Castle Orchard (15 page)

Somebody said, ‘How typical of our Johnny to pay his lesser creditors, the ones who would really have suffered.’

There was a pause while others wondered if this were not too generous an assessment of Arthur’s character, but the proof was in the pudding.

Another said, ‘He was absurd, but charmingly so.’

‘He was not fit for the world.’

‘The world was not fit for him.’

‘To think we will never again spot him swanning down Piccadilly with a cane in his hand, some new toy, as lightheaded as a butterfly.’

‘He had no enemies.’

‘Dogged by his creditors, ignobly run to ground – murdered, one might say.’

‘There should be a law against such harassment.’

‘Ah, but it’s said he gave them the slip, that they didn’t know he had gone.’

‘Is that so? He was nonetheless harried to his end.’

‘The estate must be sold, I suppose, to pay his debts.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘But what sort of a place is it? He never went there, did he, if he could possibly help?’

‘Oh, I think he disliked it.’

‘Does anyone know it?’

‘Not worth a visit, I believe, grounds nothing, house a muddle, shut up for years. It is only known for its Philosopher’s Tower and one would not go all the way into the remoter parts of Wiltshire to look at that. Arthur himself said it was a disappointment and likely to fall in the river.’

Someone approached Allington for a game of chess but then thought better of it.

Someone else, who had not previously spoken, now said, ‘He was married in his earliest youth.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Yes, he was. He married a Templeton from Devonshire. It was, he is meant to have said, at the instigation of his father and quite against his inclinations.’

‘But if that is so, what happened to his wife?’

‘I suppose she died.’

‘Or returned to Devonshire . . . who knows.’

‘There was no heir?’

‘None ever mentioned.’

‘The last of the Arthurs, the estate sold to pay his debts.’

‘A Templeton married a Westcott, the heir I believe.’

‘A slight connection, if the same family.’

Allington finished his drawing. He was thinking, My own place in the country. He thought of Mrs Arthur whom he had last seen standing in the vegetable garden in a faded blue cotton gown, carefully patched, but the patch brighter than the gown. Would she mourn Arthur? Whose task was it to tell her of his death?

‘His funeral?’ somebody asked. ‘Who is to arrange it?’

‘Is he to go back to Castle Orchard? His family must be buried there.’

‘All the same, not his natural home.’

‘A collection will be made to return him there.’

‘No, the collection is to bury him here and to put up a stone.’

A hat was produced. Not everyone had the money they required in their pockets. The hat was passed to Allington. He spoke at last, saying, ‘Contribute to Arthur’s funeral? Certainly not. Let him be cut up and examined in the surgeon’s hall. It would be the first time he had ever been of the slightest use.’

There was a shocked silence.

After a moment Allington continued, ‘I have seen many die, though no more than any other serving soldier. Their death, usually, is not important. There is always someone else to take their place. Deserters, the riff-raff, are shot by firing squads. Others are stripped to the waist and flailed, two hundred, three hundred lashes and more, a worthless punishment for often worthless men but none so worthless as Arthur.’ He reached in his pocket and dropped a farthing into the hat, saying, ‘Even that seems generous.’

After such a speech it would have been judicious to have quit the scene, but he merely abandoned his pocketbook in favour of the
Spectator
. He was not one to walk away from a situation he had himself created. He then said, ‘Think with what ceremony you will bury Arthur. They are raking up the bones of those that died at Waterloo to make a mound in honour of the Prince of Orange. Who cares how they were buried, stripped of their clothes and dumped in pits? I dare say you think it a pity I escaped being one of their number.’

Tensions could run high even in the best-regulated of gentlemen’s clubs and there were many there who did not lack the courage to challenge Allington. Though he was an undoubted hero of the late wars, these were now ten years old and they did not give him an excuse to speak as he did. They thought it was because Arthur owed him money.

While a hasty debate was in progress and Allington awaited the consequences of allowing his tongue to run away with him, Rampton entered the room. He looked very grave, as was to be expected, but there was also an air of grievance and dissatisfaction about him.

