The Black Moon (26 page)

`Very soon we were surrounded and escorted inland by French armed Police and lodged in a school before being marched to our present Prison the following evening, so I saw little of the plight of the
Heros;
but she had thirty English prisoners on board whom I have since met and treated, and they tell me that she struck in a less favourable situation than we did, that complete panic thereupon reigned aboard, and that it was four days before the last was brought ashore, leaving many dead aboard from their privations and the sea around littered with corpses. Near four hundred perished from this Vessel alone.

`Well, we have been in this Prison ever since, and I at least have been fortunate in that I have never had cause to be idle. With three surgeons only among many thousand, and the usual outcrop of bilious fevers and scrofulous conditions resulting from bad food and close confinement, we have none of us lacked for Occupation. So far there seems to have been no talk of parole or repatriation or Exchange. None of the senior officers has been freed or ransomed or exchanged; and there are in the prison English ladies, one at least titled, the like of whom you would consider the French would have no purpose in retaining, but here they still remain.

`My own Caroline, this is no love-letter, as you will by now have seen. If this reaches you it will at least give an Account of what has happened through this long Year. I can only say that' amid all the trials of this present time you are never absent from my thought, that the locket you gave me is always warm against my Heart, and that, however long this separation continues, it cannot alter my love for you and my devotion.

`Good night, Caroline, my love.

'Your devoted,

Dwight.'

`I have left word with the Admiralty,' said Caroline, 'regarding a ransom. But at present they do not advise it;' she lifte
d an ironical eyebrow at Ross;
as foreseen by you. They are trying to arrange exchanges, but up to now they have not been successful with prisoners held in Brittany.'

'Now that the French are so victorious against other countries,' Ross said, `it may be that they will be able to turn
their attention, to controlling their own:'

Nevertheless he did not privately rejoice as m
uch as Caroline and Demelza
were doing The Admiralty list and the letter only confirmed what he, had discovered from Clisson six months ago. In the meantime, and quite recently, he had received reports fr
om Brittany of the conditions
of the prisoner-of-war camps at Quiberon and elsewhere along the coast. Even if one allowed for, a measure of exaggeration, the accounts were horrifying. So, while he showed a pleased face to the two women and joined with them in speculating on Dwight's release, he felt that the chances of their seeing the young surgeon home alive and well were not more than even, and that the urgency to arrange an exchange or a ransom was greater than either of them realized.

Ross continued his weekly visits to Agatha until early April.Then one day when he called on her she said:

`They be back.' -

'Who? George?' Ross said, startled in spite of himself, for the boldest of us likes to be prepared within himself for trouble.

`Nay. The Chynoweths - the old folk. And Geoffrey Charles and his governess.'

Ross found time to admire her reference to the old folk.

`And George and Elizabeth?'

`Next week or the week after, they say. But they said they'd be home for Easter, and now that's by.'

Ross put his head
near to the whiskery old face and shouted
: `You know that when he returns my visits to you must necessarily cease.'

`Aye. Shame on him. Cess to him. Shite take him.' Agatha stroked her black cat while uttering these curses. Ross thought that an earlier generation would have greatly feared her. `Ross, boy, I've a thing to say afore ye go. Mind you the tenth of August?'

`The tenth? I do not recall it. Oh ... but it is your birthday....

Ag
atha's mouth quivered above her
purple gums. `My hundredth. That's what I been living for. No Poldark hasn't
ever reached it afore: Nor none-beyond-ninety, so far as
know: There was Rebecca; Ch
arles Vivian's sister, but she diced of a bursten and
rupture well afore her ninety-first. And she were the eldest by long strides. Till me. And now Agatha Poldark's going on for a hundred! Four months more, that's all I got to stay, Think on that!'

Ross made appropriate noises. The old woman's mouth was working with excitement as if she were, going to have a fit.

`So ... my son. On the 10th August I be going to have a party.
Eh? Eh? What's that you say? A
party! Twill cost no money to that tight-fisted gale that Elizabeth's wed. I've got money. Not much, mind, but more'n enough for that . . My fathe
r left me a little nest egg in
three per cents an' it's been adding on ever since. I give some to Francis last week but there's still some left.' She gasped and rested a minute, trying to get her generations right and resting and gathering her strength for the next effort. Her whiskers seemed to bristle. `George can't stop me. Twould get all about the county that he'd stopped me. I'll have all my friends - them I've not seen for yea
rs and years. And I'll have the
neighbours, all the
neighbours, and
and a big cake. You and your little bud'll be invited. And that tall long lean thin red-haired sprig of a gel you brought here Christmas. And your childer -
I want to see your childer afore I die. So mind that. Mind August tenth!'

Ross patted her head. It was the longest speech he remembered from Aunt Agatha. 'I'll remember. We shall come. Now rest or you will tire yourself. See, the weather's relenting at last, and in another week or so it will be warm enough for you to get out in the garden.'

