Castle Orchard (17 page)

Abandoning any further attempts to listen to the rector, she considered Captain Allington’s letter. His attitude to her was generous but he could not be expected to be patient for ever. She lived at his expense, considering the produce of the garden and the home farm were now all his. Even Domino, the fat old pony, was his, though she could not imagine what use Captain Allington would make of him, unless he had a wife and children. It was curious this possibility had not occurred to her before. The set in which Johnny had moved were mostly bachelors, scorning domesticity, but she was not the only wife to be a victim of gambling, and she thought whole families ruined by it. The very notion of a roulette table, faro, and all those other games made her shudder. In which of these terrible pursuits had Castle Orchard passed from Johnny Arthur to Captain Allington? And at which juncture might he return to London and lose the price of it to someone else? As far as her husband was concerned, she knew his debts to have been incurred not only by gambling but also by wild extravagance.

That Castle Orchard no longer belonged to the Arthurs was now public knowledge. She had felt the need, out of honesty, to tell the few servants. She had also told them that Captain Allington seemed ready to keep them. They viewed the situation with mixed feelings – pity for their mistress but without undue disturbance for their own future. Pride, during Captain Allington’s brief stay, had appeared so fond of his master, they could not believe much ill of him. It was, as a result, curious how life continued exactly as it had before. She knew she must depart from Castle Orchard, but the lawyer had not answered her letter on the subject of the jointure. She knew there was a jointure. Her father had made it so that if she signed certain documents, the money would be available for her use without the necessity of her being widowed. She had, under duress, signed away a legacy she had had on her father’s death, but she had not touched the jointure. How could she decide how she and the children might live without being told her income? She thought they might live in a little house, perhaps just Annie with them, and save money for the education of Phil. The money had been invested, the income reinvested, but why did the lawyer not answer her letter?

She knew she should go to Westcott Park but she barely had the means to travel. She had – temporarily, she supposed – to live either on the charity of the Westcotts or of Captain Allington. She knew the former should be preferable. The only other person with whom she might have had a connection was her mother-in-law, but the old lady had always disliked her and, furthermore, had had a paralytic stroke. To apply to her would not be of the slightest use. She wondered about consulting Mr Stewart Conway. He had written her a formal letter of condolence on the death of her husband which she condemned as hypocritical – but was not much of such things hypocritical, and was she not unfair to blame him for it? She had since not seen him, which made all his hints of undying devotion seem like the kiss of a butterfly on the wind.

The rector came down from the pulpit. She hastily thanked God for her health and strength of mind. Having given her those things, she supposed He expected her to rely on her own resources. She wished she had the deep piety of her late father that had sustained him through troubles. Had he been alive, how willingly would she have surrendered herself and her little family to his care.

On leaving the church the rector took her hand, patted Phil on the head, and said, ‘My dear Mrs Arthur, I’m sorry calamity has so overtaken you. I can’t believe such wickedness, and keep hoping all is rumour and conjecture . . . insubstantial . . . a fib.’

‘It isn’t a fib.’

‘You will be leaving us?’

‘I must, eventually.’

‘But to go where?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘Not far, I hope. Stewart must advise you. He is clever. He will walk with you across the meadow to Castle Orchard.’

His brother, now coming out of church, seemed ready to walk with her, abandoning the schoolboys to push and shove and scuffle their boots and file away with the undermasters. He gave Mrs Arthur his arm and they went down the path together, past the graves and the innumerable monuments to the Arthurs.

‘My husband forfeited his right to a place here,’ she said, indicating the graves but looking at Phil as she spoke. ‘But then the rights of his heir are forfeited as well.’

‘The sins of the fathers are visited on the children,’ Mr Conway replied.

‘Yes. I always think that very unfair.’

‘We aren’t expected to understand everything.’

‘Now you sound like your brother.’

‘I am his brother. I may sound like him from time to time.’

