Castle Orchard (36 page)

While out riding they met the agent doing his rounds. He doffed his hat and remarked that Captain Allington had told him to refer to her, but everything had been left in such order and every possibility allowed for, he could think of nothing to ask her. He then said he thought the climate of Italy satisfactory for the Captain’s health but he ought not to stay once it became too hot.

Mrs Arthur, after making a few polite rejoinders, rode on. The weather was beautiful.

Annie complained of the abruptness of the master’s departure. Phil and Emmy asked where he was. Mrs Arthur said nothing or pleaded ignorance. How could she tell them she had no idea whether he would ever come back? She saw to Emmy’s lessons and took her for long, slow walks, dawdling at the pace of the child. Emmy filled her pinafore with wild flowers. Time was no object. They went without hats even when the sun was hot. Emmy took off her shoes and stockings and did exactly as she pleased. Meg was garlanded with daisy chains.

Mr Stewart Conway visited Mrs Arthur one evening, after Phil had gone to bed.

He said, ‘I can never get to see you. I understand Captain Allington is away. This abrupt coming and going, it’s very inconsiderate. I suppose it’s what soldiers are accustomed to. Annie tells me there is a splendid portrait of him hung in the morning room. She is quite in love with it. It’s the uniform. What dandies these soldiers are.’

‘What will you do, Mr Conway, if Jacky and James should wish to be soldiers?’

‘I never suggested it was not an honourable profession, merely that too much is made of it.’

‘But suppose Bonaparte had invaded England?’

‘I am sure we would have been glad of all the protection the Army could give us. I believe I would have volunteered myself. However, I think the likelihood of it exaggerated.’

‘Why did he build all those boats, if that were the case?’

‘Well, I dare say it was his intention, but it is not what I came to discuss. You are again in charge of Castle Orchard. It is a great convenience to Captain Allington. Is it not time to put a stop to it? Trying as you are, teasing a fellow with questions and answers, it is my most earnest wish to look after you.’

Mrs Arthur thought, If I married him, Castle Orchard would pass from myself to the Conways, and this he doesn’t know. Why, as a married woman, could she not hold property for herself? It was the law. If she stood at the altar and married Stewart Conway, at that very moment he would become the owner of Castle Orchard, the house, its farms, its villages, the bends of the river, its meadows, its ruin and its Philosopher’s Tower. As it was, she had no need to marry him.

He said, ‘Last time I spoke to you we were interrupted. You told me your affairs were now in order, but I think you were yet in ignorance of them. I told you, or I intended to tell you. . .’

Mr Conway was lost for words. Mrs Arthur looked at him gently but there was no encouragement in her face.

She said, ‘I think it much better you should tell me nothing. My affairs are at last in order and my income sufficient for my needs and those of my children.’

‘So I am not required?’ he said.

‘I have been grateful for your friendship.’

‘Friendship is not of what we talk,’ he said.

‘No, but I don’t want to talk of anything else, at least, not at the minute.’

‘But you will move away?’

Mrs Arthur wished she knew what she would do. Would Captain Allington agree to take Castle Orchard back? It seemed unlikely. She was sure there must be other women better qualified to make Mr Conway happy. He now took her hesitation and confusion in answering as a refusal to confide in him. After fruitless further discussion he went away in a dudgeon.

Mrs Arthur, after he had gone, wondered if he would court her for the rest of their lives and whether he would feel her refusal to marry him some denial not only of his natural right to be in possession of herself but of Castle Orchard too.

She could yet write to Captain Allington and send the letter via Lord Tregorn. Sooner or later His Lordship must know the whereabouts of his stepbrother. Had he gone to Italy as the agent had suggested? She started several letters but finished none.

The weather broke. The glorious, warm May sunshine was replaced by mist and drizzle. Phil bobbed his way across the meadow to school under a huge umbrella which swayed above him. When the wind blew, he and it tussled together like some little ensign with the regimental colours.

Mrs Arthur stepped out of the front door for the purpose of ascertaining the weather. Coming up the drive at a smart trot were a pair of bay horses and a landau with the hood drawn up. Puzzled, she hastily withdrew into the house. Who could possibly call on her now? After a moment’s thought, she decided it must be her brother-inlaw, though the vehicle had not looked like his. The man on the box had been wearing a greatcoat so had he been dressed in the Westcott Park livery, she would not have seen it.

She went into the drawing room to await events. What did she have on? Not one of her fresh-made gowns with which even John could not find fault, but John, under all circumstances, was dependable. He might find it difficult to approve someone so unwise as to have married Johnny Arthur, but she could tell him the truth. Captain Allington had given her back Castle Orchard and she was loath to take it. He would point out to her that she had to take it, having no other means of support, which was true. He would say it was Phil’s inheritance. Phil’s inheritance had been forfeited by his father. He might also think out some compromise. He would help her for the sake of Louisa.

She went to the window and sat down to wait, folding her hands in her lap to compose herself. Annie would show John in at any moment now. After a while her mind wandered. What a curious life was hers and how alone she was.

Eventually it occurred to her she had heard no voice, neither Annie’s nor John’s, no slam of the front door. She got up and returned to the hall. It was empty. She looked out on to the carriage sweep. There were no bay horses, no landau. Had she imagined it all? Was she going mad? She then saw a figure coming slowly up the drive, from the direction of the lodge, a cooking pot under one arm. It was Pride.

Mrs Arthur reached for her shawl and stood out by the sundial, waiting.

As soon as he came up to her, he said, ‘Cook will be after telling me off, we do everything so unexpected, and I’ve been in a deal of trouble lately.’

‘Oh, Pride, I didn’t recognise the landau.’

