The Four Swans (14 page)

Hastily dropping the pin, he tiptoed from the lumber room and crept down to his study, where he sat for a long time turning ever the pages of his sermon without reading it.

Wednesday was the day on which Ross made a weekly inspection of Wheal Grace; along with Captain Henshawe. Since the accident of May ‘93 he had never left anything to chance or to the reports of other people.

This morning before they went down they had been introducing, a surface change at the mine. Tin ore was loaded on to mules for carting away to the stamps, and it had long been the custom in, the industry to fill one large sack with the ore-bearing ground, which was lifted on the shoulders of one man by two others, and the one man then carried it and threw it across the back of the mule. But these sacks when filled weighed about 3601b. and twenty-five such mules were loaded in such a way, often twice a day. Ross had known men crippled as a result of bearing this weight, and proposed that the new sacks when, bought should be half the size and the old ones as they wore out abandoned.

To his own surprise he met with opposition from the carriers themselves, who, were proud of their strength and suspicious that if the new sacks were introduced more men would be employed to earn less. It took Henshawe and himself the best part of two hours to convince them that the change would be for their own good. So it was past eleven before the inspection of the mine got under way, and nearly twelve before they reached the tunnel that Sam Carne and Peter Hoskin, were driving south on the 40 fathom level.

Ross said: `Neither of them working today?’

`Carne asked for the day off to visit his brother who has injured both legs, in a fall, so Hoskin is helping with the south adit.’

‘Sam’s work is good? He does not let his religion interfere? Well, no, give them their due, they never do that. How much further have they gone?”

`Twenty-two yards when I measured last week. They’re in hard ground and making little progress.’

Bent double, hat, candles flickering in; the dubious air, they, crawled too the end of the tunnel, where a shattered end and a pile of rubble showed the extent of the digging.

Ross squatted down, staring at the rock, rubbed it here and there with a, wet finger. `There’s mineral veins enough here and spots of ore.’

`There’s been that all along. You can see the stockwork farther back.’

`Problem is you could open this up twenty feet west and, twenty feet east and still miss a lode channel by a fathom or so. Think you it’s worth going on with?’

`Well, we can’t be too far now from the old runs of Wheal Maiden, sur. Since that was worked by your father, and profitable for a time we can’t be too far from some of those old lodes.’

‘Well yes, that was why we drove in this direction in the first place. But were any of the Maiden lodes as deep as forty fathoms?”

`Tis doubtful. And Maiden being on a hill.

`Quite … This is hard, bitter ground. I don’t like these vugs. I don’t want to risk another fall.’ :

`Oh, there’s small risk of that. You could chop a church out here and twould hold’

`Is there anything better we can put them on if we take them off, this?’

`Only shoring up Gradient Alley behind Trevethan and Martin.

`Then leave them be for another month or so: I take it there’s no risk of unwatering Maiden?’

`God forbid! Tis little likely. She was always a dry mine.’

They made their way back slowly the way they had come, and began to climb up the stepped, slanting ladders. A pin-point of light slowly enlarged itself, until it was a great mouth in the darkness; then they were out into the startling brilliance of a rainy day.

Ross stood talking with Henshawe for a few, minutes more, noticing as he spoke that a horse was tethered near his house. A visitor? He narrowed his eyes but could not recognize the horse. Its colour was pale roan= and it was finely groomed. Some new acquisition of Caroline’s? Sir Hugh Bodrugan out courting again?

From here the fine rain was blowing across the beach like smoke. The waves were lifeless, the landscape without colour or form. Two of the three tin stamps in this valley were working ears were so accustomed to the clatter and rhythmic thump that one had to make a conscious effort to hear them; the hay in the Long Field was thin this year. He must keep in touch with Basset about these farming experiments. That was if Basset wished to continue the friendship after his refusal of the nomination. It had gone off yesterday.

He had talked the matter over with Demelza first, and, true to his prediction to Dwight, her reaction had been unexpected. She had been against his accepting the offer. Although he had already wholly made up his mind to refuse, her definite stand against it had, naturally if irrationally, irritated him.

He had said: `You were so disappointed that I turned down a seat on the bench, which is a small thing, but you applaud my wish not to attempt to become a Member of Parliament, which, is a great.’

