Castle Orchard

by E A Dineley

  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.’

  On Wednesday morning she got out of bed having slept, out of sheer exhaustion, rather better than usual, and sat down at the dressing table. She was shocked by her own appearance. Annie came up with a jug of water and she said to her, ‘I look a hundred years old, Annie.’

  ‘Nonsense, ma’am, you’re just a little weary with the worry of it. You have all them lovely curls, and your green eyes what smile so sweetly and laugh of themselves.’

  ‘You flatter me, Annie,’ she said, amused. ‘My sister Louisa was the pretty one.’

  ‘Your sister, Mrs Westcott, she is what everyone thinks of as a beauty, but you ain’t so usual and that’s what I like.’

  Mrs Arthur went down to the kitchen. She had already discussed the dinner with Cook, who now said, for the seventh time, ‘It is a very trying thing to be considering dinners for a gentleman whose tastes we don’t know. We don’t even know if he will want dinner – and where is it to be served? Not with you and the children. That wouldn’t be seemly. I try to get something out of that Dan, but one may as well talk to a post. “Master Dan,” says I, “what does your master like?” And I speak ever so slow and loud and careful. It could lead to a misunderstanding.’

  ‘We will be in the cottage.’

  ‘You can’t go in that cottage. It’s not fit.’

  She and Cook went through the store cupboard together and made a list of essential items that were running low. They looked in the larder. Without the home farm they would have been in a dismal plight.

  Mrs Arthur went into breakfast. Phil and Emmy were in their places, Phil gently kicking his heels against his chair and Emmy with a doll beside her to whom she was offering scraps of toast and jam. It was a rag doll Mrs Arthur had made herself, large, starey-eyed, but much loved.

  As she sat down at the table she found a letter from Captain Allington.

  Dear Mrs Arthur,

  I am endeavouring to put myself in your shoes. You have every reason to resent me, though whether you choose to blame your late husband or myself for your present situation, I cannot tell. There are many things I cannot tell. I think it inevitable we shall see much of one another, until such time as you choose to depart. You may feel you are a guest in my house, but which retains the essence of being yours, whereas I may feel a guest in a house I have not grown accustomed to call my own. I shall live at the lodge but attend to business in the house, wherever you have put my desk. Allow the children to lead their customary lives, do not decide you should withdraw them or yourself to some distant part of the house that I may never be offended by the sight of you or them, for the children will not be accustomed to being confined.

  Your very obedient servant,

  R. Allington

  So, he intended to live at the lodge. Her relief was enormous. She had assumed he had intended to put in a lodge-keeper. That very day she had planned to get a little furniture into the cottage. Should she be so beholden to him? Should she move anyway? Having read the letter once, she read it again and then folded it up and tucked it under the edge of her saucer. Really, she would have to read it yet again in a minute, but she decided she must move to that cottage whatever her circumstances. She thought she heard the front door open and shut. A moment later, Annie ran into the room.

  She said, breathless, ‘What shall we do? Captain Allington is here, and it not Sunday yet.’ Overcome, she retreated, leaving Captain Allington standing in the doorway, his hat under his arm. Mrs Arthur noticed the elegant cut of his dark coat and the dandy brightness of his yellow waistcoat.

  He said, ‘No, it isn’t Sunday. Did Dan say I was coming on Sunday? I left on Sunday. That’s what he will have meant.’

  Mrs Arthur got up from her chair.

  He then said, ‘I’m afraid I have taken you by surprise.’

  ‘It is for you to come and go as you like,’ she replied. ‘Phil, shake hands with Captain Allington, and draw up a chair for him. Emmy, run to the kitchen and tell Cook we need another place and more breakfast on the table. I’m assuming you have had no breakfast.’ She thought, I must pretend he is just any ordinary visitor. We must be polite.

  Captain Allington shook Phil’s hand and accepted his offering of the chair. He said, ‘Yes, I have taken you by surprise.’

  ‘There is a cottage empty. I intended to move there before Sunday.’

  ‘Certainly not.’ He spoke sharply.

  ‘We could go to the lodge. I have just got your letter.’

  ‘No. Pride and I shall live in the lodge. That’s why I’ve had the builders in.’

  ‘Then we must go to the cottage.’

  Emmy returned carrying a basket of bread rolls. She put them down in front of him and said, ‘We had no man at breakfast before.’

  Annie followed her with a tray, nervous and upset. She bobbed a curtsey and hastily put the breakfast down.

  Emmy, the only one to be not in the least embarrassed, said, ‘He can’t have coffee. It brings on one of his heads. Tea is all right.’ She looked carefully at Allington to see how many heads he might have, before adding, ‘Mr Pride said it, when you were here before.’

  ‘Well, Miss Emily, what an excellent memory you have,’ Allington said.

  ‘Yes, I do. I remember all my lessons.’ She enjoined her doll to eat up and leave nothing on the plate.

