Free Castle Orchard by E A Dineley

have occupation.’
    ‘But surely you haven’t so much money you could buy one?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    Tregorn reached for his hat. He said, ‘You continue to baffle me. I must go. Dreadful rabble on the stairs.’
    ‘Courtesy of my fellow tenant. He never pays for anything.’
    ‘Terrible, silly sort of fellow, but good-hearted.’
    ‘I am not sure I find him entirely so.’
    ‘Don’t come down with me. You will get a chill on your head or something. Lady Tregorn and I will always be pleased to see you at St Jude. You know that.’ Tregorn looked hard at Allington, as if looking could assist him in puzzling him out, ascertaining the state of his health, this man for whom he now felt responsible.
    Allington suddenly said, ‘Are the lime trees flowering at St Jude?’
    Tregorn had no idea. Though a countryman he did not necessarily notice such things. He said, ‘Now Allington, I will pay that allowance of yours, whatever your situation.’
    Allington, from his window, watched his stepbrother go down the street to where the groom was walking the horses. In a moment his servant and Pride could be seen manhandling the picture, well wrapped, towards the door. Again he sat by the window, but now his mood had changed and he was sombre. He picked up the volume of Keats’s poetry, as if to recapture a lost moment, and started to read where he had left off:
     
       
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
       
I have been half in love with easeful Death;
       
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme
       
To take into the air my quiet breath;
       
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
       
To cease upon the midnight with no pain . . .
    Allington said out loud: ‘Ah, but only if it were like that.’
    He got out his pocketbook. It was bound in green cloth and was larger than was convenient, about six inches by four. Pride made special pockets inside his coats to accommodate it, with a button and a loop to ensure its safety. The pocketbook was not exactly an
aide-memoire
because there was little Allington forgot, but he liked to write things down in it, sometimes a single word, sometimes a reflection.
    Now he wrote:
John Keats died from consumption on 23 February 1821. Age 26. The squeezing of life from sick lungs, the coughing of blood.
    He was aware of being so severely wounded at the age of twenty-three that he had been much more than
half in love with easeful death
. So many had died, with lesser injuries than his. For what had he lived, for what purpose, partially incapacitated as he was?
    Pride came in and gave him a sharp look. He said, ‘You are not starting again, are you, sir?’
    ‘No, I’m better.’
    ‘What shall I do with this here picture?’
    ‘Lean it against the wall. I shan’t look at it now.’
    ‘Suppose I send round for Dan to bring you your longtailed grey. You could ride out to the country. You’re strong enough, that’s what I think. It would do you good. If you read all they books you’ll start thinking, and thinking ain’t good for you.’
     
    Quarter Day had come and gone. It was July. Captain Allington had noted the going and the subsequent returning of his fellow tenant, with a slight cessation of the besieging forces of duns and creditors in the house in Half Moon Street.
    It was a warm and sultry afternoon. He was seated at his desk, contemplating his accounts. He knew exactly what was in them. He could remember whole pages of figures without difficulty, but he liked to have his affairs in order, and order meant writing things down and making any necessary adjustments.
    His one-time mistress he had paid two months’ rent and the wages for her servants. She was about to resume her career so that was to be the end of that. He stood up and went to his bookcase. His eye fell on a volume of Wordsworth. He took it down and went to sit in the window, opening the pages at random:
     
    My heart leaps up when I behold
    A rainbow in the sky;
    So was it when my life