Mr Conway had his sons with him, his twin boys, chubby, flaxen-haired and disconcertingly indistinguishable one from the other. They twittered and chirped between themselves like a pair of yellow-headed canaries, peculiarly incomprehensible. Phil started to play tag with them and they ran about after him as fast as their sturdy little legs could carry them.

‘Well, they say the estate is gone,’ Mr Conway said. ‘Lost in a game of cards.’

‘I don’t quite know how it was lost, but something of that sort, I suppose. It hardly matters.’

‘And the gentleman of the headache is the new owner.’

‘Yes, Captain Allington.’

‘When does he come?’

‘I don’t know. According to your brother, you are to advise me.’

‘Hubert has great faith in my powers, but I fear it’s ill founded. We can’t set much store by Captain Allington, a gambling man and without doubt unprincipled.’

‘He wrote me a civil letter.’

‘One couldn’t trust him.’

‘I dare say not.’

In silence they opened the little gate in the hedge and entered the Castle Orchard gardens. There was a flight of wooden steps, half-buried in leaves, that led down to a sunken lawn, unkempt and shadowy from the yew that enclosed it. Mrs Arthur looked at her companion. Where were the hints of undying devotion now she was a widow?

She thought Mr Conway would not want to be married to her, now Castle Orchard belonged to Captain Allington. Was he not too practical a man for that? She certainly had no wish to be married to him or to anybody else, yet what might she be driven to do?

Emmy had captured the twins on the carriage sweep. She stood between them, holding them apart, shaking them and then giving each a kiss. They rolled their eyes and said nothing. Though they were a little older than Emmy, she was as tall.

In the drawing room Mrs Arthur offered Mr Conway a glass of wine and a biscuit. She had found in the cellar one bottle of wine left from her husband’s last visit. Was it her bottle or Captain Allington’s?

‘Your brother said you would advise me, Mr Conway. I wrote to the lawyer asking about the jointure, but get no reply, not one.’

‘Perhaps investments failed and he doesn’t like to tell you.’

‘From the tone of his only letter, I don’t think he would hesitate to tell me.’

‘You won’t be destitute.’

‘And what if I were?’

‘You will, of course, go to your sister at Westcott Park. Your children would obtain some advantage from it. Mr Westcott must be a man of influence. His property is large, the house grand.’

‘But I have no claim on him. Louisa is only my halfsister. It would be a very desperate move.’

‘And what of your stepmother?’

‘There I really couldn’t go. I think she hates me, or something near it.’

‘I dare say none of it will be necessary. Why speculate? Nothing can be done until you know your position. In the meantime you will go there, as this now belongs to Captain Allington. It was odd he never said anything at the time.’

‘Not at all odd if you consider the awkwardness of his arrival here and the fact that Johnny had made no attempt to tell us or him the truth.’

‘I can’t think such a man as Captain Allington can have any sensitivity.’

Mr Conway was watching Mrs Arthur. He acknowledged to himself that he had become fond of her, but that fondness had evaporated like the dew on a garden as the sun got up. No, it was not so, he remained fond of her but he was not sufficiently gallant to marry a woman unless he was sure of her income. He was not rich himself. He looked at the curls on her head and wished she would grow her hair that little bit more and let ringlets frame her face. She was not conventional and that would be a serious fault in a wife. Those curls were wild curls and they said something about Mrs Arthur he was not so happy with when he faced reality. She was now watching the children from the window and he went to join her.

She said, ‘Jacky and James could escape from Emmy if they would only agree to divide and conquer.’

‘When I see my little boys,’ Mr Conway said, ‘I think of my dear departed wife. They resemble her, you know. It should make me love them more, but I can’t forget how they cost her her life.’

Mrs Arthur turned to look at him. She was scornful of his logic.

He said, ‘Do they not look like my dear Amelia, whom I shall never replace?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘They look a great deal more like you.’

He said, judiciously reverting to the original subject, and with reassuring complacency, ‘It is as well you have Westcott Park to fall back on.’

