Castle Orchard (18 page)
Authors: E A Dineley
‘’Twas the way ’e looked. Dark eyes. Spoke the lingo. Went be’ind the lines ’e did, the enemy lines, or so ’twas said, lookin’ like a muleteer with a stiletto down ’is boot.’
‘Was he at Waterloo?’
‘Aye. Boney finished ’im there. Cut ’im up like stewing meat, so ’twas said. ’Ow should I know? ’Tis what’s said. Knocked ’im silly. Left the infantry and went to the cavalry. I don’t know. Get along, boys. Yer wear me out with yer chatter and I wants me rations.’
Jackson took his stick and swished it about. The boys scattered, confused. Was it the same Captain Allington and was he killed or not killed?
Mrs Arthur received a letter from her half-sister.
Dearest Caro,
We had heard rumours but they seemed too incredible to be true. Now it’s a fact, and poor little Phil is never to inherit Castle Orchard.
Mrs Arthur paused to consider this. She had known for a long time that Phil was unlikely to inherit Castle Orchard, but she had never said so to Louisa.
Now, dearest Caro, I think you must be very distraught and not know which way to turn. Mr Westcott says you are welcome to the Dower House if you feel it would suit you. He’s so kind, I dare say he wouldn’t ask a large rent. Pray don’t stay a moment longer for fear of Captain Allington’s arrival. He can’t be a man of principle. We hear all the news from John’s cousins, always a little too ready for gossip. Captain Allington is very acceptable in military circles but he is a natural son of the late Lord Tregorn and he makes all his money playing at cards, so I doubt he’s really at all respectable, though indeed gentlemen will play cards and lose money more often than winning any. Now Caro, it is perfectly obvious you can’t stay at Castle Orchard if Captain Allington is to come there, even if he were so unprincipled, so little caring of your delicacy, your virtue, to suggest such a thing. Bring poor little Phil and poor little Emmy that they may be safe. Would the Dower House suit? You must come, in the meantime, to Westcott Park.
Your most affectionate sister,
Louisa Westcott
Mrs Arthur laid the letter down. A robin sang in the garden. She went to the window. Phil was standing by the sundial, but she doubted doing anything so positive as puzzling out the time. Did he think about the loss of Castle Orchard? No, his head was filled with swords and battles.
It was now the beginning of November. The lawyer had answered her last letter but only to say the money in the jointure was all spent, as she must know. She had written back to say this was not so. The only money spent was the separate legacy from her father. Though it had been at a particularly distressing time for her, she had been careful in reading the documents her husband had wanted her to sign. Money was obtainable from the jointure with her signature, but not otherwise. The money was safely put away and the lawyer mistaken.
She took up her pen to write to him again. She could not reply to Louisa agreeing to take the Dower House at Westcott Park, for even had she known the modest rent Mr Westcott meant to ask, she had no idea what she would be able to pay.
Annie came in and said, ‘The builders are in doing up the lodge, ma’am, mending the window and such.’
‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Arthur asked.
‘Sure as sure, dearie. Mind, it ain’t bad, the lodge, only needs a sweep of the chimney and some paint. Do you think he’s coming now, the new master?’
‘He doesn’t say. He says he might send his horses.’
‘If he’s a fox-hunting gentleman he won’t long be parted from his horses, not in November. It must be in his mind to have the lodge filled. The agent spoke to me ever so civil. He was down there instructing the men to do the work. He said Captain Allington was particular, wrote a letter and never missed nothing out of it.’
Mrs Arthur thought his letter to her had missed everything out of it.
Pride, banished to his attic for failing to gain his sixpence, wrote to his mother.
Dear Mother,
You will be interested to learn we is leaving London and moving to Wiltshire, this being an odd place with greyish hills looking like a great smooth coverlet that a giant has gone to bed under. You never would have seen the like, but a travelled man like your son what has been to Spain and Portugal and other foreign places, knows how the world looks. My master has acquired a property. I do think it will benefit him for he likes the outdoors. When we was in the wars he preferred his tent to the billets we got and would sleep in the gardens when he could, though that was also on account of the fleas and the lice which is very numerous amongst those dirty foreigners. Master also says I will do very well there for there is no gin shop for to tempt my weakness of which I am not always cured but usually goodish.
