The Twisted Sword (24 page)

On a fine Thursday, a week before Demelza left for Cornwall, Lieutenant Christopher Havergal called on her at Lansdowne House and asked her permission to pay his attentions to IsabellaRose. Demelza, who had been trying to concentrate on reading a book - a novel - recommended by Lady Isabel Fitzmaurice, picked the book up again, found a spill to mark her place, and then put it back on the table. Your attentions, Lieutenant Havergal? I'm not sure what that... It can't mean what I think it mean.'

'It means that eventually I wish to ask IsabellaRose's hand in marriage.'

You - are not serious, Lieutenant?'

He coughed into his hand. Yes, ma'am. Very serious indeed.'

Demelza perceived that he had had his hair cut and his moustache trimmed. His uniform too was new. You are asking ... my permission to - to - to ...' She could not say it.

'Indeed, Lady Poldark. I am sorry if it comes as such a a surprise to you.'

Demelza also observed that he was nervous. Nervous! Lieutenant Christopher Havergal, nervous!

'I still don't quite understand. Do you know how old my daughter is?'

Yes, ma'am. It is quite incredible. Everyone takes her for seventeen. But I do know how old she is. May I sit down and be allowed to explain myself?'

Demelza waved her hand weakly towards a chair. He sat on the edge of it, coughed again. His moustache was still long enough to quiver when he coughed.

'I am not suggesting, Lady Poldark, I could not and would not dare to suggest an early marriage. But perhaps in two years, when she is fifteen... Until then a Betrothal... That is what I would like more than anything in the world. What we would like

'So IsabellaRose knows of this - this proposal of yours?'

'Oh yes, ma'am. We talked of it before she left for Cornwall.'

'And she would like to marry you?'

Yes, ma'am. It seems to be ... to be her dearest wish.'

No wonder the little monkey had seemed so bouncy when she climbed into the coach with Caroline.

'I am leaving for Flanders tomorrow,' said Havergal.

'Since Bella left I have been trying to summon up the courage to call. You will see I have left it to the last minute. It means so much to me that I have shirked putting my suit to the test.'

'But Lieutenant Havergal--'

'Pray call me Christopher if you will, ma'am.'

'But Christopher, what you ask is impossible! Although in some ways she seem so mature, she is scarce out of childhood! At that age one is - fanciful, light-hearted, just beginning life. To suggest she would know her own mind so soon, on such an important matter as this - oh, I am sure she thinks she does, but in three months she will see some other young man and transfer all her romantic ideals to him! It is - natural! Oh, I am sorry to say this, but may I ask you how often you have been in and out of love with some pretty girl since you were thirteen?'

He had very nice eyes when he looked at you directly; no wonder the naughty Bella had a fancy for him.

'Often, Lady Poldark. I have met many pretty girls - and - if it does not offend you to say so -- have had three of them as my mistresses - one of them Portuguese. Many of them have delighted me, but none before has ever touched my heart.'

Demelza glanced round the enormous room with its high windows and its heavy furnishings. Her visit to Lansdowne House was not a great success. Lady Isabel could not have been sweeter, indeed seemed delighted with her company; but it came as strange at the best of times for Demelza to do nothing but sit and read or take a constitutional round Berkeley Square or make polite conversation at a tea-table; And this was not the best of times. Her whole life was disrupted, and the proper way, the only way, to counter such disruption was in work, sheer physical work such as digging, weeding, beating a carpet; or even milking a cow and carrying the pail back and forth from the dairy. Inaction bred the strangest fancies. She was not happy here but was staying until her allotted time was up.

'Forgive me, Lady Poldark,' this handsome elegant droopy young man said, reclaiming her attention; 'you will think it beyond the world presumptuous in me to say this, but I believe you do not yet quite realize what an extraordinary young woman your daughter is. Have you heard her voice? But of course you have! But perhaps you do not realize what an extraordinary fascination and range it has! She must do something with it! Perhaps she should go on the stage - or into opera. She would be invaluable, unique, in some branch of the world of entertainment, the musical world. She has a great future in front of her!'

'Married to you?' Demelza was ashamed of the question but it bubbled up in her.

'I think so, ma'am. I think so. Of course we have this little trouble with Boney to settle first. Who knows, I may not survive? And then our betrothal would be irrevocably broken. But if I survive, and when it is over, I have no intention of making the army my permanent career. I shall live in London and pursue some other career.'

"You have money?' Dear life, she thought, what's come over me? 'Tesn't right, 'tesn't proper. Shades of Jud!

