by E A Dineley
‘That is a fancy colour for your sober Captain.’
‘My master dresses very sober except in the waistcoat. Here he allows a little something extra, not that much of it shows.’
‘Soldiers are dandies,’ commented the Frenchman.
‘No, they ain’t.’
‘But look at your guardsmen here in Piccadilly, each one a figure of glory.’
‘Well, yes, but I don’t believe many of them were in Spain.’
‘My dear Mr Pride, it is the uniform. The uniform is a dandy thing. How many a time you have shown me the red your Captain wore in its box of cedar? And the blue one too, he wore at some other time. They are beautiful, dandy things, not at all right for killing or for waiting for a wolf to eat you.’
Pride attempted to disagree but he was not clever at it. After a few weak sallies into the enemy camp, he contented himself with sipping his brandy, though he did not like a Frenchman to have the better of him.
After a while, he said, ‘Those were what he had to wear for reviews and such. He didn’t wear ’em for battle, he had second-best for they. As for what he wore at Waterloo, torn off him that were, for the sake of the buttons and the lace. It can’t have been good for much else, not the state he was in. Down to his shirt when we picks him off the battlefield, and lucky to have that, though it was only good for rags. They looters don’t care how much they shakes a man up, dead or alive. Much of the time while I was with him the Captain was in the Portuguese service. His uniform was brown: there’s not much dandy in that. Tell you what, women loves a uniform. A uniform knocks them right silly. They Spanish women flirt, you wouldn’t believe it, and the dancing . . . not at all decent. Women are troublesome things. Look at the trouble my master had with that Italian. Take one look at her and you knew she couldn’t stick by nobody. Just as well Master ain’t sentimental. I only once know’d him sentimental. Laid out the better part of dead. Brussels we were in. Do you know the place? Pretty, that’s what I call it, but the streets were all over straw and crammed tight with the wounded, which didn’t do nothing for it. Took your mind off it, but it weren’t forever. Still, first impressions stick. Master were in this merchant’s house, once Major Wilder had come out and organised things, and there was a young girl with a big, pale plait right down to her hip and she were always laughing and skipping about. Though he didn’t never speak to her, I reckon she kept him alive. Peculiar time to come over sentimental but then he had the wound to the head, which probably accounts for it.
‘Now, if we were wintered in a place, when we got our orders to shift, the scenes when we was marching out . . . you wouldn’t believe it . . . women a-screaming and crying and jumping in rivers, pickets on the bridges to hold ’em back. ‘Twas all on account of the uniforms.’
The weather continued hot. Arthur, having spent much of the previous night at a gambling club in Jermyn Street, lay propped up in bed on a profusion of pillows. It was approaching mid-afternoon and he had a headache. Emile tiptoed into the room with an armful of shirts and a newspaper.
‘Emile, when is it Quarter Day?’ he asked in world-weary tones, for in a night when thousands of pounds had passed before his eyes and through his hands, he had ended the winner of twelve guineas which, though it might pay the wages of a serving maid for a year, was not much to a gentleman.
‘Midsummer Day, sir, twenty-fourth of June, and there’s a gentleman to see you.’
Arthur picked up the candlestick from beside the bed and threw it in the general direction of Emile, saying as he did so, ‘I know what is Quarter Day. Under my beleaguered circumstances, how could I not?’
Emile picked up the candlestick and replaced it with studied care. He said, glancing at the newspaper, ‘Today, sir, is the twenty-third of June.’
‘Why then, I ought to be out and about. Sir John Parkes is to lend me his coach. I won’t take it all the way. I must find the money for posting some of the journey. I am not suited to the hurly-burly of public coaches. I need no clothes beyond a change or two of shirt. There is nothing and nobody at Castle Orchard. Who did you say was at the door?’
‘Mr Rampton, sir.’
‘Show him in then, don’t keep him waiting.’
Emile, without going immediately to the door, said in his usual precise tones, ‘I think Sir John will not lend you his coach, sir. He is no more in a lending position. He is dead. It is in your newspaper.’
Arthur sat up in bed, a look of the most profound horror on his face. Emile proceeded to usher in young Mr Rampton.
Arthur said, ‘It is not, it cannot be true.’
Mr Rampton, who had on a new coat and had hoped Arthur would notice it, asked, ‘What’s not true?’
‘That Sir John Parkes is dead.’
‘Oh yes, it is more than gossip, and Smythe has gone to France.’
‘Smythe killed him? Why not Allington? It’s Captain Allington who has gone to France. Tell me it is.’
‘No. They don’t mention Captain Allington, only Mr Smythe. The dual took place at Chalke Farm, wherever that might be, with not a soul there but the seconds and the surgeon, who could do nothing.’
