Castle Orchard

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Authors: E A Dineley
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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.’
    ‘It is too handsome a thing. I should be tempted to purloin it.’
    ‘I suppose when I get my estate I shall have to have something to hang in it,’ Allington said, with a nearly imperceptible smile.
    ‘Why a whole estate? What is wrong with a little country house, a villa?’
    ‘I must

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