Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

He got up and held out his hand to pull me to my feet. Then he looked up at Belmotte Tower.

"I meant to ask you to show me over that," he said, "but there's no time now. It's more impressive than ever, at close quarters."

"Have you got used to it belonging to you yet ?" I asked.

"But it doesn't--well, not for a little matter of around thirty years.

Anyway, it takes me all my time to realize that Scoatney does."

As we walked down the mound I told him how I had imagined his first

glimpse of Scoatney, that night back in March.

"Large as it is, it had shrunk," he said.

"Do you mean you'd seen it before ?"

"Oh, yes, when I was seven. Father brought me over with him when he patched up the row with my grandfather--which unfortunately, broke out again when Father became an American citizen."

"Did you know Scoatney was going to be yours then ?"

"Good Lord, no--there were six lives between me and it.

And I loved it with a most precocious passion. I remember standing at the top of the staircase looking down on my grandfather, my father and uncles, and a cousin of my own age all at tea in the hall, and

thinking: "If they were all dead, Scoatney would belong to me."

And then rushing screaming to the nursery, appalled at my wickedness. I sometimes think I ill-wished all my relations then."

"It'd be a powerful lot of ill-wishing for a child of seven," I said.

I tried to imagine him, very small and dark, on the Scoatney stairs

where I sat watching the dancing.

"My grandfather called me "the little Yankee" which infuriated me. But I thought he was wonderful. I wish I could have seen him again before he died--perhaps I oughtn't to have waited until he agreed to it, but I didn't like to force myself on him."

Then he told me that the position had been particularly difficult

because he had never been sure if old Mr.

Cotton would leave him enough money to keep Scoatney up- the estate is entailed but the money isn't, and without it Simon would just have had to lease the house and stay in America.

"It must have been very mixing for you," I said, "not knowing whether to settle down there or fix your mind on England."

"You're dead right it was mixing--sometimes I think I shall never get un-mixed. Oh, I shall strike roots here eventually, I guess.

But I wish I could have known when I stood on those stairs."

We had come to the stile leading to the lane. He sat on the top rail

for a moment, looking at the barn.

"That's magnificent," he said.

"Wonderful old timbers. Oughtn't I to repair the roof his I'd like to be a good landlord."

I said that was our job, as we have the castle on a repairing lease.

Then we caught each other's eyes and burst out laughing.

"You won't count on us doing it this year ?" I added.

He helped me over the stile, still laughing.

Then he said:

"Listen, Cassandra, there's something I want your father to know and I don't like to tell him myself. Can you make him understand that I

don't mind at all about the rent, that I shall never mind, even if he doesn't pay a cent for the rest of his lease his I'd like him to know that I'm honoured to feel he's my tenant."

"I'd call him more of a guest than a tenant," I said, and we both laughed again. Then I thanked him and promised to tell Father.

"Do it tactfully, won't you? Don't let me sound gracious and

patronizing."

"But I do think you're gracious--the right kind of gracious.

There's a right kind of patronage, too, you know.

Perhaps Father'll dedicate his next book to you as its "only

begetter."" "What a nice child you are," he said quietly.

"Not too consciously naive?"

I swear that I said it without thinking--it just leapt from my mouth.

It was looking at the barn did it--while we talked I had been

remembering that day, gloating over the way things had changed.

His head jerked round.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing in particular," I said, lamely.

"I daresay some people think I am."

We were passing the barn. And that minute Heloise put her head out

from where I sat listening that day, and let forth a volley of barks-

she takes naps on the chaff with one ear well open for rats.

"Were you up there ?" said Simon.

I nodded. We were both of us very red.

"How much did you hear?"

"Just that, about me."

Heloise came dashing out of the barn still barking, which I hoped would mean the end of the subject; and stooping to pat her was a good way to avoid his eyes. But she instantly stopped barking, and then he bent

down and patted her, too, looking at me across her.

"I'm so terribly ashamed of myself," he said.

"I

apologize most abjectly."

"Nonsense. It did me a lot of good," I told him.

"That wasn't all that you heard, was it his Did you hear his I didn't let him finish.

"Come on, we'll be late for your brother," I said.

"Just let me get rid of my journal."

I ran off and put it in the barn, taking my time over it; and I talked very determinedly about the weather as I rejoined him.

"It's the loveliest first of May I ever remember," I said, and then made rather a business of calling for Heloise, who had disappeared.

She put her head out of the frothy cow-parsley looking like a bride.

"The country's all dressed in white lace," I said as we walked down the lane.

He was silent so long that I thought he hadn't heard me. Then suddenly he said: "What? Oh, yes--sorry. I was trying to remember what you could have heard me say about Rose."

I tried to think of the most convincing way to reassure him.

"Well, whatever it was, she doesn't know it," I said at last.

I am an honest liar when I take my time; he believed me at once.

"You wonderful child not to tell her."

I heard myself explaining to God as I always do about good, kind,

useful lies. Simon started to tell me why they "got Rose all wrong."

"It's because she's so original," he said.

"Original his Rose ?"

"Why, of course- even the way she dresses.

That frilly pink dress --and borrowing a real crinoline-was "It was--"

I meant to say "It was Topaz who thought of all that," but I stopped in mid-sentence--"pretty, wasn't it?" I finished up.

"Everything about her's pretty." He went on to talk of her for quite a quarter of a mile: how different she was from the average modern

girl--and because of that he hadn't understood her, had thought her

affected--when what she was, of course, was unique.

Everything Rose does is original, apparently, even the way she dances, inventing little steps of her own. And she is so intelligent he kindly said I was, too, but Rose is a wit (a fact not as yet disclosed to her family). As for looks- she'd have been a toast at any period of

history.

I could whole-heartedly agree about the looks. I told him I could

imagine her arriving at Bath with all the bells ringing and Beau Nash welcoming her as the reigning beauty; that fetched him considerably.

Rose lasted us until we were passing the larch wood, when he stopped

and spoke about the greenness of the larches.

"There'll be bluebells in there before long--you can see the shoots now," I told him.

He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said:

"What is it about the English countryside- why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"

He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening--I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked Father why this was

and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's

evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die.

Then he said I was probably too young to understand him;