by E A Dineley
‘I shall be glad, sir, to wash my hands of the whole affair. I shall find it very difficult not to speak out. The whole thing is deeply shocking. Whatever next? Does your conscience never prick you? This Captain Allington can hardly be a respectable person. He will, I suppose, lose the property as quickly as he has gained it. What, may I ask, do you intend to—’
He was cut off by Allington entering the room.
Arthur said, ‘No, don’t ask me. Well, Allington, Jonas here is put out by the business and supposes you will lose Castle Orchard as soon as you gain it.’
‘He may suppose as he likes,’ Allington replied.
‘This property has been in the Arthur family two hundred years,’ the lawyer said. ‘However unprofessional it may be, I must protest. Mr Arthur’s late father, God rest his soul, for it surely wouldn’t rest if he knew a quarter, built the Philosopher’s Tower. What would he say to this transaction? He was himself a very astute gentleman. What, now, will be the position of his son?’
Allington thought Arthur’s only position was one in the King’s Bench or worse, but he did not say so. He merely said he hoped the documents were in order. After examining the deeds for some time and the accompanying map, he checked his name and added his signature. The document included a clause stating he forgave Arthur the money owed him and he would undertake to destroy all the IOUs dated from 1817 and up to the present month of September 1825.
Arthur reminded them the matter was not to become public knowledge until after Michaelmas. ‘I hope, I repeat, I may rely on your discretion,’ he said to the lawyer.
‘My clients can always rely on my discretion,’ Jonas replied.
‘Arthur is, perhaps, no longer your client,’ Allington pointed out. ‘Send me your bill. I shall pay it after Michaelmas.’
The lawyer, looking from Arthur to Allington, thought the latter the more likely of the two to pay him. He agreed to send him the bill and took an unhappy departure.
Arthur now stood at a mirror, rearranging his neckcloth and trying the effect of various pins. He said, ‘You think of everything, Allington. It would give me great satisfaction to see those IOUs burned.’
Allington had the IOUs in a box. He lit the coals in the grate himself.
‘Do you wish to look at them?’ he asked.
‘I suppose I should satisfy myself it really is the IOUs you are burning.’
‘You should. These ashes will make a great deal of mess.’
‘Never mind that.’
As Allington fed the papers on to the fire he said, ‘You will write to inform your people at Castle Orchard of the change of circumstances?’
‘Oh course, but not until after Michaelmas. I don’t keep more people there than needed to keep the rats at bay.’
‘You have an agent?’
‘Yes, but he is not solely my agent. I share him. I had best write down his name and address. How glad I shall be, never to clap eyes on him again. Ah, the rustic horror of a country estate.’
Arthur suddenly let out a peal of laughter and Allington thought how little he trusted him.
‘Of course, at Michaelmas I could go down there with you,’ Allington said.
‘I should dislike that very much,’ Arthur replied. ‘Think how they will be all a-staring and talking of my father and his grave and how one turns in the other. No, no, but I promise everyone shall know who needs to. You may not care for the place, in which case you can sell it and get something else. Do you like to fish?’
For a moment Allington did not reply; his mind had gone to the rivers in Spain, the Ebro, the Bidassoa, the Aqueda, all teaming with fish. As Arthur seemed to wait for him to speak he said, ‘Yes, I can fish.’
Arthur said, ‘Oh, a horrid, dull thing, fishing. My father would have me stand there hour upon hour.’
Allington, ignoring him, said, ‘It is my intention to pay a few of your lesser creditors.’
‘Very good of you, but for what?’ Arthur asked.
Captain Allington shrugged. ‘It is what I have decided to do if you will give me their bills – your tailor and all those sorts of people. No, not your tailor, the bill would be too much.’
Arthur went to his desk, which was so full of bills they cascaded to the floor as he drew back the front. He said, ‘Take your pick.’