  Allington then said, briskly, even coldly, ‘As for the lodge and the cottage, as I take it they both belong to me, it is surely I that may decide who is to live in them.’

  Mrs Arthur poured the tea. She refrained from looking at him. What he said, so bluntly, was true. The cottage was not hers in which to move. How was it she had not thought of that? Why had she not gone to Westcott Park? She had placed herself at the mercy of a man of whom she knew nothing, a virtual stranger, with the gambling habits of her late husband. Surely anything would have been preferable? When she did look at him, she thought he smiled, but of this, she was uncertain.

  Phil was watching Captain Allington with round eyes. He was nervous and anxious. He thought his mother was being given a scolding for wanting to live in the cottage.

  Allington said to him, ‘Do you look after your mother?’

  Phil shook his head.

  ‘When I was a little boy I was very managing and I looked after my mother. I would say, “Now, Mother, where are your gloves? They are on the dresser. They’ve got a hole. I’ll
fetch your others from upstairs. We’ll be late for church. Come along. You’re never ready, but we’ll be all right, darling, don’t worry, hurry with me and I’ll get you there before Parson”’. He paused and then asked, ‘Are you like that with your mother?’

  Phil said, in a tiny whisper, ‘I try to look after my mother.’ He hung his head, ashamed and confused, for he wanted to look after his mother.

  Allington, still looking at Phil, continued, ‘As you can imagine, I soon got to think it was I that gave the orders.’

  Mrs Arthur tried to see him as a little boy of Phil’s age, but nothing like Phil, a shock of dark hair, dark eyes and, even less like Phil, strong. She understood he had, like Phil, been alone with his mother. She said, ‘But I find my gloves for myself.’

  ‘I dare say the better way round,’ Allington replied. He had eaten a little, she thought out of politeness, and now he stood up.

  Mrs Arthur said, ‘Is it your wish I should show you over the house?’

  ‘I expect I shall stumble over the different bits of the house as I go along. Don’t trouble yourself. Do as you always do.’

  Allington spent that day riding round the estate. In the lodge he had laid out every map he could find, to the agitation of Pride, who liked things tidy. Pride had made the lodge comfortable. It was a single-storey building with few rooms, the main one of which now contained a simple bed, a washstand, a chest of drawers, a chair and a table upon which, useful for holding a map flat, was the glass jar containing the sixpences. It had a fireplace and in the little room to the back there was another, in which there were various cooking arrangements. Allington came in late but his dinner was ready. Pride had come to a good understanding with Cook, supplies to be shared between what was now two households.

  After he had finished a simple but perfectly adequate meal, Allington sat down by the fire and took a book from his pocket, one he had chosen at random from the morning room, where he now had his desk. He held it near to the candlelight and found it to be the poetry of Robert Burns. He grunted with disapproval at his own choice.

  Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

  And the rocks melt with the sun;

  I will love thee still, my dear,

  While the sands o’ life shall run.

  He contemplated the indignities of irrational passion. Ten years previously, and he thought it a long ten years, he had lain in a foreign bed in a foreign house, close to death, and filled his fancy with a pretty, lively girl to whom he never spoke a single word, with whom he thought he could have had no common language.

  O my luve’s like a red, red rose

  That’s newly sprung in June;

  Was not the colour red a little gaudy? He thought his long past, flaxen-haired love nothing like a red rose. Where was she now? He hoped she was surrounded by flaxen-haired children and with a sensible Flemish husband, a respectable burgomeister.

  His mind slipped back to his childhood at St Jude, where the high grey walls of the garden nurtured nectarines. He was not allowed them, but when the gardeners’ backs were turned he would scrabble up the walls and run along the top, helping himself to anything he found to be ripe – apples, cherries, figs, peaches, nuts and nectarines. A nectarine on a warm wall was almost too beautiful to be picked, wholesome yet delicate, pale yet flushed with warm colour. Was he not in a peculiar state of mind owing to what could only be described as the love affair he had had that day with Castle Orchard? His heart had warmed to every little copse and meadow, to the woods and fields, to undulating curves and hills, to sturdy barns, white tracks, whole farms and much of a village. There were long stretches of river that were also his, and he remembered those rivers in Spain; remembered himself, young and fit, lean from a combination of exercise and frequent starvation, but in a joyous state of exhilaration and contentment with his uniform faded to rust, patched from top to bottom.

  If he had kept his health he would have wanted Castle Orchard and much else besides, but now he thought the estate exactly fitted his needs. His tenants might view him with suspicion and astonishment, he who had won them in a game, but it was of no account, for had he not been able to gain the respect of the roughest soldier? The respect and, he supposed, a grudging affection, for there had always been hands to help him when he was struck with a bout of fever. Some officers were truly loved. He doubted himself in this category.

