A Bugle For The New Day

                                                    Chapter two, part two

 Culver Hall had fallen into a pitiful state. A succession of owners had paid scant attention to it’s deteriorating condition, the gaming tables of Europe obtaining more attention over the last decade than a crumbling encumbrance in the middle of nowhere. It stood unwanted and unloved, unable to hide it’s shabbiness and it’s shame, and Ragway had looked upon his new possession determined to restore it to it’s former glory, knowing that resources beyond the reach of previous owners were available to him to make it possible. Prompting the thought that the Cavalier’s refuge had simply been waiting for him to arrive, to resurrect it and to come home.

Very little remained of the original building; Only the coach house survived from the golden age, with each successive occupant deeming it necessary to contemporise. Ragway had searched Europe for an army of specialists, hiring plasterers from Italy, carpenters from Belgium, sculptures and artists from houses of the highest repute. The antique furniture he had retained with the eye of a collector, but as he had to dress his Xanadu in the clothes of the day, he found it difficult to restrain Victorian flamboyance. All was plush, tassels and twirls, bric-a-brac and objects d’art in the highest and lowest of taste. Paintings  hung in quantity and bought by name regardless of subject, apart from works by David Cox, selected because the were landscapes of Wales, and local artist Richard Wilson.

There had been opposition from his wife Flora. The sheer loneliness of the place to which he intended to banish  her, the absence of friends, of their own class, and, it would seem, their own race. Every available argument she had used, and in the end seeing that she was making no impression, she had restored to ridiculing her husband, scoffing at his reason for buying what she saw as a gilded cage in the wilderness, She could not call on her son Hayden for support, much as he agreed with her, as his father always chose to ignore him, and Sarah, who would have been a likely ally, was away in London pursuing her Women’s Rights or whatever they were calling them now.

Flora had seen the look of conquest in his eyes many times, the unrelenting stare that frightened her, but now it contained the zeal of madness and it had compelled her to retreat into her shell and settle for the uneasy truce so often her only resort, as he showed off his adopted heritage to his business adversaries brought to the Hall so that he could crow; “Of course, we Ragway’s were here in the time of Cromwell.”

© Mark Pearson 2007

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