He had of necessity, though he did not see it as a necessity, for surely a man could lend a carriage to whomever he liked, been involved in answering questions, ludicrous questions, such as, had he given the carriage to Mr Arthur or merely lent it, for otherwise it was the property of the receivers? Indeed, his father’s carriage and poor Briggs, very shaken and bruised and disgruntled, had all been impounded though subsequently released, the carriage with its red Morocco sliced apart. It seemed Arthur’s creditors were particularly enraged, for having sent to his lawyer to obtain the deeds to Castle Orchard, it was learned that the lawyer did not have them, for the estate had not belonged to Arthur at the time of his death.

Rampton began to expound on all this. Then to whom
did
the estate belong? The lawyer had not been prepared to disclose this information, it not being his business to do so, the transaction being perfectly legal and there being no mortgage or other complications. The estate, the house and everything pertaining to it was gone from the Arthurs, and the only comment the lawyer made was that he thought the late Mr Arthur had behaved very shabbily for a man with a wife and two children.

Rampton did, of course, know to whom Castle Orchard now belonged. He was unlikely to have forgotten it. Nobody else could know. He cast an uneasy glance in Allington’s direction and thought better of making further disclosures. He had himself been shocked at the notion of Arthur having a wife and children. He wished he had never had anything to do with the fellow, let alone helped him escape at the expense of the family carriage.

The zest for firing a pistol at Captain Allington died away. He was, after all, a man known to have suffered much for his King and country. It was apparent that Arthur was not all he seemed. Others were speculating on the back pages of betting books. Who might owe money to whom and what provision had been made for Arthur dying before he was five and thirty or for his selling Castle Orchard? If he had sold Castle Orchard, where was the money? This remained a mystery, only the small creditors having been paid and Johnny having with him his snuffboxes and a quantity of cash amounting to the Michaelmas rents, not the value of a whole estate, the red Morocco having divulged nothing and there being no secret bottoms to his portmanteaux.

The Revd Hubert Conway read of Arthur’s death in the newspaper. It disturbed him very much and then it crossed his mind that Mrs Arthur might not have read the newspaper and, being in the strange position she was, could remain unaware of the catastrophe. He thought it a catastrophe for he assumed that every woman must regret the loss of the man to whom she had made her vows, however unsatisfactory he might prove as a husband. It was the duty of a woman to continue in good faith and bear her lot with Christian fortitude. The manner of Arthur’s death seemed peculiarly unfortunate, for how could one make one’s peace with one’s Maker while being hurtled off the box of a carriage going to Dover? The Revd Hubert Conway had not known Arthur well, for Arthur could hardly be said to have cultivated his acquaintance, but he believed no man to be beyond redemption.

‘It is a sad, sad world in which we live,’ he muttered into his coffee, ‘when a man is an undutiful son, an undutiful husband and an undutiful father – and then falls off the box of a carriage. He can’t make amends. I must visit Mrs Arthur.’

‘What are you saying, Hubert?’ his brother asked.

‘I must visit poor Mrs Arthur.’

‘Why?’

‘Her husband is dead.’

‘Dead?’ Mr Stewart Conway leaped from his chair. ‘How is he dead?’

‘In an accident. It’s most unfortunate to die so unexpectedly.’ The rector rose from his chair, his coffee unfinished. ‘I shall go immediately to poor Mrs Arthur.’

‘Let me go, Hubert, let me.’

‘You? Why, how odd you are, Stewart. It is I who am rector. It would be most strange for you to go. Mrs Arthur may be taken ill with the shock and it is certainly my duty to be with any member of the parish grievously afflicted.’

So saying, he hastened out of the room, talking to himself all the way down the drive and across the field. ‘Very odd of Stewart, very odd, poor Mrs Arthur, how sudden,’ and further words to that effect.

On his way he met Phil, equally preoccupied, going to school. For a moment they stopped and stared at each other. The rector then said, ‘Poor child, poor child.’

‘I am a poor child,’ Phil replied, ‘because my legs are like sticks.’

‘Dear, dear, what does the boy say?’ The rector hastened on.

Mrs Arthur had not read the newspaper. She was seated at the dining table teaching her daughter arithmetic. Emily Arthur was as stalwart as her brother was thin, with round rosy cheeks, green eyes and brown hair. She had the health and shine of a good apple. When the Revd Mr Conway was shown in, her mother gave her a kiss and told her to run outside for a while.

‘I hope it’s not bad news, Mr Conway,’ Mrs Arthur said, taking one look at the rector.