A curl had fallen across her forehead as she wrinkled it.

`Ross, you must not expect always reason from me. Often! it is what I feel, not what I think, and that sways me. But I’m not one for words.’

`Try,’ he said, `I have found you very much one for words most times.’

`Well, it is like this, Ross. ‘I think you live on a knife edge.’

`A knife. Whatever do you mean?’

`A knife. The knife is what you think you ought to do, what your - your conscience or your spirit or your mind thinks you ought to do. And if you move away from that, stray from that - what’s the

word?-then you cut yourself.’

`Pray, go on. I am wholly, fascinated:’

`No, you must not laugh. You asked me to say what I meant, and I’m trying. As a justice you would have been on the bench and sat in judgement - isn’t that right? - and helped with local laws. That I thought you could do - should do - and if you failed sometimes, you yet would not have to bend. And it is the duty of a gentleman to help in this way. Isn’t it? I would still like you to be that. But in Parliament, if what you say is true, would you not often, quite often, be asked to bend?….’ She impatiently pushed back her hair. `By bend I don’t mean bow.; I mean bend from what you think you ought, to do.’

`Deviate,’ Ross said.

`Yes. Is that it? Yes, deviate.’

`You make me sound very stern and noble.’

‘I wish I could say it better. Not stern. Not noble. Though you can be those. But you oftentimes make me feel you’re like a judge in court. And who’s in the ‘dock? You.’

Ross laughed. `And who better to be there?’

Demelza said : `Most men as they grow into middle life, it appear to me, get more and. more selfsatisfied. But you every year get more and more unselfsatisfied.’.’

`And is that your reason?’

‘My reason is I want you to be happy, Ross, and doing things you enjoy doing-and working hard and living hard. What I don’t want is to see you trying to do things you can’t do and having to do things you don’t agree with - and cutting yourself to pieces because of what you think is failure.’

`Give me a coat of armour and I’ll be all right, eh??

‘Give you a coat of that sort of armour and I’d say accept!’

He had finished the conversation off by, adding in some exasperation: `Well, my dear, your summary of my virtues and failings may be quite correct; but in honesty I must confess it is not for any of your reasons, nor really, for any of the reasons I have yet stated that I’m sure I’m right to refuse. The real crux of it is that I am, not willing to be anyone’s tame lapdog. I don’t belong in the, world of pretty behaviour and genteel fashion. For most of the time I’m happy enough, as you know to observe the courtesies - and as I grow older and more of a family man and more prosperous, the impulse to kick against the traces becomes less and less. But I reserve the right. I want to reserve the right. What I did last year in France is little different from what I did a few years before in England; but for one I am named a hero and for the other a renegade! Put me on a bench dispensing laws or in a parliament making them and I should feel the biggest hypocrite on earth!’

When he drew near the house he thought he remembered seeing the roan horse once before - last week - and he was correct.

As he went in Lieutenant Armitage rose. `Why, Ross, I hoped to see you but feared I would not. I must leave shortly.’

They shook hands-and made polite conversation. Demelza, looking slightly flushed - a circumstance so rare that Ross couldn’t fail to notice it - said

`Lieutenant Armitage has brought me over a plant from his uncle’s garden. A rare new plant which he says should go against the library wall. It’s a mag - what did you say?’

`Not strictly from my-uncle’s garden,’ said Hugh Armitage. ‘He ordered three, and they came in-pots and I persuaded him to part with one as a gift to the wife of the man who saved his nephew from a hellish captivity. I was talking to your wife of them when we met at Tehidy last week. They are best against a wall, being rather tender and coming from Carolina in the Americas.’

Ross said: `Any new plant to Demelza is like a new friend, to be cosseted and cared for. But why must you go? Stay to dinner. It has been a long ride.’

`I have been invited to dine with the Teagues. I said I would be there by two.’

`Mrs Teague still has four unmarried daughters to dispose of,’ Ross said.

Armitage smiled. `So I have been told: But I think she’ll be disappointed if she entertains hopes of that sort. Having just escaped from one prison I’m the less likely just yet to want to enter, another.’

`A sour view of marriage,’ Demelza said, smiling too.