Captain Allington sat at the desk and started to set the papers in order. Though he was quick and methodical, the business took an hour and a half. Much of the time Arthur watched him, a look of credulous fascination on his face. He began to think how he envied Captain Allington his figure.
He said, ‘Who is your tailor?’
Allington answered without looking up at him, for he was busy, ‘Pride. He was a tailor before he enlisted.’
‘Why, that’s devilish convenient.’
Allington made no reply, as if this detail of his private life was more than sufficient to impart, but Arthur, not liking to be so quiet, announced, ‘What I like about you, Captain Allington, is your silence.’
It was the first time he thought he liked anything about Allington and he only liked it upon this occasion. ‘Anyone else would be saying how can you owe a thousand pounds to your tailor and five hundred pounds to a coach-builder when you no longer drive any sort of coach, et cetera, et cetera, so tiresome.’
‘What I would like about you, Arthur, would be your silence,’ Allington replied.
Arthur spread out cards on a little table, still keeping an eye on Allington, and proceeded to amuse himself with a game of Patience. After a while he said, ‘If I get this game out, Allington, will you let me have your grey horse? It has such an elegant tail. I wonder why it’s the custom to dock the tail of a horse and why yours isn’t docked. I’ll make it the fashion that horses must wear hairpieces. May I have it?’
‘No.’
‘But it is certain I can’t get the game out.’
Captain Allington did not trouble to reply. Eventually he shuffled together a wedge of bills and said, ‘I will pay these.’
‘I am sure they will thank you. Those sort of people don’t always expect to be paid. It is enough that a man of my position patronises them.’
‘Someone must pay a tailor or he will go out of business.’
‘Someone always does, but Allington, don’t pay all those bills at once. It will look odd.’
Allington paused in the doorway. He saw that the cabinet in which Arthur kept his collection of snuffboxes was half-empty and supposed that he must be taking them away in his pockets, a few at a time, and be hiding them somewhere. If he should leave Half Moon Street with a portmanteau, it would cause suspicion. He would be followed down to Castle Orchard to make sure he intended no escape. At some juncture he must catch his creditors unawares and get the steam packet from Dover to Calais, complete with the Michaelmas rents and his collection of snuffboxes, for they were valuable, one a present from the King. He might subsist for a short while in reasonable comfort.
Returning to his own room Allington sat down at the table and unfolded the map of Castle Orchard. He started to allow himself, for the first time, to believe in his ownership of this estate, complete with its farms and cottages, its house, its woods, its stables and gardens. Though his more practical side acknowledged that the whole place might be a ruin, for he did not believe what Arthur said and a place could go back a great deal in three years, if it was a ruin he was perfectly prepared to spend the rest of his life putting it back into shape.
As he studied the map, the strident sounds of London – the horses, the street vendors, the barrel organ – faded from him: Castle Orchard was enwrapped in the deepest mystery. The map told him of farms and boundaries, of the position of woods and the acreage of fields, but it did not tell him of its essence as a place. It had all the charm of Xanadu’s stately pleasure-dome.
‘So twice five miles of fertile ground,
With walls and towers were girdled round.’
He went to his bookcase and withdrew the relevant volume of Coler
idge’s poems. His mind ran on gardens bright with sinuous rills and sunny spots of greenery.
As September drew on, nothing tangible altered in the house in Half Moon Street, for what altered was intangible, the unease and the tension as the month crept towards its end and Michaelmas. All unaware, the girls who worked on the ground floor, employed by the wife of the landlord as makers of gowns for the fashionable, continued their sewing and continued to take sly peeps at the exits and entrances of the two gentlemen lodgers who lived up the stairs, bachelors, and therefore objects of conjecture.
Mr Arthur was not above putting his head round the door and making a joke or two, but Captain Allington never did this, and it was difficult to think of a means of catching his attention without also catching the attention of their mistress. Captain Allington’s severity filled the young seamstresses with a pleasing alarm, certain it sprang from a broken heart.