My master having property will be a gentleman of consequence.
Your loving and affectionate son,
Nathaniel Pride
Downstairs, Captain Allington wrote rapidly to Castle Orchard.
Dear Mrs Arthur,
If you find you must be under an obligation to somebody, if it was to be me, I should not be burdened by it. I cannot speak for the other contenders.
As to living at my expense, if you mean you eat my butter and eggs, I sincerely hope you continue to do so.
You will observe I am having a little attention paid to the lodge.
Your most obedient servant,
R. Allington
He had received a letter from his stepbrother, which ran thus:
Dear Allington,
I am astonished to hear you are the new owner of the Arthur estate in Wiltshire, though why anything you do should astonish me, I am sure I cannot say. I pray my son will never part with St Jude for the sake of a chance throw of the dice, but to give you your due, I doubt you won the place by chance. I cannot say I approve of this sudden elevation in your position. I suppose you will be looking for a seat in Parliament next and a peerage after that. Ah well, you were always too clever a fellow by half. I shall be up for the opening of Parliament next month and hope I shall see you then. By the way, my brother Thomas is being elected to Parliament, as you may have heard. He will, I think, come in without much opposition. He says if you are still employing Dan, as he is now to be much more in London, he would like him back as his tiger because there never was a more nimble one, even if he could never get him to understand anything.
Yours, etc.,
Tregorn
Allington wrote in return:
Dear Tregorn,
Who taught me to play chess, backgammon, draughts, whist, piquet, cribbage, etc. when I was eight years old? You and your brothers. You must have had remarkably little to do or the weather been bad, though it certainly amused you. I was clever at it, but like Pandora’s box, once the lid was off, I was soon out of hand. I sincerely hope not to be in London in December. When I am prepared, I shall invite you to visit me at Castle Orchard. I hope no prejudice at my rise in fortune will make you refuse. Please send my best compliments to Thomas. Tell him I will not part with Dan because I can make him understand what I want and Thomas never could. I am surprised at his wanting to cut a dash with a cabriolet and a tiger. He will do better to concentrate on his Parliamentary duties.
Your not very biddable stepbrother,
R. Allington
No, he had no wish to be in London in December. He wondered how Castle Orchard looked in winter. The place lingered in his mind like a mirage, mysterious as the pleasure dome. Mrs Arthur’s phrase ‘there was no money at Michaelmas’ also stayed with him. Of course there would have been no money at Michaelmas, for Arthur would have taken every penny.
Dan arrived at Castle Orchard in a light fall of snow. Mrs Arthur saw him from the window, his distinctive figure astride a bay thoroughbred and leading another of Captain Allington’s hunters. Two days earlier she had seen the bailiff from the home farm fill the hayloft and deliver sacks of oats.
He had said, ‘Knows what’s what, this Captain Allington, and pays prompt. We won’t be pulling the wool over
his
eyes.’ He had looked sadly at Mrs Arthur and added, ‘I hope you are all right, ma’am, and the little ones.’
‘We have our health, Stevens,’ she had replied. What else could be said?
She knew she should go but had no idea how or where to go beyond Westcott Park. She had received another letter from the lawyer reiterating the first and had written back to ask if he would send her the documents relating to the money, as she had never put her signature to a single transaction concerning it. All she had received in return was a bill for his letter-writing.
Captain Allington had been so long silent, apart from his one, brief page in answer to hers, she had begun to think he was a figment of her imagination, something never to come true, but here was Dan arriving with the snowflakes, a harbinger of his master, but silent. He would smile, nod his head, laugh, but that was all. Had she wanted to direct him she could not do so, but he needed no directing. He laid down the beds for the horses and cleaned out the harness room before deigning to place Captain Allington’s saddles and bridles alongside what was there already. He appropriated the rooms over the loft, long since uninhabited, and soon had the stove going and himself snug. He fetched Domino, loved but of no known use, out of the field, tidied his mane and tail, trimmed his heels and oiled his feet.