On his way downstairs he met a girl he had not seen before.

`Miss Chynoweth?'

Morwenna had a rather unusual short-stepped tripping
walk, which probably came from being unable to see very
far ahead of her. She peered up at him.

`Mr Pol - Captain Poldark, is it?' 'You are just from Truro, I believe?'

`We came on Tuesday. Just after the holiday.'

So this was the girl Drake had a taking for. Not pretty.

But demure. And fine eyes. But they were a little swollen. `You are all well in Truro?' `Some have had influenza. And baby Valentine has, been
dangerously ill in rickets but is better Thank you.'

Had she been frettin
g for Drake? `I have just been;
visiting, Miss Agatha Poldark. She keeps in fair fettle, considering her
age.

'Yes. I thought she looked
better than when we left. She has stood the weather uncommon well.'

`While you have all been away,' Ross said, `I have visited her weekly. The, servants were becoming idle and neglectful. Such a visit was necessary as there was no one of her family left behind.'

Morwenna nodded but did not speak.

`Now you are back I must discontinue these calls. As you will know, Mr Warleggan does not welcome me here. So this will be my last visit. Can I rely on you to see that Miss Poldark is well cared for until Mr and Mrs W
arleggan return?'

She flushed very easily. `Of course, sir. And Mr Chynoweth is about. We shall make sure that she is not neglected.' ,

`Or left entirely alone.'

`Or left entirely alone.',

`Thank you.' He took her hand. I
t was cool and clammy. She was
not at all like Elizabeth.. No poise, None. of that delicate patrician beauty.

`Good-bye, Miss Chynoweth.'

She answered him very quietly and watched him go.

It had been a desperate tw
o weeks. Her first refusal to
accept the arranged marriage had taken place with Elizabeth only on the morning following the evening when she was first told of it. Dry-eyed now, she had argued as rationally as she knew how. Deeply appreciative of their thoughts for her future great opportunity, she knew ... position in society . . but marriage was something she wa
s not yet prepared for. In one y
ear, two years perhaps, even if then so favourable a match was not forthcoming. She was happy with them; indeed she might never marry; she had thought often of going into a convent. At present she wished more than anything to stay with Geoffrey Charles. It seemed vitally importan
t to her that she should finish
her task with him before even thinking of anything else.

She detected in Elizabeth's eyes for the first time a flicker of sympathy
-
though it might have been there before, it had
not shown. The meeting ended in
a deadlock but with just a gleam of hope.

Not so her interview with George that evening. In twelve
months
they had bad few dir
ect personal conversations with
each other, and this was like no other that had preceded it. Although Elizabeth was present she took virtually no part. He did not storm, he was not even angry
-
she would almost have preferred it had he been so. He just casually, politely but authoritatively, swept her objection aside. He might have been her father announcing that he had found her a place in a school and she, was to start next month. That she preferred to stay at home and play with the baby was understandable enough, but that was not how the world went on. It was necessary to grow up.

She found herself arguing against something that in George's eyes had already happened. She had been given in marriage. Her place in the school was booked. Tears, fears, some distress was natural. It would pass. Mr Osborne Whitworth was calling at four tomorrow and would take tea with her alone.

Panic nearly led her into complete defiance; but on the brink she was intimidated by George's authority. He was thirty-five, rich, influential and an altogether formidable personality. She was only just eighteen, scared of him, and a long way from home. She tried instead to hedge. She knew, she said, nothing yet of what her mother would say,
and after all it was her mother,
whose word carried the most weight with her. In any case, whatever her mother said, she needed time. She needed a month, two months, three months perhaps. Time to adjust herself to thoughts of marriage. Time for this, that and the other: she invented excuses, some of them reasonable, others that would not bear examination.

George did not bother to examine them. He was content enough that he had made the first breach, that she had made the first concession. Thereafter it would all follow as it had been planned. His only concession to the
objections was to call the Rev
Mr Whitworth into his office for five minutes when he came to take tea the following day and to warn him that his bride-to-be was a little high-strung and should be given time to adjust herself.

Ossie was not nervous. Neither was he of all high-strung. A sturdy young man, with heavy legs that might have belonged to a sailor, he was well aware of his good looks, his good birth, his good voice and his-wide knowledge of the most fashionable clothes for men. His appointment to the church had only marginally curbed the last of these attri
bu
tes, and
not at all the first three. His
experience of women had been not unextensive but had been plainly confined to the jelly houses of Oxford and to his first
wife, on whom' he had bestowed
his
attentions twice weekly until
she died of it. Since Truro was a small place and his face and his cloth already too well known, he had need of
another wife for more personal
reasons than the care of his two motherless children.

