The Four Swans (33 page)

Emma put the hook under her arm. `Well, tis all lost on me, I tell ee. Look at ‘em, look at the Methodies crawling about, pinched mouths, frowning brows, afraid to say boo to a goose, case the goose is Satan in disguise - are they happy? Cursed if I can see it!’

Drake sighed. `We must do what we think best, sister. The world have gone sour on me, as doubtless you will have heard. It is not in me to give you any answer. I’m that sorry you’ve become taken up with Sam. I’m sorry for your sake and I’m sorry for his. But if you can find nothing in his promises then I b’lieve there’s nothing that’ll help you with him at all.’

Emma stood there retying the knot in her scarf. `Down a mine,’ she said. `That’s what did ought to happen to the both of you. Cast down a mine with a lot of water in it so’s you’d both drown.’

She went off, leaving Drake staring after her. He did not go in until her figure had dwindled away in the distance of the hill.

I

Except for a short spell around Christmas, it was a beautiful winter. Compared to that of two years ago England was a different island set in a friendlier sea. All through the worst months frosty nights were followed by days of hazy sunshine; and in Cornwall there was not even frost. Primroses bloomed all winter, birds sang, winds were mainly easterly and light.

Ross and Demelza and both children bathed on the 21st December. The water was icy to get in but the air delicious to come out into, and while they rubbed themselves with towels the low sun peered over the sea, casting long cadaverous shadows of themselves across the silent beach. Then indoors, giggling and still damp, to stand before the fire and sup bowls of steaming soup and sip toddy. It was Jeremy’s first taste of spirituous liquor and it went to his head and he lay on the settle shrieking with laughter while Clowance gazed gravely at her brother thinking he had gone off his head.

The one break in the good weather came at Christmas with snowflakes and a howling easterly gale, and Ross had visions of another such year’s beginning as January ‘95, but in less than a week the storm was over and the sun came out again.

Save for the mildness of the weather there was little to rejoice in. Lord Malmesbury, sent to Paris to discuss French terms for a European peace settlement, was kept on a string until mid-December and then summarily dismissed. The Directory did not want peace. Spain had at last declared war on their side. Corsica had been taken, the French landing at one end of the island as the British left it at the other. Catherine of Russia was dead and her successor, Tsar Paul, a neurotic and a tyrant, had no interest in pulling English irons out of the fire. The day before Malmesbury was sent home a French fleet of forty-three ships, with sixteen thousand troops aboard under the redoubtable young Hoche, slipped out of Brest, dodged the British fleet and sailed to invade an Ireland waiting to be liberated.

Only Captain Sir Edward Pellew, the hero of the fight in which Dwight was captured, was once again in the right place at the right time and drove his solitary frigate into the heart of the French fleet during the night, blazing off with everything he’d got and causing confusion, panic and three enemy ships to run on the rocks. But most of the invading armada reached Bantry Bay and while Ross and Demelza were enjoying their bathe were assembling to proceed up the bay to land their troops. Thereupon came the Christmas gale, more valuable to England than all her blockading squadrons; and blew for a week, making any sort of landing impossible; and in disappointment the French fleet turned for home.

Yet when the escape became known, there was despondency in England not relief. If such an occurrence could happen once, when might it not happen again? Belief in the blockade was shaken. Belief in the omniscience of the British navy was lost. More banks suspended payment and Consols fell to 53.

Nothing more was heard at Nampara of Hugh Armitage, and his name seldom came up in conversation. But Ross wondered if his shadow had come between them. It never had, while he was here; they had talked once or twice about him, about his infatuation for Demelza, about her feeling of vulnerability, like true lovers discussing something which had arisen and needed to be considered, yet without any feeling of there being a real menace in it towards their own love. That was while he was here. After he was gone it had at first been just the same; but it seemed to Ross that something in that last letter of Hugh’s in September had unsettled Demelza and she had slightly withdrawn from the frank companionship of most times.