‘Ah, but by this dastardly act I have lost two good friends. One is dead and the other gone to France.’ Arthur groped under his pillows for a handkerchief. For a while he wept uncontrollably. Rampton could think of nothing to say beyond remarking, to himself, a preference for France over the other.
Arthur then jumped out of bed and pulled a handsome padded dressing gown over his nightshirt, displaying, as he did so, his pair of little thin legs.
‘Allington is to blame,’ he said. ‘Allington is at fault and my poor, good friend Parkes lies stone cold in some horrid place.’
‘But it was Smythe shot him. Smythe accused him of something or another and they say Smythe was quite right. Allington has not been seen these two days.’
‘No, he’s in his rooms. He’s ill, if you can believe that. They call it a megrim but we know about megrims, a fanciful thing for women. It’s not the ague. He will be drunk.’ Arthur began to rush distractedly about. ‘I shall demand to see him. I have a right. Parkes was my friend.’
‘I beg you not to,’ Rampton said, alarmed. ‘You’re not in a fit state of mind. Besides, it’s rather a crowd at your door.’
Arthur remembered he was in danger of being arrested if he left his rooms. He subsided into a chair and wept some more.
‘There’ll be an inquest and some futile enquiry. I must attend to my own affairs. Emile must book me a place on the mail and I shall go down to Salisbury or they will put me in the King’s Bench. I dare say my friends will still visit me, those that are not dead or gone to France, but I cling to my liberty. Last night I had five thousand pounds in my hands and this morning I have twelve guineas.’
‘A clever man such as yourself would surely do better at the whist table, where your fate, much of the time, would be in your own hands.’
‘It’s true, it’s true, but it doesn’t have the allure. Why, I do play it from time to time and win quite a little money. Even Allington says I could win regularly if I paid attention, and that’s a compliment from him, though I think I hate a compliment from Allington. One day I shall trounce him at his own game, I shall be one jump ahead of him and it will be my turn to say “checkmate” in those quiet, dismissive tones, which I am sure I shall mimic to a nicety at the time. Now, Rampton, I shall bet you the twelve guineas I won last night that I shall beat Allington at chess before the year is out.’
Rampton said he would like to oblige Arthur in any way he could, but he demurred when it came to a bet on a matter on which he could have no opinion. Arthur, who saw little relationship between a bet and an opinion, began to think Rampton a bore, but he was too much distracted by the death of his friend and his own precarious pecuniary state to do more than suppose Rampton still might be useful to him now and again. The lure of the Quarter Day rents eventually taking precedence in the rag-bag of his mind, he announced decisively, ‘I shall
leave for Castle Orchard, even if I die getting there.’
Rampton was puzzled. He thought there would have to be some catastrophic accident to the coach that travelled so regularly and reliably between London and Salisbury for Arthur to lose his life on the road.
The rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of the drum meant charge, and charge little Frankie Conway did. He charged and cheered and screamed and ran and waved his arms, bounding through the copse at Castle Orchard, slithering on mud, on the wild ransom, the dog’s mercury, the brambles catching his clothes, the hazel slashing his face; and to him, as to the others, it was never only a game.
Robert had a real soldier’s coat, not the smart one that had belonged to their uncle, but a raggedy old coat from the rank and file with the lace torn off and a patch on the elbow. It was a rusty brown, but once, once it had been a glowing scarlet: its glory had to live in the mind’s eye. It was not very much too big for Robert and he, despite his coat not being an officer’s coat, would always be the officer. Stephen carried the drum and he beat it well, even when he was running along. Frankie only had a stick, but that was all he and the little ones had.
Phil ran through the wood as hard as he could go and his breath hurt as it struggled in and out of his chest. Though it was only a game he was always afraid and they, in the end, always caught him. He could never run fast enough, though he ran and ran and ran.
‘I don’t want to be the French any more.’
He lay on the ground and the Conway boys stood round him with their sticks, even the twins, only six years old.
‘You have to be the French.’
‘You are our prisoner. We are going to shoot you, because you are a deserter and that is the worst thing you can be. On goes the blindfold and then you are shot by ever so many soldiers at once. You are blown into so many little bits and nobody ever remembers who you were after that, because you’re nothing.’
‘You wait for the bang, bang, bang with your blindfold on and your insides drop out and they are like the insides of a rabbit, pink with green bits.’
‘And purple bits.’
‘But first he must be our prisoner.’
‘We will lock him up.’
‘And forget him.’
‘And the rats will gnaw his flesh.’
‘When he is shot, all the other soldiers will look at the little bits of him that are left and remember not to be cowards and run away. You are a coward because you are afraid of the river.’
‘And then the birds will peck his eyes out.’
And so it went on until such time as the Conway boys thought of their dinner.
Phil wandered home, ragged and dirty, woebegone, unable to say why he always had to be the French, except that he was a coward and afraid of the river.
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 cle
ver, 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.’