'Enough money to live on,' said Havergal. 'Some expectations. I read for the bar but did not progress far enough. It could be taken up again. You will see, Lady Poldark, that I do not pretend a special eligibility. But I sincerely believe that if Bella were married to me I could bring her talents to the notice of influential men who would know how to make the best of them.'

Demelza picked up her book. It would soon be four o'clock and Lady Isabel, having taken her rest, would be ready for tea; bright-eyed and chatty and deaf and rather sweet and rather boring.

'Christopher,' she said. 'In the first place I could not possibly let you become betrothed to IsabellaRose without her father's consent, and that at present is impossible to obtain. You see. In the second place, although I find you likeable and personable I do not think you have quite played fair with us by engaging the affections of a little girl who is still too impressionable to know her own mind--'

'Lady Poldark!--'

'Oh, I know what you are going to say. It was mutual between the both of you. I well can guess how Bella would need no leading on. But you are - twenty-one, is it?, almost twenty-two - you are good-looking, a dashing officer, a - a young man of experience; how could she fail to be swept off her feet? You have not played quite fair with us and you must - must understand the - the consequences. I cannot and will not give permission for any such betrothal like you suggest! It is not possible and pray forget it!'

He sat with his long fair hair falling over his face. Then he looked up and grinned at her - a really wicked grin.

'So be it, ma'am. Perhaps the permission I sought was too much to expect. Were I in your position I believe I might feel the same. So let us leave it a while. I will go now. But I trust that if, in a year or two years, your daughter and I should meet again and be of the same mind, you would not find me so personally distasteful or dislikeable as to forbid us your approval?'

She looked at him, part hostile, part won over.

'I cannot say, Lieutenant Havergal. Nor can I speak for my husband. I do not suppose he will at all approve. But what may or may not happen in the future I have no idea. I can only ask you pray to forget about anything you have said to me for a long time to come.'

II

The Royal Standard was the principal hotel in Falmouth. It had a billiards room with fine views of the harbour and a large coffee room, also on the first floor, which was the meeting place for the seafaring folk of the town, though generally speaking it was the captains and masters and agents and factors who met there, not the ordinary seamen. Stephen went regularly and had made it his business to be popular; he had an easy friendly manner, didn't push where he saw he was not wanted, and stood his round. Occasionally he now took Jason with him. On the Thursday on which Christopher Havergal was putting his proposition to Demelza the room was crowded to its limits, for the weather had turned unfriendly: hazy cloud with a strong southeasterly half gale which was keeping around sixty sail embayed in the Carrick Roads. Chiefly it was a West Indian convoy, and not only were the crews ashore but the passengers, putting up at various lodging houses of doubtful excellence and crowding the narrow streets during the daylight hours as they sought some distraction from the delay. With only two days to go before the axe Stephen was not the best company, but in Jason's presence he always put on a show; pride in his son's admiration for him impelled him to make the effort. He had not told Jason of the impending crash, but during the evening the young man got a fair idea that trouble of some sort was impending.

'What's amiss, Fa-Uncle?' he said in an undertone after Captain Buller had left. 'Why ask him?'

'Because the Queen Charlottes being refitted for taking on the New York run -- now the war's over. He'll be signing up crew early next month, and there'll be plenty applying. He's got a good reputation and the money's good.'

'I don't want to join the Packet Service,' said Jason. 'I don't want to work for anyone but you. I know I wasn't needed on the Chasse - or Blarney did not want for me to be mate -- but I'm willing enough to sail as an ordinary seaman on the Adolphus.'

'Aye, lad,' said Stephen. 'I've no doubt ye are.'

'There's something serious wrong, isn't there. Adolphus has been ready a week an' she's not yet victualled.'

'Nothing to be gained by taking on stores while we're all wind bound. Look at the masters in this room. Everyone's held up.'

Yes, but if the wind came off at dawn tomorrow they'd all be away by the first tide. We could not be.'

'Mind your own business,' said Stephen, and gulped at his ale. But his voice was not sharp. They listened together to two captains talking at the next table.

'... the breeze died away and we was befogged and becalmed for nigh on ten days. Man, ye wouldna' believe it but ye could hear sailors talking in other vessels and never see sight o' them. Then when the fog lifted we might ha'

been part of an armada. Fourteen of 'em we counted gathered there like a flock of sheep by the calm . ..'

Jason said: 'I heard you were thinking o' selling Chasse Marie.'

'Who told ye that?'

'It was a word just dropped. Are we doing badly, father?'

'It is not our fault. I need time, Jason, and I can't buy time.'

'Time for what?'

'No matter. You will find out soon enough.'

