Authors: E A Dineley
Indoors, his mother was writing a letter. She looked up as he came in and said, ‘Dearest, what a mess and why so sad?’
He went to her and she put an arm round him. She never said, ‘You have been crying,’ for she thought this something a boy might not like to have pointed out to him. Instead she said, ‘Why play with the Conways if you don’t enjoy it?’
Unfortunately, Phil did not know how not to play with the Conways, nor did he know how to explain this to his mother. He said nothing, for he must look after his mother and not tell her all the horrid things the Conways said, in case she got bad dreams.
‘Go and change your clothes while I finish my letter to your Aunt Louisa, then we’ll have dinner.’
Phil went away and his mother picked up the pen and put it back in the ink. She thought of the length of dusky pink silk sent her by her sister, complete with a pattern for the latest mode: low neck, slender waist, short sleeves ruched and puffed and further ruching at the hem. Whenever did Louisa think she might wear such a thing? But it was not Louisa’s fault, for did she not deceive Louisa, skating and sliding over the truth? Louisa knew much but never the whole, for why should she worry her half-sister with the whole?
She wrote,
The silk is beautiful
. This could be stated unequivocally. After a pause she continued:
May I be clever enough to make it up. I have made a little jacket for Phil. He fancies a military cut but he overestimates my tailoring skills. I dare say I can add a little braid without making the thing ridiculous. Phil and the Conway boys only play at soldiers, always the French and the English, the Battle of Waterloo, etc., though he seems cast down by it. Emmy is well and shows no interest in battles. Westcott Park may need an heir but I am glad you have a little daughter even if she is another little daughter. There is a lot to be said for daughters, and the heir can come later.
And so the letter went on, everything to be made light of. Having finished it, she reached for her journal. In it she wrote:
Midsummer Day, 24 June, Quarter Day and J. not down yet. He will be here tomorrow. I do wonder how he thinks we can manage on so little. I told Louisa I made a coat for Phil but not that I made it from the better parts of my old cloak.
She then turned to the accounts but remembering it was time for dinner, she allowed herself only a cursory glance at the figures.
Allington, seated by the window in his own rooms, was feeling better. His recovery was accompanied by his usual sense of euphoria at the relief from the pain, but he sat quietly reading all the same. In compensation for what he considered his incarceration in his lodgings in Half Moon Street, he occupied himself with John Keats and was happily transported. He read of beeches green and shadows numberless with intense pleasure: he was light-headed.
Pride came in and announced in tones of the deepest satisfaction, ‘His Lordship is come.’
Allington looked up. He said, ‘Tregorn?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In that case, please don’t keep him waiting.’
Lord Tregorn was a stocky man with a shock of dark grey hair and a weather-beaten face, middle-aged. Up from Cornwall, where he preferred to spend his time, his London clothes made him uncomfortable.
‘Pride tells me you have had a fit of the usual sort,’ he said. ‘You had better sit down again.’ He eyed Allington keenly. ‘How are you? How are you really? You haven’t the ague, have you? That does frighten me. Why, the mantle of responsibility falls on my shoulders the instant I step into my father’s shoes. Here I am, up to make my maiden speech in the House of Lords, my first and my last, I dare say. I shall be no more effective than my father, who never could bring himself to speak more than once and then only to stammer away about rabbits and the game laws. What are you doing, Allington?’
‘Getting you a glass of wine. I keep some, you know, for your visits.’
Tregorn thought, Why do we all call him Allington? Why do we never use his Christian name? Now the old man is gone he takes the riddle of Allington’s birth with him, stepson or son, stepbrother or half-brother. Tregorn thought Allington no blood relative, with his dark brown eyes, his long figure and his cleverness. His cleverness had shocked them from the moment they had amused themselves with teaching him card games and chess. A little boy of eight or nine had no reason to be leaning forward and expounding on the last ten moves of the game when he had only just learned to play it. He had arrived in their lives, a young boy, his pretty mother to marry their father, a widower and some twenty years her senior. Allington had not resembled his mother either – a fair, timid creature – but she had been living on the estate for years, her soldier husband first absent and then dead, giving rise to supposition. No, Allington was not a blood relative; he was far too clever to be the product of the late Lord Tregorn and his second wife.
