Castle Orchard (14 page)

Arthur would like to have emulated Brummell’s flight in detail, as a compliment to so eminent a man, but it was not even the same time of year. It was on a day in May that Brummell had dined on cold fowl and a bottle of claret, attended the opera, left early and made his escape. Now it was October. Arthur would like to have spent his last evening at Almack’s, but he could not put off his departure until January, when Almack’s reopened. It was a pity he had not delayed losing Castle Orchard until after Christmas. He neither liked cold fowl nor the opera, though he considered one should attend the latter whether one liked it or not. Arthur’s only satisfaction was in knowing his own debts greater than the eminent beau’s, said to have been a mere forty or fifty thousand pounds, but then Brummell was, in reality, a nobody.

Arthur emulated Brummell in having the coach and four put at his disposal by a friend, in this case Rampton’s father. It was packed with portmanteaux containing his favourite clothes, smuggled out under his greatcoat, one by one; his shirts, all thirty-four, which had gone to the laundry and returned elsewhere; similarly his neckcloths and, in a stout trunk, his snuffboxes and the best of his canes. Rampton’s wife had agreed to return to the country but Rampton himself had come back to London for the express purpose of aiding the escape, perhaps for the notoriety he would be accorded, for in his heart he now knew Arthur to be too dangerous a friend altogether. He had mundane ideas of how it was to be effected, not being a man for adventures. Arthur was to dine at his house and when it was dark, don a cloak belonging to Rampton’s wife, climb into the coach with a pair of horses attached, and be driven away by the family’s reliable coachman. The coach would go off to the house of a Rampton daughter, recently confined. It would be assumed Rampton’s wife was visiting her sister-in-law. There, an additional pair of horses was to be attached and the journey to Dover immediately undertaken if there was no sign of their being followed. Arthur did not care for the scheme, fleeing disguised as a woman – especially Rampton’s wife, whom he disliked – but he knew himself to be watched at every moment, followed everywhere: it was the best they could do.

His signal for departure was to be the day after Captain Allington took the road to Salisbury. Rampton pointed out the expedience of having a fixed day in order to have post horses booked for the entire journey, for they would require many changes between London and Dover. Arthur replied, if he was not himself aware of which day he was to travel, at least nobody else could know it.

Observing Captain Allington to leave Half Moon Street on 14 October, he alerted Rampton to be prepared for the next day. He left his lodging dressed for dinner. Emile, thinking it might rain, ran after him with an umbrella. Arthur had been tempted to take his valet with him, but the risk of disclosure was too great. He thanked him most graciously for the umbrella and wondered who would employ him after he was gone or whether the valet could be persuaded to join him later. He need speak no French if Emile was with him.

The Ramptons had a townhouse in Berkeley Square. Arthur strolled there without a notion he was viewing the familiar streets for the last time. Somebody or something would rescue him from his plight. His sojourn in France was to be just a passing adventure. At some moments he thought this and at others he swung like a weathercock and thought just the opposite and was seized with unreasoning panic. As usual, he was followed.

Rampton, not wishing to appear anything but cheerful, had made certain of the dinner being very fine. There was a raised giblet pie, lobster and venison, syllabub and sweetbreads, a soup and a jelly. The curtains were drawn, the candles were lit and the grave family portraits looked down from the walls.

It was when the cloth was removed and the dessert put on the table, the pears and the apples, the raisins, the iced cakes and the almonds, that it occurred to Arthur he was taking his last English meal in all the comfort of an English house.

He looked up, tears filled his large blue eyes and he said, in a weak, faint tone, ‘I don’t want to go. I’m not well enough.’

Rampton said, thinking Arthur had made fine work of the meal, ‘It’s my belief you have to go.’

Arthur repeated it. ‘I have to go. What shall I do? They will hang me or send me to Australia.’

‘Don’t, please, become hysterical. They will not hang you or send you to Australia for debt. You may have a perfectly honourable incarceration in the King’s Bench, though in your case, more protracted than you might care for.’

‘I have to go, I have to go!’ Arthur said, leaping up from the table. ‘I should certainly die in Australia.’

‘The coach will be at the door in twenty minutes,’ Rampton said, calmly drawing out his pocket-watch. He made Arthur sit down again, ordered coffee to be brought to the table and poured more wine. Time seemed to stand still. The pocket-watch was referred to again and again. At last they got up and entered the hall. There were few servants about since most had gone down to the country with the family, but a footman appeared and announced the arrival of the coach.