'A hundred and fifty-eight barrels of tar,' a voice said near to them. 'Fifty-nine hogsheads of tobacco. Five hundred and fifty mats. Eighty wainscot logs. Clapboards. Laden to the gunnels, we were, and who should come up but this French privateer?'

The Carringtons listened in silence to the story. Jason said: 'So we're at war with France again.'

'Not yet. I don't know. We may be. But Harrison's talking about the winter before last. I've heard this story before.'

Jason said: 'But it said in the paper last week. It said Parliament said there was a state of war. And it said in another part of the paper that no ships are to go to Ostend except in convoy because o' the French privateers.'

'The lad's right,' said a beery old man, leaning over from the next table. 'They'll be issuing Letters of Marque from this side of the Channel before you know. Wish I was younger. I'd go after some pickings.'

Jason looked at his father who, never down for too long, laughed and slapped the boy on the back.

'Wish we could too. Maybe after the next few weeks, after the dust has settled, we'll go adventuring on our own.'

'What is wrong with Adolphus?' persisted Jason.

'Ah ... There's the rub, boy, there's the rub. Drink up, we must be going.'

Another conversation drifted to them from a large hairy, good-tempered man who might have German or Scandinavian blood.

'I picked up with the Neptune in December just before we got the Trade Winds, and for twenty-two days we never lost sight of each other, so even balanced was our rate of sailing. I was just ahead all the time; we were carrying topmast studding sails, but alas on the twenty-first day King Wind said we could carry them no longer and carried them off. Ha! ha! ha! No captain likes to be outdone, me least of all. So the next night we had supper together, McGennis and me. A Liverpool man but no worse for that. Ha! ha! ha! He told me he was homeward bound after a successful trip ... Thank you, Tonkin. Here's to your health ... A successful trip. Best part of it, he said, was when he was looking for wood and produce in the Gaboon River. Traders came aboard and offered him thirteen slaves. He took 'em. Carried them across and sold 'em to the Portuguese slave traders. Made more, he said, by this than all his commissions and adventures besides ...'

There was what passed for a brief silence in the noisy coffee room.

"Tis a felony now, carr'ing slaves,' said a strongly Cornish voice. 'The law were brought in a few year ago, my dear. 'Tis profitable, I agree, but not if you get ten years'

transportation for et.'

'If you get caught, true enough,' said the big man. 'But McGennis was not caught.'

'In Bristol,' said Stephen, 'I'm told they have a device of selling their ships to the Portuguese. Not really selling but a device, ye understand. Then they change their names and sail under the Portuguese flag. 'Tis dangerous, but the profits are huge.'

'I'd have no hand in it,' said a man called Fox. 'It would be moral blood money. A man who still trades in slaves is no better than a pirate.'

Jason said in an undertone: 'I wouldn't care. If we don't do it, someone else will. Tell you what, Father. One day we'll sail off in the Adolphus together, you as captain, me as mate, see what we can find. That would be real good. Come home wi' gold. If you're in trouble, Father, money trouble, that's the way out of it.'

Stephen looked at the stocky young man beside him. A chip off the old block. In spite of the vagrant life he had led and the ill luck that had come his way in his earlier years, Stephen had always had a pride in himself, an arrogant belief in his own ability not merely to survive but to become a success. He was confident in his own maleness, in his physical strength, in his good looks, in his ready tongue. There was a unique person called Stephen Carrington and there was no one quite like him. His mind was quick and adaptable, his body was something to be proud of, he walked with the hint of a swagger. And this boy was very like him. This boy, his blood, looked up to him with pride and admiration. And in a few days' time he would learn that his father had lost everything, was to be bankrupted at the whim of George Warleggan.

Well, there was no way out. Of course he was still alive, could somehow begin over again. Scrape together a few hundred pounds from among his friends, lease a small cutter or a schooner, start smuggling crude tin stuff to France, make a bit, add a bit, build up again a step at a time. (Though with the enmity of a Warleggan to face it would be an uphill struggle in this county.) Perhaps go back to Bristol, take Clowance and the boy. (Though he had quite a few enemies there.) So all his abilities and adaptabilities really counted for nothing. The trap had been set and he had fallen into it. He had been riding high, and the higher the rise the bigger the fall. Some folk would derive a sour satisfaction from it. Not excluding his father-in-law, he suspected, having no doubt from the beginning disapproved an association with the Warleggans. In spite of Clowance's trenchant rejection of the idea, the old feud seemed the most likely cause of his new ruin. (There was nothing else he had ever done to offend the Warleggans, except to steal money from their bank, a matter on which they could not have the inkling of suspicion.)