From the start he had found Morwenna a pleasant person to lead out on to the floor for a gavotte, and to sit in a drawing-room with and be handed cakes. He did not in fact care all that much for her face-though he admitted that her modest expression was very suitable for a cleric's wife. But her body was a different matter. For some days now he had been thinking carefully of the swell of her breasts under the prim grey muslin blouse, of the slimness of her waist, of her long young legs, of her surprisingly small, slippered feet. He had an odd partiality for women's feet. The thought of the possession of all this, the exclusive and personal possession of all this, had recently interfered with the concentration of his prayers. But of course he had not allowed such thoughts to gain any hold until he was sure also of the personal possession of £3000.

He felt now that marriage to this young woman at an early date was necessary to clear his mind of the sick fancies circulating there.

But the meeting with his affianced bride did not go off quite so well as he had expected it to. Once he had her alone, which privilege was allowed him immediately after tea, he continued his monopoly of the conversation, at first on a casual note, telling her in detail of a hand of whist he had played the night before. If his partner had not led the king of spades on the second round he would scarce have known which way to look for it, but thereafter, by drawing trumps, they had made twelve tricks between them-and their opponents had held ace, king of hearts and ace of diamonds. He had cleared £18 on the evening, and none so down in the mouth as Willie Hick, who neve
r could bear to be the loser !

Ossie laughed long at the memory and, to be polite, Morwenna briefly joined in. Did Miss Chynoweth play whist, he asked? Miss Chynoweth did not. This depressed him a moment, but then, recollecting the object of his call, he resumed on a lower and more romantic note. He told
Morwenna that she must overcome her Sur
prise that he had' noted her in the way
he had, but that in fact ever since he set eyes on her at the Cardew ball he had been determined to make her his own. Unlike Sam Carne, Osborne Whitworth seldom introduced God into his daily conversation, but at this point he stated that he felt God had guided him to accept Mr Warleggan's invitation to the ball when all his normal instincts, as a recently bereaved husband and father, had urged him to refuse. `Desolate as I then was,' he said, `I felt you had been sent into my life to comfort me, to console me, to be my new helpmeet and my wife, and to be the mother, the new mother, for Sarah and Anne. It was a happy day for me when I found my sentiments returned. You will find the vicarage warm and comfortable. A little neglected
- there is dry rot in two rooms and one of the chimneys needs renewal-but now we shall soon put-that right.'

While saying this he had been standing with his back to
the fire, hands behind his back and the tails of his cut-away
silk coat hanging forward over his arms. His violet gloves
were on the table beside him. Morwenna struggled to find
something to say. Her impulse was to burst into tears and run from the room; but she had been treated so much as a child in her arguments with George and Elizabeth that she would not now on any account act like one. Instead, without looking at
him, she muttered something to
the effect that she was not at all sure that his sentiments were returned: It was the nearest she could get, she found, to an outright rejection. Being a modest girl, in whom further modesty had been instilled as a Christian virtue by both her father and her mother, she found herself complimented against her will by his proposal; and although she was adamantly against it, she racked her brains as to how she could conv
ince Ossie that she was not for
him, without hurting his feelings.

It didn't work. Ossie so far unbent from his position as master of their future destinies as to take her hand and kiss it. `It is a natural feeling, Miss Chynoweth - Morwenna - it is a natural feeling. All women
-
all good women, that is - come to marriage with some hesitation and shyness. But the sentiment
-
will be returned, I do assure you. Not only am I a c
lerk in holy orders, I am a man
of feeling. You have nothing to fear from me. Our, love will grow together. I shall tend it and see that it grows.'

Morwenna withdrew her hand. During this avowal she had
glanced up at her suitor's face and seen a momentary expr
ession in his eyes that a more
experienced woman would have recognised as lust. She saw it only briefly and as, something rather startling and dislikeable. Stumbling and embarrassed, she began again. Part hostile towards him, part apologetic, she told him that she did not in fact return his sentiments at all, and that she feared she might never do so. Then, seeing his face again and aware that she had at least partly conveyed her meaning
to him through the thick haze
of his conceit, she timidly compromised and said that more than anything she needed time. It was the old plea, that which she had put forward to George. Time, to her, meant everything. She felt if the momentum
for
the marriage arrangement could only be arrested, then it might creak to a halt in due course of its own accord. To put off, in her weak position, to postpone was all.

So Osborne went away, a dissatis
fied and somewhat offended man.
He did not, of course, take the refusal too seriously; he only blamed George and Elizabeth for not having sufficiently prepared the ground. He knew that it would all come right in the end. But he was aware, dimly aware, that there was a core of resolve in this slim, shy girl, and that it had,
to be tactfully overcome before
a wedding day could be fixed. For the moment he would have to be content with his sick fancies.

Thereafter another terrible week for Morwenna. A letter came from her mother to Elizabeth saying how delighted she was at the news. The two elder Chynoweths, appraised of the situation late in the day - as they w
ere about most things approved
the match and added their congratulations on its arrangement. The only grain of comfort was that her mother wrote in her letter that she had not received her usual letter from her daughter that week and was awaiting it.