‘He changed it. A gentleman in the yard at the White Hart was admiring the britchka. Master said, “I’ll change it for your landau if you’ll agree to it this minute.” Said he was going to be a family man and the landau was more appropriate.’

‘But Captain Allington – is he all right?’

‘Middling, I’d say, but what can you expect when he does everything so sudden? I’m to tell you he’s gone down to the river, he’s gone to the tower.’

Mrs Arthur crossed the garden, passed the apple trees alight with blossom and greenery, and made her way to the Philosopher’s Tower. The door was ajar. Captain Allington was, she knew, there. She climbed the staircase and walked blindly into his embrace.

Below them, Phil walked with the younger Conway boys along the river as far as the bridge, where the mist hung. They could be seen and heard from the window, which was open. Stephen was holding Jacky and James by the hand: they were now all a little afraid of the river, as if they had glimpsed what it could do. Phil was, perhaps, the boldest. He had conquered the river.

Frankie was heard to say, ‘Robert wouldn’t come. He doesn’t want to play any more.’

Stephen said, ‘We can play.’

‘Not the same games,’ Phil said. ‘Not those. When I grow up I expect I’ll be a soldier but I’m not going to be one now. We had better go away from the river. Jacky and James are too little. I’ll get Smokey Joe and we’ll take turns.’

The boys turned back towards the house. Their voices diminished. Their footsteps left trails in the long grass, the dew.

Captain Allington and Mrs Arthur smiled at one another. When she came to examine his face, it blazed with that fierce, impatient intelligence that made him look like his portrait, stripping the years from him. It shocked her. How was it she had engaged the attention, let alone the affections, of such a man? He also appeared extremely white, in fact not particularly well, but she thought him happy, very happy.

He had on the table the little note she had written, that Dan had delivered.

He said, picking it up and smoothing it out, ‘I viewed this as a proposal. The man is meant to ask, but as I didn’t, it must do.’

Mrs Arthur said, ‘But you could have asked.’

‘You might have accepted me.’

‘Of course.’

‘But you might have accepted me for the same reason as you were prepared to accept Mr Conway.’ As Allington spoke, he restlessly paced the room, which was really too small to contain him. Mrs Arthur was aware that though he spoke seriously, he was absurdly light-hearted.

She said, ‘It wouldn’t have been at all the same. And Castle Orchard, you will have it back.’

‘What of Phil?’ he asked.

‘When the time comes, you will do what is best for Castle Orchard. Time will tell what is best for Phil.’

‘I thought you might never forgive me.’

‘I have nothing of which I need to forgive you.’

‘Gaining Castle Orchard from Arthur by the means that I did.’

‘While you were away, I received a visit from the Ramptons. I learned a lot about you then. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘The principle is the same.’

Mrs Arthur thought about this. Maybe he was right, that the principle was the same, but had he not been owed the money? She said, ‘I’m at a loss for words but I have nothing to forgive and nothing to condone. In fact, quite to the contrary. Could it be a sufficiently weighty subject for the Philosopher’s Tower?’ She then added, smiling, ‘If you told me every detail of what made you act as you have, I should make excuses for you.’

Together they went downstairs and out of doors.

She said, suddenly anxious, ‘Where have you been? You don’t look well.’

‘No further than the White Hart at Salisbury. I couldn’t go any further. I had the worst one of my heads, as Pride and the children would say, that I think I’ve ever had – but maybe I always think that. Pride was cross with me for going off so abruptly. He kept muttering, “Stand to your arms one hour before dawn when in the face of the enemy.” When we reached Salisbury he got so drunk he couldn’t look after me, so the arrival of Dan was opportune. He stayed with me until Pride was sober. In fact, I dismissed Nat.’

‘But he hasn’t gone.’

Allington laughed. He said, ‘No, of course not.’

‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if you had had the fever?’

He took her arm and looking down at her he said, smiling cheerfully, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever have that again. I killed it the last time. As for my not looking well, I just got up too soon. We’ll walk across the meadow to the rectory and ask to have the banns read. Neither brother will care for it much, but that can’t be helped. Would you like to do that? It’s a little wet. You look very pretty. You had better wear a cloak.’

The weather cleared again. Castle Orchard settled down in lazy warmth to await the summer. Pride, who had been busy moving things between the lodge and the house, now sat at the window of what was to be his new quarters, a pen in his hand.

The letter proceeded on, the usual series of small lies and ingenious fibs designed to convince his aged parent he was indispensable. Behind him, on the mantelpiece, was the glass jar holding the sixpences.

They all wrote letters that day. Captain Allington wrote to his half-brother.

He wrote the same to Major Wilder, but more fulsomely. He then took out his pocketbook and wrote in that:
Happiness. Contentment. They were not so bent on eluding me as I had thought.
He then added, arbitrarily,
A pair of greyhounds. Use the landau. Take the children, J. Arthur’s, God help me, life is curious.

Mrs Arthur wrote to her sister.

She stopped to consider the vague inaccuracies of this statement. It was not difficult to visualise the consternation it would arouse in the breast of Louisa.

She paused again. The crystal ball told the future, not how to evade it, but perhaps there was not the need to complicate the matter by pointing this out. It was as hard as ever to write to her sister.

As to the more distant future, Phil received a small independence from his paternal grandmother, the old lady dying intestate. As his mother had in her heart foreseen, he never did inherit Castle Orchard. He joined the Army and went out to Canada, where, in winter, the tears can freeze in your eyes – to fight the rebels in Montreal.

You may still go to Castle Orchard, if you can find it, up that lane and down this . . . and ask to see the Philosopher’s Tower. Allingtons live there to this day. Captain Allington’s own eldest son, being successful at the Bar, entered politics and was elevated to the peerage. Being an impudent, clever fellow, he had a rook or a castle inserted into the family coat of arms.