Arthur flung the cloak over his shoulders and pulled up the hood. He said, ‘I shall be arrested.’

‘No, you won’t,’ Rampton replied, looking forward to seeing the last of him. ‘It will be hours before you are followed. Don’t disturb yourself unnecessarily. Briggs, our coachman, is as sound as a rock. He will get you there safely. Your passage is booked. It is all so easy and only a few steps from the door to the coach.’

Tears ran down Arthur’s cheeks.

The coach was there, an old-fashioned, dignified vehicle and a quiet, middle-aged, sensible coachman in crimson livery on the box and a groom up behind. Arthur peered at it anxiously. He had imagined a postilion to ride the nearside horse and no coachman, but the Ramptons preferred their horses driven, which he knew quite well for it was the same coach in which they had travelled to Bell Hill Abbey.

‘Oh, but I cannot go without a postillion,’ he said, grabbing at straws.

‘Nonsense,’ Rampton whispered. ‘Get in immediately. It can’t make the slightest difference to you. Don’t draw attention to yourself, for it’s not yet fully dark.’

Arthur drew the cloak about him and stepped up into the coach.

Inside he leaned back on the cushions. It was comfortable and snug but suitably grand with its red Morocco buttoned upholstery and all the little conveniences to make a journey comfortable – a lamp for reading, a box of sandwiches, another of biscuits and a flask of the best French brandy. Ten minutes later he knew they were adding the extra horses. He assumed they had not been followed.

The interior of the luxurious vehicle lulled him into temporary satisfaction and complacency. It gave him the protection afforded a rich man, or so he liked to think. Did he not merit it? Was he not an Arthur of Castle Orchard? Perhaps, or for certain, he was descended from the fabled King Arthur, a suitably fairy-tale prince, and royal blood flowed in his veins. With this half-conviction stirring in his head, so much more agreeable than the reality of the moment, he thought he might sleep and this he proceeded to do, barely stirring when the carriage pulled in and the horses were changed.

It was a few hours before he properly awoke. His first moments were ones of confusion, for the royal connection was still lurking in his mind, but then it occurred to him that the carriage was moving very slowly and his creditors were in pursuit of him, intent on hanging him. Should he escape and get on the steam-packet, he would be addressed in French and he never had been clever at French, or else too idle to learn it. Forever and ever French would be spoken and his English friends would desert him, but if he was caught he might be hanged. He again went from complacency to panic.

The carriage came to a halt. Arthur pulled down the window and peered out. They were at the Bull in Rochester, so they must have been something like five hours on the road. He supposed it about one o’clock in the morning but it was too dark to read the dial on his watch.

They seemed expected, for horses were run out almost immediately and the others led away. Rampton must have alerted the various inns of their need for horses, after all. It had not occurred to Arthur to enquire after such practical details. The groom had been driving to give the coachman a rest but now the coachman got back on the box.

‘I want to sit up with you,’ Arthur said. The idea of sitting alone in the carriage now made him nervous. He would not be able to tell if they were being pursued. He had abandoned the cloak, preferring to pull on his greatcoat, and he clambered up. It was a night of swift clouds not entirely obscuring a full moon. Rampton had said to him, ‘It is fortunate there will be sufficient moonlight, or you would have to delay your going.’ He now cursed the moon, for without it he would be back in his own bed.

As soon as they were under way, he urged the coachman to hasten.

‘Lor’ bless you, sir, we are going at a good even trot, though I declare they have given us a blind horse as the near-wheeler.’

‘Have we made good time?’

‘Excellent time, sir, don’t you fret.’

‘I want you to spring the horses to get us on a bit.’

‘Can’t do that, sir. They have to get up the hill out of Chatham yet. Terrible hill that is. Very pleasant road, the Dover road, apart from the hill out of Chatham.’

Arthur was not interested in the hill out of Chatham beyond thinking it would delay them. The four horses, the wheels on the hard, stony road and the jangle of the bars made plenty of noise but he could hear something coming behind them, very fast, or so he thought.

‘We are being followed,’ he said.

‘If we are, ’twill only be the Mail. Don’t know precisely what times they run.’

‘We will be overtaken. I shall be arrested. I shall be hanged.’

‘Calm yourself, sir. There is nothing behind us.’