‘Ah, Mrs Poldark, I take a sour view of marriage only because I see so many of my friends bound in unions they find tedious and restricting. I don’t take a sour view of love. For the overwhelming love of an Heloise, a Chloe, an Isolde, I would if need be, jettison everything, even life. For life is a trumpery thing at best, isn’t it? A few movements, a few words, between dark and dark. But in true love you keep company with the Gods.’

Demelza had coloured again. Ross said: `I don’t think Mrs Teague will be thinking along those lines.’

`Well,’ Hugh Armitage said, `I shall hope at least for a passable dinner.’

They went chatting to the door, examined again the fleshy, dark green, heavy-leafed plant standing in its cloam pot beside the step, admired his horse, Promised they would come and see him sometime when he could get his uncle free of this election nonsense, watched him mount and clatter over the bridge and wave at a turn of the valley.

When he was no more to be seen Ross looked round and found Demelza examining the plant.

`I forgot to ask its name again.’ `Mag, you said.’

‘Mag something. Mag - was it lina?’ ‘Magdalen perhaps.’ ‘No. I shall never remember it now.’

`It looks much like a laurel to me. I wonder if it will flourish on this coast.’

`I don’t see why not. Against a wall, he said.’

`vegetation, is different on the south coast. The soil is darker, less sandy.’

`Oh, well,’ she stood up; ‘we can try.’

As they went into the parlour Ross said: `Does he touch you, my love?’

She half glanced: up at him, with a glint of embarrassment. `Yes.’

`Deeply?’

`A little. His eyes are so dark and sad.’ `They light up when they look at you.’ ‘I know.’

`So long, as your eyes don’t light up when you look at him.’

She said : `Who were those people he mentioned? Heloise, was it?

Isolde?’

`Legendary lovers. Tristan and Isolde I know. I can’t remember who loved Heloise. Was it Abelard? My education was more practical than classical.;

‘He lives in dreams,’ Demelza said. `Yet he isn’t a dream. He’s very real.’

`I rely on your wonderful common sense always to remember that.’

‘Well … yes. What I try, to remember, is that he’s so young.’

`What? Three, four `years younger than you? That at most. I wouldn’t look on it as an unbridgeable gap.’ `I wish twere more.’

`You’d like to be old? What an ambition!’ He put his arm round her shoulders, and quickly she leaned against him. `I see,’ he commented `A tree in need of support’

‘Just a small matter shaken,’ she said.

1

A week later two gentlemen were pacing slowly up and down the great parlour of Tregothnan House. It was a big room, rather shabby, panelled in cedar, the chairs Jacobean and uncomfortable; the coats of armour needed a polish, the battle flags, hung high up, had been the prey of moths. Four small Elizabethan cannon guarded the high, carved mantelshelf.

The two gentlemen had now been waiting nearly three hours. Regularly at each hourly interval a butler appeared with canary wine and biscuits. The two men were Mr William ‘Hick, the mayor of Truro, and Mr Nicholas Warleggan, the smelter and banker. Both were in a nervous state, though it manifested itself in different ways. Mr Hick sweated, though the night was cool and the room cold. His handkerchief could well have been wrung out; he smelt of unwashed sweat which had been started into life by new excretions. Mr Warleggan preserved an exaggerated calm which was only betrayed by the clicking of his fingers.

`This is disgraceful,’ said Hick, for the tenth time. He was not a man for original remarks, and the situation had long since exhausted, his invention. `Quite disgraceful. To be invited here for seven thirty and him not here at ten! And no word! And the election tomorrow! It is altogether too bad!’

`It serves, to implement - and - confirm our decision,’ said Warleggan.

`What? Eh? Oh, yes. To be sure. Our decision.’ Hick sweated afresh. `To be sure.’

`You must calm yourself, my friend,’ Warleggan said. `You know what to say. There is nothing to fear. We are all free men.’

Free men? Yes. But a person of the Recorder’s stature and influence. This waiting makes it all, so much worse.’

‘It is not a question of the Recorder’s stature or influence, Hick. It is a question of your being here to communicate to him a decision arrived at by us all. You are only the mouthpiece, communicating to him: Ah I think perhaps we shall not now have to wait much longer…’