As Allington paid off Arthur’s lesser creditors, the number of debt collectors besieging the landing grew less and dwindled almost to nothing. All that was left were the ever-watching, ever-waiting employees of the moneylenders, and they were often content to wait in the street. (Arthur had been known to climb out of a window.)
Arthur said, to anyone who cared to listen to him, ‘You can see how I’m getting my affairs in order. I hardly owe any money. Sometime after Michaelmas I shall receive a legacy from my late aunt. I am turning over a new leaf.’
Off he would go in all his finery, swinging a cane, dangling his quizzing glass, ruffling his curls, but always in the direction of St James’ where the draw of the gaming table beckoned him no less; what he gambled with or how a mystery, unless courtesy of his friends. He was full of talk and laughter on the subject of a reformed life and the economies he was to make. The only economy he was seen to make was the taking of the Exeter mail down to Salisbury, instead of hiring a post chaise, upon the 26 September.
To the surprise of some, he returned, the same conveyance depositing him back in London on 1 October. He appeared to carry on much the same as usual, apart from declaring the experiment to be a failure, the air within the Exeter mailcoach proving foetid, the company not choice and the seats hard and dirty. He did not think he could be expected to repeat the experience at Christmas – but where would Johnny Arthur be at Christmas?
He called on Captain Allington.
‘I find you very odd, Allington, you have so little curiosity,’ he said.
‘You do?’ Allington replied. He watched Arthur peering about at the austerity of his rooms. He had wrapped the portrait up again. Should he wish to hang it, it was too big to fit conveniently in the available space.
‘You don’t have much up here,’ Arthur said. ‘I suppose you live like a soldier, as if you were in a bivouac. Perhaps you don’t quite believe in the transaction, think that Castle Orchard is a figment of the imagination.’
‘Of yours or mine?’
‘Why now of both, I suppose. However, I have returned, as you can see.’
‘And is Castle Orchard itself aware of the transaction?’
‘No. It occurred to me that there is a usefulness in the matter remaining a secret for another week or two.’
‘It’s hardly useful to me.’
‘I know, I know. You have been very patient. Would you give me a fortnight?’
‘Precisely from this day? If I must.’ Allington spoke reluctantly. ‘After that I spill the beans unless you can assure me you have written.’
‘I shall write next week. They will then expect you. The news won’t immediately return here. You may go down to Castle Orchard at the end of the fortnight if it pleases you to do so. Shall I tell them you are sending your horses? Haven’t you hunters? You can hunt from Castle Orchard.’
Captain Allington left him to write what he liked. He assumed Arthur wished to make his escape to the Continent at a moment when it was least expected, and he must be most preoccupied with that. If it was known the property was no longer his, he would be arrested. The fact it was not his and could not be sold to pay his debts, would come as an unpleasant surprise after he was ensconced in some Ostend or Calais boarding house, from which it was unlikely he could ever return.
Allington began to consider, cautiously, how he might rearrange his life. The immediate removal of all his horses into Wiltshire seemed rash and premature, despite Arthur mentioning stabling for twelve. For all Allington knew, there might be no roofs on the buildings.
London, from Arthur’s point of view, was still empty. The beau monde did not return until January, and that he should be seen, by chance, in the street, during October, made him wish to duck and hide. The Ramptons had returned to their seaside estate and he was at his wits’ end how to occupy himself at such a time when he had never before felt more like distractions. The fortnight, for both Allington and Arthur, passed extremely slowly.
With a constant change of horses the eighty-six miles to Salisbury could be done in a day. It had been Allington’s intention to ride all the way, but he confessed, only to himself, the riding exercise he had given his lame leg in August had done it no good and he thought it prudent to rest it before the hunting season He had therefore borrowed a britchka, a light travelling vehicle which could be opened or closed according to the weather, from a military acquaintance, with the idea of buying it if he liked it. He sent Dan on with his grey a few days before, showing him maps, listing place names and drawing pictures, concluding with the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. He travelled himself, accompanied by Pride, on 14 October.