Pride had produced another chair from the bedroom. It was evident Allington was not in the habit of receiving visitors. As Tregorn sat down, the glass of wine in his hand and a plate of ratafia cakes placed beside him, he continued to speculate on the mysterious nature of this relict of his father’s estate. There was nothing straightforward about Allington – but then, there never had been. In the eyes of Tregorn and his brothers, Allington, even as a child, was too clever, and being too clever rarely did a man any good.
‘You don’t have to be responsible for me,’ Allington said.
‘But you have this wretched ill-health. I shall continue to pay your allowance.’
Allington looked as if he was trying to decide if this was or was not fair.
‘After all,’ Tregorn continued, ‘we cannot approve of your way of life, winning money at cards.’
‘It hardly seems gentlemanly, does it?’ Allington agreed. ‘On the other hand, you could not expect me, brought up as I was in the splendour of St Jude, to live on my half-pay as an officer, not required for duty or indeed not fit for duty. I look fit for duty, I can ride, and if I had just lost an arm, for example, I could be serving at this minute.’
The conundrum of how Allington should live was, as usual, too much for His Lordship, as it had been for his father. Allington’s allowance could only be increased at the expense of Tregorn’s legitimate, but plentiful, younger brothers, let alone his own innumerable offspring. Even suppose the allowance was increased, it would not necessarily stop Allington winning money at cards or however he did win it.
‘Who taught me chess? Who taught me whist?’ Allington asked, smiling.
‘Now, another thing,’ Tregorn said, ignoring this, changing the subject. ‘What is it I hear of Sir John Parkes shot dead in a duel? Your name, I understand, is connected with it, which I don’t care for.’
‘Nor I,’ said Allington. ‘It was an excessive act. Smythe is an excellent shot. I dare say he could have wounded him and left it at that.’
‘You speak very calmly and a man shot dead.’
‘I have seen many men shot dead. Death comes to all of us, it seems not to matter when. I wouldn’t have shot Parkes myself. I don’t believe there are circumstances in which I could be induced to fight a duel. His death is of no great significance, but seeing you question me, I will tell you. I passed a letter written to me from Parkes on to Smythe: what a business it is to behave in a manner suited to my station, whatever that station might be, for again, not the act of a gentleman.’
‘I suppose you had your reasons.’
‘I considered he had lied. From the content of the letter I think it probable he hoped Smythe and I could be induced to fight one another and he get away unscathed. Perhaps he hoped Smythe would shoot me dead. I don’t believe he had any personal animosity towards me, but my death would be a great convenience to the friend he has who lives in the rooms below these.’
‘An Italian actress,’ Tregorn said, a little confused but still anxious to probe to the bottom of the matter.
‘Until of late, my mistress. It was by the way of an experiment, not particularly satisfactory. Do you think your father would have disapproved of my keeping a mistress and curtailed my allowance accordingly?’
‘How should I know?’ Tregorn said crossly, for he thought the question inappropriate. There was nothing unusual in keeping a mistress, but it surprised him that Allington should do so. He then wondered why he was surprised. He reached forward and picked up the book Allington had been reading as if it might help him solve a mystery, but finding it to be poetry he put it down again with a look of faint horror.
‘However,’ Allington was saying, ‘I don’t wish to take another, and as the alternatives are too disagreeable, it looks like celibacy.’
Tregorn, thinking the conversation taking an even worse turn, said, ‘Why not marry? If you could support a mistress you might support a wife.’
‘When I have a place of my own I shall consider it, but I’m not everybody’s idea of a catch.’
‘A place of your own?’ Tregorn was astonished, disagreeably so. ‘These rooms seem adequate, though not if you were married. You don’t mean a place out of town?’
‘Why not?’
‘What sort of a place?’
‘An estate.’
Tregorn stared at him. His stepbrother, for that is what he surely was, seemed to be stepping out of place if he thought he would join the propertied classes. The only thing he could think to say was, ‘Whatever for?’