  To love, he thought, one must give oneself away, open locked doors. Had he not addressed the insubstantial little boy who so closely resembled Johnny Arthur, on the subject of care for a mother?

  When he finally went to bed, fortified with a glass of hot milk proffered by Pride to make him sleep, which at another time he would probably have declined, his dreams of Castle Orchard were entangled with Mrs Arthur, as though one could not be separated from the other.

  Mr Stewart Conway left it a few days before paying a call at Castle Orchard. Mrs Arthur received him in the drawing room but she said, ‘I don’t know that I should, because it isn’t my house. Should I receive calls?’

  ‘Annie showed me in just as usual.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have known what else to do.’

  Mrs Arthur rang the bell and Annie returned.

  ‘Annie, is Captain Allington in the house?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, in the morning room.’

  ‘Please knock on the door and inform him Mr Conway has called.’

  Annie went away on this mission.

  Mr Conway said, ‘I had hoped he would be out. I don’t wish to know him but I suppose, as a neighbour, it can’t be avoided. Your situation is impossible. It will cause a scandal.’

  ‘So it may, but it’s very proper.’ Mrs Arthur gave a prim smile especially for his benefit.

  ‘The sooner it’s resolved the better,’ Mr Conway continued. ‘May I know, as I stand your friend, whether or not you have received further information from the lawyer?’

  As he was speaking, Allington entered the room. Mrs Arthur thought, despite his lameness, he could move swiftly and silently. He must have heard all of Mr Conway’s last sentence.

  The two men gave each other the briefest of bows that accorded with politeness. They presented a curious contrast to one another, Captain Allington at his least forthcoming and Mr Conway confused.

  Allington said, ‘And are we to offer Mr Conway any refreshment?’

  ‘It is for you to do,’ Mrs Arthur replied.

  ‘In theory it is for me to do, but in practice it is for you to do. However, it is my belief the inestimable Annie, out of habit, will bring whatever she can find in the kitchen she thinks suitable or Pride will furnish her with the bottle of Madeira I brought from London with me.’

  ‘Yes, that is how it will be.’

  Captain Allington now turned his attention to Mr Conway. He said, ‘You are the brother of the rector?’

  ‘That is correct,’ Mr Conway replied.

  ‘And you keep the school?’

  ‘Yes. We have thirty boys and five of those belong to my brother and myself. We prepare them for entrance to Eton or Winchester. Occasionally one goes to Harrow.’ Mr Conway spoke more than he wished, being ill at ease.

  Annie brought in a tray with two glasses, the Madeira and a plate of biscuits.

  Mr Conway, with an instinctive wish to show upon what a familiar footing he was with Castle Orchard, said, ‘How are you, Annie?’

  Annie bobbed a curtsey and replied, ‘Very well, thank you, sir.’

  ‘But you have brought only two glasses,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Master doesn’t take no wine, sir, but Mr Pride says he will eat the biscuits.’ Annie looked shyly at Allington and bobbed him a curtsey too.

  Mr Conway turned with astonishment to Captain Allington and said, ‘You take no wine? That is very singular, very singular indeed.’

  ‘But not a sin,’ Allington answered.

  ‘I am an abstemious man myself, but a bottle of wine with our dinner, shared between my brother and I, is not excessive. I
suppose you would consider it an impertinence if I enquired the reason for such abstinence.’

  ‘I would,’ Captain Allington replied. ‘Nor am I accustomed to having my habits commented on by all and sundry.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, I meant no offence,’ Mr Conway said, hastily.

  Allington helped himself to the biscuits and leaned on the mantelpiece. He was looking about him and at the view out of the windows. He said to Mrs Arthur, ‘I like this room.’

  ‘Would you prefer to have your desk here?’

  ‘No, the morning room does me very well, and I may smoke a cigar there.’ Allington turned to Mr Conway and said, ‘Well, I dare say you have come to discuss with Mrs Arthur the progress of her son at school. I shan’t interrupt you further. If I was Mrs Arthur I should want to know why the child was so reluctant to leave in the mornings.’

  Phil’s reluctance to go to school was unspoken and by Phil himself denied, yet his mother was more than aware of it. She did not see why Captain Allington, who had been three days in the house, knew it too.

  Mr Conway laughed. He said, ‘I can see you are not used to boys, sir. It is rare for them to wish to start their lessons.’

  Captain Allington shrugged.

  Mrs Arthur said, ‘Phil doesn’t like to go to school but never will admit it.’

  ‘There is nothing to worry him at school,’ Mr Conway said. ‘My brother won’t have a cane, though I think myself, under extreme circumstances, it is efficacious.’

  Captain Allington, who had moved towards the door, gave Mr Conway a cursory nod and left. Mr Conway, affronted, said, ‘He’s very abrupt. How can you be in the house with him these three days and not suffer every humiliation, this house in which you should be enjoying comfort and security?’