Castle Orchard

by E A Dineley

  They started to descend the downs. The chalk track dropped between steep banks, and as they approached level ground they passed through beech hangings red-gold in the mild English autumn.

  He talked dreamily of the great golden plains, glistening palely under the powerful light; of earth as red as bricks when turned by the plough; of mountains, one craggy mass of rocks so high whole armies seemed like little crawling flies. He spoke of castles and villages perched on eminences; and of convents full of dark-eyed nuns, imprisoned by grilles that failed to inhibit clandestine whispered seductions in broken, alien tongues. The names of foreign places slipped easily from him. He talked of days of doing nothing, billeted in villages or towns, of theatricals, dances, horse racing and endless dalliance with pretty girls. They lived from day to day. He spoke of beautiful arcaded squares shadowy in the noonday sun; of cathedrals that took your breath away; of corn-ripe stone and cream-coloured churches. He told, without enthusiasm, of Catholic mummery, of tinselled Virgin Marys and decorated saints.

  ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘My caçadores . . . Catholic to a man, good and bad, everything done in the name of God. They were touchingly anxious I shouldn’t be killed, they had so little hope for my salvation.’

  Nearing Castle Orchard there were several places where the river could be forded. Captain Allington already knew them all. His horse plunged into the water and the water swirled about its hocks. The grey followed meekly after and Dan brought up the rear.

  She had no conception of fighting in winter but he started to describe the storming of a town in January and a river to be forded, again and again, the ice knocking at the ribs, the clothes frozen solid on the body and the ground rock-like where the trenches must be dug. He talked of marching day after day, of lying down in the rain at night, no cantonments, no bivouac, merely rain-soaked ruts in a field of plough.

  He then said, ‘I’ve probably taken you too far. Are you tired? We’ll go again another day.’

  The Reverend Hubert Conway, though a gentle and unassuming man, had a clear idea of his responsibilities, however distasteful. He said to his brother at breakfast, ‘Stewart, it is my duty to remonstrate with Captain Allington. He doesn’t attend church, which will set a bad example amongst his tenants. Also there is the matter of Mrs Arthur, poor soul. I fear it will cause gossip, though it is not a subject I feel willing to raise.’

  ‘Mrs Arthur should go to her sister.’

  ‘It may not be convenient for her sister.’

  ‘In that case, what is Captain Allington to do?’ replied his brother testily.

  The rector could not imagine what Allington should do, short of going elsewhere, or at least further than the lodge. This did not deter him from crossing the meadow that divided his establishment from Castle Orchard and asking Annie if Captain Allington was in.

  Captain Allington was at his desk in the morning room, which had now taken on a bachelor air. He had hung his two Cornish seascapes, but the portrait of the Light Dragoon had never been unpacked and resided in the corner with its face to the wall. Allington sat with the window open to disperse the aroma of his occasional cigar. As a young soldier, a cigar smoked under excruciating circumstances of hunger, wet and cold, brought inestimable comfort. Now he thought it a poor habit and one in his changed circumstances he should abandon. He could surely manage without tobacco, especially if it might remind him of Johnny Arthur and his endless snuffboxes.

  When Annie showed in the rector, Allington gave him a small bow but said nothing.

  Mr Conway, disconcerted, said, ‘Mild for the time of year.’ He tended to say this when lost for words, whatever the circumstances of the weather. He thought Captain Allington’s room very cold with the window open.

  Allington asked Annie to bring the rector a glass of Madeira. While it was fetched Mr Conway struggled with a few more commonplaces. Apart from offering him a chair, Allington made no response.

  ‘You will not take a glass with me, I see,’ Mr Conway said, forgetting his brother’s comments on Allington’s abstinence.

  ‘I take no alcohol,’ Allington replied. ‘Did you have business with me?’

  The rector said nervously, ‘I have a duty to attend to the souls of my parishioners but they take their example, not unnaturally, from their betters, particularly their landlord. I fear that their attendance at church will slip and slide.’

  ‘My predecessor, the late Mr Arthur, set no such example.’

  ‘Indeed not, the poor, misguided gentleman. Let us hope he found salvation though no time to prepare for it, thrown off the box of a coach.’