He had asked her twice if anything was amiss, not of course mentioning Hugh’s name, and each time she had said no. The change in her indeed was so slight that someone less close to her would have noticed nothing. She went about in the same way as ever, cheerful, lively, talkative, witty, enjoying life and enjoying her children. The furnishings for the new library were coming on well, and she took interest in seeing everything was right. Twice she rode to Truro with him about the chairs. Other times they shopped together in Padstow and Penryn. They had the Enyses to dinner. She was always busy. Twice in love-making she turned her mouth away from him.

In January to his very considerable annoyance Ross learned that the Reverend Osborne Whitworth had been appointed to the living of Sawle-with-Grambler. The following week, the weather being so open, Mr. Whitworth rode over with his wife and sister-in-law, slept with the elderly Chynoweths at Trenwith, and duly read himself in. It was learned that he had decided to increase the Odgers’s stipend to Ł45 a year.

`It shows,’ Ross said, `what value can be placed on Lord Falmouth’s promise of assistance.’

`Why? Did you ask him?’

`Yes. When we were there in July. He said he would make a note of it.’

‘I expect he forgot, Ross. I expect he’s too big a, man to ask for things like that.’

`Not, I would imagine, if they were of any advantage to himself.’

`How do you suppose Ossie has got it, then?’

`He may have influence with the Dean and Chapter - his mother was a Godolphin. And of course George, occupying the largest house in the parish and being a Member of Parliament…’

`Well, I suppose Elizabeth will, be pleased, since it will be preferment for her cousin’s husband.’

`Odgers will not be pleased: It was his one hope of a comfortable genteel life. Now he knows he must slave and scrape for the rest of his days.’

`Would you be, able to have more influence, Ross, if you were a Member of Parliament?’

`Who knows? God knows. I am not and shall never be.’ `Never is a long time.’

`Anyway, you consider me unsuited to hold such an office.’

‘Twas you refused, Ross, not me. I know you asked me before you said no, and we talked of it; but you’d really decided to say no before ever you spoke to me, hadn’t you? I thought-what it was in me to-think-and I said to you that you had chosen right if you go on all the time being judge and jury to-condemn yourself.’

`Yes, yes, I remember the coat of armour. Well, my dear, perhaps one of these days, I shall grow one and become a borough monger and conspire with the best. Perhaps I shall be able to regulate, order and arrange my prickly conscience if I contrive benefits only for my friends and not for myself, and refuse any payment for them. That way my nobility of soul will shine through.’

`It is not so much that I care vastly for Mr Odgers,’ Demelza said. `He’s a teasey little man. But Mrs Odgers is so hard worked, and the children so down-at-heel. And also Ossie Whitworth thinks so highly of himself already that it seem a pity he will have reason to be still more satisfied.’

Ossie was indeed satisfied. As soon as he was summoned to Exeter to be collated he wrote assiduous letters of thanks to Conan Godolphin, George. Warleggan, and all others who had assisted him in the struggle; for he was nothing if not punctilious about his own affairs, and one never knew when one might need one’s friends again. It was a very pleasant weekend, the last in January, that he spent at Trenwith, and with his two women and a groom beside him he knew it made a distinguished cavalcade.

It was Morwenna’s first long trip since her illness but she stood the ride well. Her health had improved steadily from the time of Dwight’s ministrations. True in September there had been a relapse that had lasted two weeks; she had retired to bed and had refused to speak to anyone in the house - not even Rowella, certainly not Ossie. Dr Behenna had declared it a light paludal fever caught from the river, and had given her purges and Peruvian bark. This treatment had had a good effect and had restored the family’s faith in their medical man.

And from then on, although quiet and sad, she had gained strength, and this visit to Trenwith showed her to be in perfect good health again. The return to this house was a test of another sort; every room had some memory in it of the tragedy of her young love. Knowing of Drake’s nearness, she almost yielded to the temptation to rise very early on the Sunday morning and walk to see him, but at the last her nerve failed. Ossie might wake before she returned and then there would be great trouble. And, in any event, what could it profit either Drake or herself to rub their wounds raw again? She knew of his enduring love; he knew of hers; it must be enough.