Mr Conway felt unable to proceed. The news was too bad to impart and it was apparent Mrs Arthur was in ignorance of it.

‘Please sit down, dear Mrs Arthur.’

‘It isn’t Phil? He’s only just gone off to school.’

‘No, no. I passed him on the way here. It is in the newspaper, too dreadful a thing, an accident on the Dover road. Why was he on the box? He needn’t sit with the coachman. The carriage was borrowed from a Peer of the Realm, or so the paper said. The coachman’s name was Briggs and he said Mr Arthur struggled with him for the whip to make the horses go faster, though there was nobody behind them but a gentleman returning from dinner. The carriage went up the bank and turned over. It is a very dangerous hill, the one out of Chatham, for I had an uncle living there who used to tell me of it. They picked Mr Arthur out of the road but he was no more. Oh, that I should be the bearer of such terrible news. Shall I send for Annie? Dear Mrs Arthur, pray don’t faint.’

Mrs Arthur did think for a minute she might faint. She half-stood up and then sat down again, bewildered by the suddenness. She whispered, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Unless there are two of Jonathan Arthur Esq. of Castle Orchard.’

‘He was trying to get to France, I suppose. At Michaelmas he took all the rents and left nothing with which to pay the servants. What is to become of us? What will become of my children?’

Mr Conway said, ‘Why, my dear Mrs Arthur, you surely need not go away. There must be trustees and wards and guardians and all that sort of thing.’

Mrs Arthur was not so stunned she could not think the estate must be sold to pay the debts. What were his debts? She had no idea. Maybe the furniture, the library, the plate would suffice, but in her heart she knew they would not and that Castle Orchard would have to go. At the same time she thought of the young man she had married, almost a boy, so like Phil, so charming, a sprite from another world, but so useless, so decadent and so merciless in his intentions.

Mr Conway, seeing her shocked, abstracted air, said gently, ‘Would it help to say a little prayer for him, here and now? He can have had no time to prepare himself for the next world.’

Mrs Arthur turned to look at the rector’s sad, earnest, innocent face. She said, ‘I couldn’t say a prayer. Maybe I will one day.’ Though she said this, she thought it most unlikely. She added, ‘I should like it if you did.’ It was said more for the rector’s sake than for her husband’s.

‘Later, later, I shall say a prayer,’ he replied. ‘Now I must be practical. You should not be alone, Mrs Arthur, at such a time. Have you relations?’

‘I have a half-sister, but I don’t think Louisa should come and I can’t imagine what use she would be if she did. I have a stepmother, but I shall manage well enough.’

‘But the funeral?’

‘Yes, there must be a funeral, I suppose.’

‘He must be returned to lie with his ancestors.’

Mrs Arthur was not sure Johnny’s ancestors would welcome him. The puzzling suddenness of death confused her. She said tentatively, ‘Where do you suppose he is now?’

‘With the angels and archangels, I do sincerely hope, though no time to contemplate redemption. The Lord is merciful.’

‘No, I meant his body. That must be somewhere. Perhaps it has yet to be officially identified.’

‘You mean it might not be his?’ The rector would have preferred not to talk of the body.

‘I expect that was established.’

‘Dear me, yes, for it was in the paper and they would hardly put it there if there were doubts. Death should not be so unexpected. My wife was a year a-dying and one became quite reconciled to the idea of it.’

Mrs Arthur knew the rector’s wife had bullied him from dawn to dusk.

He continued, ‘I never could bring myself to marry twice, though for the sake of my dear little boys, perhaps I should have done so. Should I have Phil sent home? He shouldn’t be at school today. I will go and have him sent. You will break the news to him yourself, Mrs Arthur? If you feel unable I shall undertake the task.’

‘No, I will tell Phil. But you are right, today he must come home.’

‘I shall tell my boys and they will be sure to look after him. Robert is most responsible and grown up – he’ll be a guide for the others. They know what it is to be afflicted, for did they not lose their mother? They have tender hearts.’

Mrs Arthur was uncertain as to the tender hearts of the rector’s three sons. They were polite but when they came to Castle Orchard their personalities eluded her. She thought them a little too polite, a little slippery. Phil would say nothing and squirm, embarrassed, in his chair when they shared his luncheon.