Mrs Arthur did not think Mr Conway had given her any advice she had not understood for herself. She was glad when he had left so she might go to her desk and reread Captain Allington’s letter. Out of necessity, let alone courtesy, she must reply. Eventually, after much thought, she wrote:

Mrs Arthur, having got thus far, now considered her removal to Westcott Park. She knew little of the Westcotts and wondered how she would be received, an impoverished, or temporarily so, half-sister of Louisa’s with two children and Annie, but no proper nursemaid. She suspected she would be received with every kindness, but the idea of arriving like a beggar before the grand portico of Westcott Park and entering the hall with two anxious children, an elderly Italian greyhound and barely enough money to pay the coach fare, was not appealing. There was also the matter of her poor, tired wardrobe. She was unused to any sort of society. She could make up the pink silk Louisa had sent her but it would have to suffice for every occasion. She then remembered they would expect her to wear mourning, of which she had none, just one well-worn grey gown in which she went to church, and that was only half-mourning. In order to go to Westcott Park she would need several gowns in black, Phil and Emmy too. Here, indifferent, she could continue to wear what she had. Mr Conway would be sure to remark on it. Perhaps it was as well his attachment to her, under her new circumstances, was so rapidly cooling.

She looked again at the letter Captain Allington had sent her. His handwriting was large but neat and perfectly regular. It seemed out of tune with his habits as a gambler. His letter was nonetheless kind, and as she and her children were entirely dependent on him at the present moment, she thought his kindness had not only to be recognised but acknowledged.

She ended her own letter with the words:

She added a few words about the servants and how there was an insufficient number indoors and out, and signed it
Caroline Arthur
.

Phil was down in the boot room and so was Jackson, seated on his upturned barrel, his white clay pipe, forbidden, clamped between his teeth.

‘Yer smoked anything, see, if there weren’t no tobacco. No money. They’d be months behind with yer money. Yer got it in a lump,’ he threw up a grimy fist, ‘then ’twas gone. Yer spent the lot. Plenty of wine in Spain. Soldier, did yer say? What’s his name?’

‘Captain Allington,’ Phil whispered, for the second time.

‘Never ’eard of ’im. Mind, there’s seventy thousand soldiers. Captain Allington? Well, I’m teasing yer. Spanish Allington we called ’im.’ Jackson paused and then eyed Phil closely, coldly, with his single eye. He said, ‘The sun turned ’im dark as a native, the sun what burned yer to death. The sun and the dust swelled yer lips up till they cracked and blood ran all down yer chin, officers and men alike, none of us was spared. Yer got a green leaf and put it between yer teeth and yer lip. Stopped it, that did. Spanish Allington. Yer don’t want Allington at yer back. He’d ’ave the ’ide off yer, boy. What did yer say the name was?’

‘Captain Allington,’ Phil said, louder, and the other boys laughed.

‘He’ll ’ave the ’ide off yer, Arthur,’ one of them said, in a respectable imitation of Jackson. ‘Why is he coming to your house?’

‘I don’t know,’ Phil said. ‘It’s not our house, it’s his.’

‘A stickler, Allington was,’ Jackson said. ‘I ’oped every day a nice piece o’ metal would lodge in ’is belly or something of a six-pounder blow is ’ead off.’

‘Was he a good officer, Jackson?’ Robert Conway asked.

‘Follow ’im if ’e said do it, go, kill yerself, wade the river, get in the breaches, whatever, never mind the Frenchies blowing yer to bits, that don’t matter, that don’t.’ Jackson sucked on his pipe. ‘’E weren’t no flogger, ’is bark were worse than ’is bite. A good officer gets yer by without a floggin’. Yer needs a floggin’, though. ’Tis the only thing what ’olds yer. Yer didn’t give Spanish Allington no lip. I wasn’t in ’is regiment, no I wasn’t, but ’e were famous.’

‘Spanish Allington,’ Robert Conway said, ‘Wasn’t that a bit of an insult?’