  ‘Mrs Arthur sets the example, and while she resides here, will no doubt continue to do so. Otherwise, it should be your own persuadings, not mine, that get them into church.’

  Captain Allington paused here and eyed Mr Conway coldly. He then stood up and went to lean in the open window embrasure. He said, ‘I have never met a man in your profession whom I found I could respect. It’s as though ordination was sufficient to render a man wise or holy. While I was a soldier there was rarely a chaplain worth his salt, rarely one to go out amongst the dead and dying to administer some little comfort to those who would have welcomed it; no one to brave the stink and pestilence of a hospital to reassure a dying man he had done his duty and could depart in peace. We buried our brother officers in unhallowed ground in shallow graves, and the only prayer we said was that their poor mangled bodies would be spared the ploughshare or the wolves. I can quote the service for the dead by heart, so frequently was I called upon to do it, but I thought myself ill-fitted for the task. As for chaplains, they were only notable for their absence.’

  Mr Conway was dumb with horror at the thought of so many bodies so unceremoniously despatched into holes in the ground and the prayers left to Captain Allington.

  Seeing Mr Conway made no reply, Allington continued, ‘Sometimes troops were drawn up for religious observances, but battles were fought on Sundays – Toulouse on Easter Sunday and Waterloo itself was on a Sunday. During the Peninsular campaign it was frequently necessary to use chapels to house ourselves and our horses, as the only roofed empty space. I dare say you will think it didn’t signify because they were Catholic. As for the rascally, fat priests, creeping about in black, we didn’t think much of them, so you could be right. You die hard in battle, the soul forced from the body, one second here, next burst asunder, perhaps in several parts and trampled underfoot; yet one moment before, able to think and feel, to write a letter home and contemplate the weather. My view at the time, and I have not seen fit to change it, was that any one of my Portuguese caçadores, despite their idolatrous habits and horrid priests, were as likely when they died to obtain salvation as the rest of us.’

  Mr Conway, nervously seated on the edge of his chair, turning his hat about in his hands and occasionally giving a tug to the fine white tails of his clerical bands, endeavoured to picture himself, in the heat of Spain, bending and stooping on the battlefield, even before the cannons’ roar had ceased, with words, though what words, of comfort, to those who were not already corpses, and every second in danger of himself joining their number.

  He cast eyes of desperate appeal at Captain Allington who viewed him yet more coldly, though he said, with a hint of levity, ‘Ah well, I suppose you would have been nothing but a nuisance and forever in the way. Now you come here to admonish me for my failure to attend church and I have admonished you for the failings of the Church. What else did you have in mind?’

  Mr Conway, thankful to be removed from the battlefields, said, ‘Oh, a very delicate matter and one I hesitate to approach. Mrs Arthur is a woman without protection, no husband, no brother, no father.’

  Captain Allington replied, ‘It is as well, in that case, is it not, she remains out of harm’s way, under what happens to be my roof?’ And before Mr Conway could suggest this was not the solution he had in mind, Allington added, ‘I think you were quite correct in hesitating to approach the matter. It would have been better n
ot to have done so. I would not presume to discuss Mrs Arthur, so it seems odd you should. It’s not in my view the conduct of a gentleman, but I see you meant no harm by it. Let us part company before we fall out with one another.’

  Captain Allington showed Mr Conway to the door.

  Mrs Arthur met the latter hastening away across the carriage sweep, in his anxiety only just avoiding bumping into the sundial. He said, glancing at the windows, ‘My dear lady, Captain Allington . . . you and he shouldn’t be under the same roof.’

  ‘I don’t think it would be right for me to suggest he didn’t use the morning room.’

  ‘But you must leave. You must go to your sister. Captain Allington is a blasphemous gentleman – he’s put me into a terrible pother.’

  Mrs Arthur could see this for herself. She said, ‘As soon as I hear from my lawyer, I shall know, I suppose, what to do. It is most kind of Captain Allington to allow me to stay here while he has all the discomfort of the lodge.’

