never ordered stone from the quarry or had any building work done.

  He was puzzling over these entries when the doctor’s messenger arrived, bringing the promised wooden crutches. He rose from the bed, cautiously, and began to practise using them, first in the narrow space of the cottage, then out in the open quarry, with Nan standing anxiously by. While he was doing this, the undertaker’s men arrived, bringing, in their covered cart, a coffin of plain unvarnished elm. It made Nan cry again, to see her father put into the coffin, and to see the coffin taken away, jolted about inside the cart as it bumped its way down the quarry track.

  ‘Poor Father,’ she said again, and stood for a moment, overcome, letting the tears stream down her face.