Free I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Page A

undertook to become English again, which he wouldn’t. He died about a year ago; these two young men are his sons.
    Simon—he is the one with the beard—said last night that he had just persuaded his grandfather to receive him when poor lonely old Mr. Cotton died, which seems very sad indeed.
    The younger son’s name is Neil, and the reason he sounds so different from his brother is that he was brought up in California where his Father had a ranch, while Simon lived in Boston and New York with the Mother. (I gather the parents were divorced. Mrs. Cotton is in London now and is coming down to Scoatney soon.) Father says Simon’s accent is American and that there are as many different accents in America as there are in England-more, in fact. He says that Simon speaks particularly good English, but of an earlier kind than is now fashionable here.
    Certainly he has a fascinating voice—though I think I like the younger brother best.
    It is a pity that Simon is the heir, because Rose thinks the beard is disgusting; but perhaps we can get it off. Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn’t much like the look of? It is half real and half pretence -and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet any eligible young men. They just… wonder. And if any family ever had need of wondering, it is ours. But only as regards Rose. I have asked myself if I am doing any personal wondering and in my deepest heart I am not. I would rather die than marry either of those quite nice men.
    Nonsense! I’d rather marry both of them than die.
    But it has come to me, sitting here in the barn feeling very full of cold rice, that there is something revolting about the way girls’ minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means. Now I come to think of it, I am judging from books mostly, for I don’t know any girls except Rose and Topaz. But some characters in books are very real —Jane Austen’s are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage. I wonder if Rose is?
    I must certainly try to make her before she gets involved in anything. Fortunately, I am not ignorant in such matters-no stepchild of Topaz’s could be. I know all about the facts of life. And I don’t think much of them.
    It was a wonderful moment when Rose stood there at the top of the stairs. It made me think of Beatrix in Esmond—but Beatrix didn’t trip over her dress three stairs from the bottom and have to clutch at the banisters with a green-dyed hand. But it all turned out for the best because Rose had gone selfconscious when she saw the Cottons—I could tell that by the way she was sailing down, graceful but affected. When she tripped, Neil Cotton dashed forward to help her and then everyone laughed and started talking at once, so she forgot her selfconsciousness.
    While I was hurrying into my clothes, behind the sheets, the Cottons explained who they were. They have only been in England a few days. I wondered how it would feel to be Simon-to be arriving by night for the first time, at a great house like Scoatney, knowing it belonged to you. For a second, I seemed to see with his eyes and knew how strange our castle must have looked, suddenly rising from the water-logged English countryside. I imagined him peering in through the window over the sink—as I bet he did before he came back without his brother. I think I got this picture straight from his mind, because just as it came to me, he said:
    “I couldn’t believe this kitchen was real—it was like looking at a woodcut in some old book of fairy tales.”
    I hope he thought Rose looked like a fairy tale princess—she certainly did. And she was so charming, so easy; she kept laughing her pretty laugh. I thought of how