Allington looked at him in silence but he then said, ‘You are the only person I know who has the temerity to ask me endless questions, but I suppose the Tregorns are the only people I have who could remotely be described as my relatives. What for? To keep a pair of greyhounds.’
Tregorn, realising he was having his leg pulled, said, ‘Could you really afford such a thing?’
‘I believe so, but not yet. It’s not, therefore, necessary for you to pay me an allowance.’
Tregorn jumped to his feet and started to pace about. ‘I won’t have it said I don’t support you now my father’s dead.’
His mind had gone back ten years, to the aftermath of Waterloo. His father had received a letter from an old and revered friend, in whose regiment Allington had spent much of his military career, accusing the family of neglect because no one had gone out to Brussels to look after Allington, whom the colonel had described as the most brilliant of all young officers. Agitated at the recollection, he said, ‘We were told you would die before anyone could reach you and for days that was said, even months, yet die you would not.’
Further words of this colonel came unwanted into Tregorn’s mind, fragments of that letter which he could remember word for word.
To die on the battlefield is one thing. We all expect that. To die slowly amongst strangers is another.
Tregorn knew why the accusation of neglect had so rankled. It was because it was true. None of them had wanted to go out to Brussels. His own wife was expecting a child. His sister was newly married. It was extremely inconvenient to go to Brussels, especially if Allington was to die while they were on the road. The truth was, Allington had been away since he was fifteen, a boy in the Army. He had taken no leave and they had scarcely seen him again until he returned a war veteran eight years later at the age of twenty-three. Either way, they had made amends, gone to Brussels and fetched him home to St Jude, wresting him from the care of a major in the horse artillery. The colonel had travelled down to Cornwall. When he saw Allington he was so upset he had announced, out of Allington’s hearing, it would have been far better had he died, so there was no pleasing the fellow at all.
Allington said, ‘No, I lived. I have wondered why.’
‘Once we got you back to St Jude, we did our best.’
‘But in living, one should have a purpose. I thought I could go back to school, to read for the Bar, but I couldn’t do it. The sight of all that small print and I was sick as a dog.’
‘Why don’t those card games, the games of chess, which must agitate the brain, have the same effect?’
‘It must be some other part of my brain. I have wondered that too.’ Allington then added, to the discomfort of his stepbrother, whom he knew to be squeamish, ‘I have often seen brains on the battlefield. They don’t look as if they could be useful at all.’
Tregorn searched for an appropriate reply. His eye fell on the jar of sixpences. ‘What on earth is the point of those?’ he asked.
‘They are the exclusive property of Nathaniel Pride. Every evening he is sober I give him a sixpence. I allow him to take a glass of brandy with Arthur’s valet, but he must be sober. They are savings for his old age. He thinks they will be adequate for all his needs, but of course I shall have to do more for him.’
‘And if he is drunk when you are sick, what then?’
‘He knows better than to be drunk when I’m sick.’
‘I should find him a liability but you are indebted to the wretched fellow.’
‘I am, and he to me. Besides, he knows how to look after me. It would be unthinkable to have anyone else with me at such times. He is also my tailor.’
‘I noticed the cut of your coat. It may be plain, but it’s smart. You soldiers always are dandies. It’s a deal better than mine.’
Allington did not think it difficult to have a better coat than Tregorn’s.
His stepbrother then said, ‘I have the picture. My fellow and Pride can bring it up between them, I suppose. It was a damned awkward travelling companion.’
‘What picture?’ Allington asked.
‘Why yours, of course. My father’s last words to me, or nearly so, were, “Let Allington have the picture”. He was disappointed you wouldn’t allow him to have your Waterloo medal added. He would look at it and say, “Allington would not have the medal put on”. He was proud of you, in his own way. As he bought you your commission, I suppose he basked in reflected glory.’
Allington thought there could have been many better ways in which he might have been set up in life, but he only said, ‘The portrait? Oh dear, how impatient I was at having to sit for it, in that interim in 1814 between the campaigns in the Peninsula and Waterloo. You could keep it at St Jude.’