  Mr Conway swept on his way, muttering as he did so, ‘Pray leave, leave immediately, dear Mrs Arthur.’

  Captain Allington, at this period free from headaches, set about fox hunting twice a week. He would reappear after dark, entirely worn out, content to sit by the fire and endure in silence the discomfort of his lame leg.

  ‘Nothing won’t stop him,’ Pride said. He was occupied with sewing the long seams of the drawing room curtains, a task in which Mrs Arthur could assist him. Things had not been changed, the same pictures hung in the same places, but Allington had ordered cloth for curtains, as those in the windows, long bleached by the sun, were little more than rags.

  Pride smoothed and straightened the mass of fabric. It was a plain linen. He said, ‘Master loves his hunting. He don’t care a bit it worries me to death. He never did mind that. What I goes through waiting for him to be killed, war or hunting, he never will take into account. Still, when he’s hunting, out the way, it gives me a chance to give his uniforms an airing.’

  Pride had appropriated a bedroom in the house for various articles for which there was no room in the lodge, and it was here the curtains were being made, for it was also his tailoring department. He went to a chest he kept in a corner and on opening the lid, he said, ‘I’m afraid the moth might get them, though kept in cedarwood, so I gets ’em out and looks ’em over. Why do they bugs think it digestible?’

  He carefully lifted a uniform and laid it on the table. Mrs Arthur stared at it, the dark blue jacket, the bright facings, the silver epaulettes, the shining buttons. It stirred, she thought irrationally, an elusive memory. ‘How gaudily we go to war’, is that what Allington had said? And by gazing at his uniform, laying her hand tentatively on the cloth of the facings, it was as though the very garment had seen too much and now clandestinely revealed its secrets, the heart that beat, the lungs that breathed, the effervescent life, there one minute, gone the next.

  Pride said, disconcerting her, ‘He never wore it much. That’s why it’s so tidy. The other he had at Waterloo, an’ that were the end of it. Looted, see. Fancy looting the clothes, all slashed to bits an’ bloody, but it’s the lace they are after, real bullion, an’ the little precious things in the pockets. Master lost all the bits and pieces he had in his pocket, things he never was without. Fancy shaking a man out of his jacket what’s lying bleeding on the ground three quarters dead, but they do, they never think nothing of it. Ah well, a soldier’s rights is his booty. I tell you what, them farriers what the cavalry have to have, are the worst. They’re meant to help as stretcher-bearers, but ’tis just a pretty excuse to have the officers’ watches. The women, they’ll be out there with the babes at their breasts before the firing’s stopped, turning the bodies up and prodding and poking the poor wounded. My ma, she brought me up a Christian, and I’m sure ’tis no Christian habits they women had.’

  Pride reached for the red uniform and laid it out beside the blue. ‘’Tis smart in the cavalry but he were a thoroughgoing infantry man, master were. Red jacket, silver buttons – this was his dress uniform. The other wasn’t worth keeping. He wouldn’t sell it in the hope he could get back to his old regiment. The Portuguese have a dreary sort o’ uniform, brown, but still, seemed he were less likely to be shot when he had that on. As for the other stuff master did, that was worse than any battle. I never could rest easy. And in the most part of it, what were master to the French? Just the glint of a spyglass high on a rock. Spoke the languages, looked the part, I don’t know what he didn’t have to do an’ where he didn’t have to go, but I never could bear the thought of it, what they’d do to him if he were caught.’

  Pride had reduced his voice to something of a whisper, but then he went off on another tack and became more cheerful. He replaced the uniforms and settled to stitching the curtains but his voice went on and on: the sun, the rain, Captain Jameson, the goat boy, the Duke of Wellington himself, were all grist to his mill.

  Mrs Arthur saw in her mind Spain, as Captain Allington had described it, either hot and dry, fragrant with thyme and rosemary, or cold and wet for days on end, and she thought she saw a hundred thousand soldiers, sprawled asleep – even, she supposed, dead – and a very young Captain Allington, perhaps not yet a captain, wrapped in the boat cloak that concealed the tatty, gaudy uniform that, Pride said, hadn’t been off his back for days. In another world Johnny Arthur, carefully washed and scented in waistcoat and pantaloons, an ivory snuffbox in one hand and an elegant cane in the other, would be parading down St James’s in search of losing his money.