It was a full church, with the Reverend Clarence Odgers fussing about his new vicar and assisting in the service. Ossie preached 1 Tim: 6 (U.C.P.). `Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, suppose that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.’ He thought it went well. It was a timely sermon at this period of unrest. (There had been another food riot at St Just last week.) He had thought of collecting perhaps fifty of his sermons and having them published. There was a handy little printer he had met in Exeter who would keep the costs down, and it did a man’s name good to have some published work on sale. He fancied he had made a good impression on the new Archdeacon and had invited him to stay with them at St Margaret’s when he came round on his next visitation.

After church he met the rest of the Odgers family, and they all trooped back to Trenwith for dinner. Elizabeth had sent written instructions to the servants to prepare a meal for twenty, but, the Chynoweths being incapable of overseeing anything, it was all badly arranged. Ossie determined to have a word with George about it when next they met.

They went, home on the Monday morning, Ossie having left a list of matters which Odgers was at once to see to: overgrown churchyard, ill-fitting door, cracked window, mice in vestry, fabric over altar, holes in curate’s cassock, inattention of choir during sermon, omitting. words from service and use of erroneous doctrine. There were other things Ossie had noticed but he thought that would do to begin.

As soon as they reached home Morwenna upstairs to see how John Conan had fared in her absence, and Ossie, who had been unable to keep his eyes off Rowella’s thin back all the way home, beckoned her into his study.

She came demurely, stood just inside the door, eyes glinting out at the trees and the river.

`Shut the door,’ he said with a hint of impatience. `Yes, Vicar.’

He said `It may be late tonight. It is becoming more and more difficult.. ‘

`Whenever you say.’

`It is not whenever I say, as you well know. Else it would be now!’

`Yes, it would, be nice now,’ she said.

His look was half lust and half anger. ‘Do not ….you must not….’

`What, Vicar?’

He brushed some dust from his coat, put his hands in their favourite position behind his back and, stared at her.

`Go, now. Go and help your sister. It is improper that we should be much alone. But I thought I must tell you about tonight. It must be tonight, you understand.’

`Yes, she said, nodding. `Tonight.’

And it was that night, after he had had his way with her, that she told him she was going to have a baby.

III

She wept in his arms, while he wished he, had the strength to throw her in the river.

It seemed sometimes to, him that God was trying him too highly. True his call had not been great - his mother, finding him unable to pass the sort of examinations that the law entailed, had chosen the ministry as a suitable alternative for the son of a judge - but, once so chosen, he had pursued a highly successful career in it; he had read a good deal of ecclesiastical law and, among the natural frivolities of a moderately well-to-do young gentleman, he had sought and obtained preferment which did not at all seem undeserved.’

But nature had endowed him with powerful appetites, and marriage had been a necessity if he were to obey the relevant doctrines of the church. The death of his first wife had been followed by marriage to a second who, after the birth of their child, had been forbidden him on the strictest medical advice. Then and there present, occupying a seat at his dining table, and presently coming wholly to occupy his thoughts, was this thin rake of a girl with the most astonishing figure and appetites of her own, who had lured him with her mock-modest wiles, enticed him upstairs with learned talk of Greek heroes and had then unclothed herself and thrown herself at him as if, instead of being a dean’s daughter, she had been the vilest wanton off the streets.

So he had become wrapped in her toils, bound hand and foot by her lures and his own deprivations. So he had allowed himself to become seduced by a wanton child. So he had broken the seventh commandment and offended against all the laws of the society of which he conceived himself to be a leader.

This far it had happened, but this far it had happened in secret. Now, now, this Medusa weeping on his shoulder would shortly begin to bear within her body, in such a way as could not be disguised, the evidence of her shame. And the evidence of his guilt. His guilt. For all to see. His very special guilt in having contracted a liaison with a woman, scarcely more than a child, who was his own wife’s sister. It was intolerable, impossible. The church, the Archdeacon, the churchwardens … What would happen to his preferment, even to his position in the church at all?