Sam and Jimmy, employed in the garden and the yard, soon began to tease and annoy him. He seized the elder by the shirtfront and knocked him out.
Annie informed her mistress of this event.
‘Serve them right,’ Annie said, ‘to torment a poor, dumb body, but they learned their lesson. Now he has them out amongst the cabbages, digging as if to save their souls.’
Two days later, a carrier arrived with a bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a large quantity of books and some pictures carefully wrapped.
Now she received a letter.
Dear Mrs Arthur,
I am sending a small quantity of furniture. Please be so kind as to choose a room in which it should go. The bed, etc. can be put straight in the lodge, but the desk, the books and the pictures should be in the house.
At Christmas I shall pay the staff their quarter, now my responsibility. I shall pay the arrears when I arrive at Castle Orchard, if that is necessary.
Yours, etc.,
R. Allington
Mrs Arthur, folding the letter up, said out loud, ‘Which
aren’t
his responsibility.’
She would very much like to have paid them herself and thought over the contents of her jewel box, an object she had hidden away so successfully, for fear of her husband, she had nearly forgotten about it. She went upstairs and groped behind a piece of loose wainscot in her bedroom until she managed to withdraw the box. Were its contents technically a part of her late husband’s estate? The very notion nearly made her thrust it back in its hidey-hole. Resisting the temptation, she took the box to the dressing table, dusted the lid and opened it up, then took out each thing one by one.
Her engagement ring, a solitary ruby, caused her to remember, with feeling, the vows of eternal love that had been proffered with the gift. There were a few bangles, the sort to be worn over gloves, and some childish pieces of chain, things she had had as a little girl. Her father had given her a tiny gold scent bottle, which she supposed must be worth at least five guineas: she thought of the pain of parting with it. In the bottom of the box was a necklace, a single strand of seed pearls, diamonds and tiny entwined leaves of gold, the whole light and pretty. It had been a gift from her grandmother. The old lady had said, ‘You are like me, headstrong, you will make mistakes.’ She had then proceeded to tell of the necklace, but Mrs Arthur had thought, even after the telling, its origins, its authenticity, a mystery, for her grandmother no longer made things clear. The only thing she wore was the mourning brooch, not an article of great value except to herself, a little lock of Matthew’s hair under the glass at the back.
If she wanted to sell her jewellery, she did not know how, nor whom to trust. It might mean going to London, and for all she knew of the value of things, the profit might be eaten up on the journey. She put the box back from where she had got it and addressed the other matter of where to put Captain Allington’s possessions. She could but oblige him. Why did he not ask her to go or say when he was coming?
There was a little morning room, facing south-east, with a view of the river and the Philosopher’s Tower. She and Annie took the dustsheets off the chairs and set about cleaning it, dusting the pictures and washing the glass. When it was ready she sent for Jimmy and Sam to move the desk from the hall, where it had initially come to rest. Dan came in with them and gave his assistance. He looked about the room and smiled and nodded. He patted his master’s desk and smiled some more. He shook his head and shrugged over the boxes of books and then he took from his pocket a stub of a pencil and a small piece of paper. Leaning on the windowledge, he wrote slowly and carefully in large letters:
CAPTAIN ALLINGTON SUNDAY
With many nods and smiles he gave it to Mrs Arthur. Today was Wednesday. She thought, suddenly stricken with panic, There is a tiny cottage on the estate, at the moment unoccupied. On Saturday we could sleep there.
The cottage was minute, one room downstairs, two up, but it had a roof and a grate. Annie said, ‘You can’t live here, it’s damp. Whatever can you be thinking of? It won’t be good for the children.’ Mrs Arthur had replied, ‘We will light the fire. The children must think we are camping. It won’t be for long. As soon as I hear from the lawyer, I’ll know what to do.’