  Mr Stewart Conway walked Mrs Arthur back from church. She wished she had mourning as a concession to public opinion but there was no help for it. She wondered about the dyeing of something black, but it did not seem as important as it should. Why should she wear mourning for Johnny Arthur?

  There were significant changes to the walk, for the hedges were cut, sharp-edged and neat, and the leaves swept.

  ‘You are cold,’ Mr Conway said. ‘Why aren’t you wearing your cloak?’

  ‘I cut it up. I shall get another, but not yet.’

  ‘Do you hear nothing from your lawyers?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘It’s shameful. I can’t think what they’re about. You must have enough money to get a cloak.’

  ‘I am afraid to spend it. What mightn’t I need it for?’

  After a pause for careful thought, Mr Conway said, ‘I shall lend you the money for a cloak.’

  Mrs Arthur shook her head. She murmured, ‘So kind, but I would prefer not.’

  ‘I am an old friend. You could be beholden to me without trouble.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You will only be beholden to Captain Allington,’ he said, an edge of sourness to his voice. ‘My brother is concerned he doesn’t come to church. He says it will set a bad example. He visited Captain Allington, but all he received was a lecture. Poor Hubert was much distressed.’

  ‘Don’t you think it would set a bad example if he sat in church with me?’ Mrs Arthur asked.

  ‘It would certainly draw attention to the fact you both reside at Castle Orchard.’

  ‘Ah, but we don’t, and I don’t believe going to church is one of Captain Allington’s habits. It’s hardly my business to enquire. Let’s not talk of him. Tell me about Phil.’

  Phil himself had run ahead with Jacky and James.

  ‘What should I tell you?’

  ‘His legs are so bruised.’

  ‘There’s a lot of rough and tumble amongst the boys. They are like puppies at play.’

  ‘Sometimes I think it more than that.’

  ‘Mothers tend to think their child victimised.’

  ‘But are you sure it’s not so?’

  ‘Phil must learn to stand up for himself. To interfere will only make him less popular than he might already be.’

  Mrs Arthur sighed. She was dissatisfied but knew no other approach and Phil himself would say nothing. They arrived at the carriage sweep.

  Mr
Conway said, ‘I shall come no further. I have no wish to see Captain Allington.’

  As he spoke, Captain Allington came out of the house. He nodded to Mr Conway and said, ‘Good day to you, sir.’

  Mr Conway returned the salutation coldly and called his little boys, who took no notice of him for they were in the thrall of Emmy. He had to lose his temper before they could be induced to come, and he thought Captain Allington mocked him. He stalked away down the drive with an arm each of his offspring.

  Allington said crossly, ‘I don’t want you to get cold. Come indoors. Your shawl is worn thin. I hope Mr Conway is of assistance to you.’

  ‘How can he assist me?’

  They entered the drawing room together. Captain Allington knelt down to tend the fire himself. He said, ‘By enquiring into your affairs.’

  ‘But how could he do that?’

  ‘How could he not? Aren’t they too long in coming to a conclusion?’

  ‘Yes, but it is not Mr Conway’s business.’

  ‘And he doesn’t make it so?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Though you confide in him?’

  ‘Yes, as much as I can.’

  ‘If Mr Conway won’t make it his business, allow me to make it mine.’

  Mrs Arthur, uncertain what to reply, said nothing. Allington then said, ‘Of course, you can have no reason to trust me.’

  She replied, smiling, ‘As to trusting you, I am sure I should be advised to do no such thing.’

  ‘You have my word of honour you may trust me. Perhaps that isn’t enough. Come, sit by the fire, and tell me your situation. You should have a jointure.’

  ‘So I have. It was some sort of jointure should I be widowed, but I had the means of obtaining it sooner. My father saw all the dangers in my marrying Jonathan Arthur. He was certain he would desert me and leave me penniless. I could soon see the truth of this for myself, but I determined whatever Johnny said, the money should stay where it was.’

  ‘And where is it now?’