‘There is, there is, I can hear it.’

Arthur tried to turn round and shout at the groom. He half-stood up and waved his arms but the groom either could not hear him or he had fallen asleep.

‘Sit down, sir, do, sir,’ Briggs said. ‘You’ll upset the horses. They are not a very even lot as it is.’

They started to ascend the hill south of Chatham.

‘Nasty hill to come down, this,’ the coachman said, flicking his whip and encouraging the horses to pull into their collars. ‘It ain’t safe without a drag chain, an’ what if that busts? You’re in for a purler.’

‘Oh, but I am sure there is something behind us. Can’t you hear it?’

‘Can’t hear nothing, sir. I’d tell you if I did, honest sure. For Gawd’s sake, sit still!’

Arthur could not contain his panic. Again and again he twisted on the seat, sure he could hear a second vehicle behind them. For a long while it was a figment of his imagination but then the coachman thought he too could hear something or another.

‘Well, sir, the road is a public place,’ he said. ‘Anyone can be out on it, perfectly lawful.’

He was, of course, quite correct, for the vehicle coming up behind them belonged to a country gentleman returning from a long evening spent dining with friends. He drove a light gig, with a fast, strong horse he was urging rapidly on. At the same time, coming steadily down the hill, four horses, and the drag chain on, was a coach of the Royal Mail.

‘I shall be hanged,’ Johnny Arthur cried. ‘Spring the horses.’

‘Don’t act so daft, sir,’ the coachman remonstrated, as Arthur tried to wrestle the whip from him. ‘Mind now, or we’ll get under the Mail.’

Arthur, crazy with fright, continued to struggle for possession of the whip. The horses started to weave about the road, the Mail got closer, the gig came up behind . . . and then the nearside wheels of the coach went up the bank and the whole thing tipped and went over. Arthur was shot off the box and into the path of the oncoming horses, though the coachman driving the Mail managed to pull them up before they trampled on him. It made little difference, for Arthur had slipped his creditors for ever, a dribble of blood from his mouth soiling the white of his linen. A rich cascade of snuffboxes from a burst trunk had descended with him.

Between them all, including the passengers from the mail, they righted the coach. The groom and the coachman were not much hurt beyond bruising. They re-coupled the horses and then lifted Arthur’s body back inside.

‘Best place for him,’ the coachman said sourly.

The mail coach then drew hastily away, for the mail must never be late.

Captain Allington returned to London from Castle Orchard. He supposed Arthur would be on the Continent but he intended to follow him there. His inclination was to call him out; he felt sufficiently enraged to do so, though he abhorred duelling and the idea of standing opposite Arthur and shooting him was ridiculous, for he may as well have shot at a rag doll.

When he reached his lodgings in Half Moon Street he found his landlord’s wife in tears and all sewing suspended. A guard was at Arthur’s door and several grey-faced, rusty-looking gentlemen were making an inventory of what remained in his rooms. Allington was immediately informed of Arthur’s death on the Dover road.

He retreated to his own rooms, extremely disconcerted. His indignation against Arthur did not abate. His mind, usually so quick, rational and calculating, he endeavoured to fix on the practical. He thought the deeds of Castle Orchard securely his, but what was the position of Arthur’s widow and children? Would she immediately fly to the succouring arms of her family in Devonshire, for he knew she came from there? He supposed she had a jointure, for it was usual, to be used in the event of her husband predeceasing her. Surely no father would have allowed his daughter to marry such a one as Arthur without making sure she had some sort of security in the event of his death?

Allington could answer none of these questions to satisfy himself, and all sorts of other conflicting emotions prevented him from viewing his own position, let alone Mrs Arthur’s, with a suitable degree of calmness.

Eventually he took himself off for a long walk. London was still empty but the news of Arthur’s death was everywhere, a description of it having been reported in the newspaper. Later, still restless, he went to his club. He took his usual seat in the Travellers’, produced his pocketbook and began to draw the landscape that surrounded Castle Orchard, the wood, the meadow and the river. He had been taught to draw as a boy when attending the Military College at Great Marlow, for it was an essential accomplishment when examining a position. He placed the house, the stables and the Philosopher’s Tower correctly. He was an object of curiosity, for had he not lived in the same lodgings as Arthur, but nobody disturbed him while he was thus occupied; nobody had the temerity to approach him.