On the following morning he instructed his servants to stay where they were, at the White Hart in Salisbury, but he told them where he was going. He had Pride pack him a small saddlebag with a change of linen and, having no idea what awaited him, indicated he would probably stay away one night. Mounting his long-tailed grey, he set out for Castle Orchard.
It was a beautiful day, the trees on the turn and the sky a hyacinth blue, autumn in its full opulence of fruit, the ripeness of plums and apples and the sweetness of leafy decay. He approved of decay that enriched the earth. When expecting death he had asked to be buried not in the neat little churchyard of the Cornish parish, but in some untended plot where he hoped he might add to the greenness: he had thus shocked his stepfather who had assured him he had no intention of carrying out such a heathen request. Allington had pointed out that the bodies of his comrades in arms lay in unconsecrated ground, though he did not add, ‘should they have the luck to be buried’. The reply had been that Allington’s circumstances did not necessitate such an expedient. Allington suspected him of having in his mind a suitable headstone already written out.
As he rode over the downs and into the valleys, spying here and there the river, the lines of Keats’ ‘Ode to Autumn’ ran through his head.
Drowsed with the fume of poppies. While thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers . . .
The poet attributed a sleepiness and indolence to autumn.
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours
Allington knew that harvest was gained by the sweat of men and horses, by long hours and little rest. It was a season of merriment and contradictions. He could see the labourers working the fields, the pale creaminess of the stubble and the darker stooks. When he reached the land which, according to the map, was the outlying portion of Castle Orchard, he got off his horse and rested a moment. He spoke to the men and asked after the quality of the harvest, but he did not delay long. He felt a combination of expectation, pleasure and anxiety. The surrounding country filled him with a quiet happiness and he thought if fate should settle him amongst these grey hills and by the meandering river, he could live out his life more usefully and be content, he who felt destiny had marked for one thing and fate for another.
Arthur had been true to his word when he said that the property was in reasonable order. The farms were tidy and in repair, the roadside cottages snu
g, their gardens filled. Allington passed a farmer in brown frockcoat, breeches and gaiters, who wished him good day. Allington answered him gravely. He wondered if the man was a tenant of his own. He had looked for signs of poverty and unrest, for agriculture was at a low ebb, but this precise little corner of England seemed to be at ease. The farmer drove a smart cob in a yellow-painted gig. Allington asked him more precise directions to Castle Orchard and, though answering him, the man looked at him with surprise, as if no one ever asked for directions to Castle Orchard. He could instruct him no further than Orchardleigh.
Another ten minutes or so brought him to this small village, and even then it had required his trained eye for the lie of the land to actually happen on it. He noted the church and the substantial rectory. Castle Orchard remained elusive. It necessitated winding along a series of narrow lanes at right angles to each other before coming upon the iron gates which he knew must lead to the house. There was a single lodge in flint and brick, empty, its garden luxuriously entangled with Old Man’s Beard. He could see that, where money had been spent to maintain the estate, the immediate environs of the house had been neglected. The drive went away before him through thickly planted scrub and wood, the undergrowth encroaching, some massive limes marking the remains of an avenue, their boughs meeting densely overhead.
The gate being open, Allington urged his grey horse forward. Its hooves made barely a sound on the soft earth and the moss, but it pricked its ears expectantly and then gave a small start as a boy emerged abruptly from the brambles, a boy of eight or nine years old, in a pair of stout boots, trousers too short and a torn jacket.
Allington reined in his horse and stared down at the child who stared back at him with the roundest of blue eyes. He had no hat and his head was covered in a mass of yellow curls. He was the image of Arthur.
Leaning from the saddle, Allington asked his name.
The boy paused before answering. He was out of breath. He then said, looking anxiously behind him and stumbling with his words, ‘My name is Philip Osipher but I am not an Osipher – an officer, I mean. I never am, I am only the French.’