It was clear from the start that the thieves had been gentlemen, or people of at least sufficient education to play the gentleman. Your ordinary highwayman or cutpurse could never put on the airs or the accent of a clergyman or a naval lieutenant. (The woman, they said, had spoken little, so she could have been any doxy they picked up to play the part.) The woman would be impossible to find; but not perhaps the two men. At least there was a lead now, and Stephen Carrington possibly the likeliest suspect.
But George’s native caution warned him that, of all the gamblers at his house that night, Carrington was the most likely to have received the note from someone else, being in and out of trade so much, and himself innocent. One must simply pursue the lead for a little while and see what happened.
Something was happening, now the tedious singing was over in the great hall. His enemy and old rival was making a speech. George edged towards the door where he could listen and sneer. It was, Ross said, a few words of hail and farewell. It had been of the extremest pleasure to him – indeed to everyone – to see his cousin return to claim the family home that was his; and the pleasure had been doubled by the presence at his side of a lovely and gracious Spanish wife. In less than three months they had together repaired the ravages of almost ten years’ neglect. This was the way Trenwith had been when he, Ross, was a boy; it was the way it had been, he guessed, through several centuries before; it was the way it was going to be, he earnestly trusted, for many years to come. But the war with France still raged, and Geoffrey Charles felt himself obligated to return to his regiment. So two weeks from today they had arranged to take ship for San Sebastian. (There was a groan from the company.) From there young Mrs Poldark would return to her own family, who were themselves shortly returning to Madrid, and her husband would travel to take command of his company of the Light Brigade, the 43rd Monmouthshires. Indeed, Ross said, although his cousin had requested that he should keep the information private, he felt it his duty to inform the company that Geoffrey Charles Poldark had been promoted to the rank of Acting Major, as from the date of his return. (There were cries of congratulations.) So, Ross said, it only remained for him to ask the company to charge their glasses and drink to the love, happiness, safety and eventual return to this old family house of Major and Mrs Geoffrey Charles Poldark.
Everyone drank. ‘You’re not drinking, sir!’ said some strange man, glaring at George. ‘Lost my glass,’ said George austerely, staring him down. The strange man ducked out of sight and reappeared almost immediately with a glass full, it turned out, of neat brandy and thrust it into George’s hand. ‘Drink now, sir!’
After everyone had toasted them, Geoffrey Charles took Amadora’s hand, she being reluctant to come forward, and said how grateful he was for the welcome, the love and the warmth which had been extended to them both for their all-too-brief stay. He felt, as probably many here tonight felt, that the long war was at last at a turning point, that at last it was nearly won. Having himself been through so many of the difficult times, militarily, most particularly the defeat and death, in impossible circumstances, of Sir John Moore, he was really looking forward to participating in a campaign which, for once, promised victory. (There was a laugh.) But when the final victory was won, he hoped and believed that he and his beloved wife would return to settle down here in their house, as his forebears had done for centuries before him. Not, he added, amid more laughter, that he would be at all unwilling to spend a part of each year in Spain!
The speech ended in a general toast which Geoffrey Charles proposed to his Poldark relatives. Almost before it was drunk he was speaking again, saying that he and Amadora were intending to lead the dancing with a new dance called the waltz. Many here already knew it; those who did not would quickly learn.
As it turned out many did not, but three couples began it, and soon another half dozen tried. Lady Harriet knew it, but unfortunately for her Dwight was called away because someone was ill in the winter parlour. She was about to walk slowly off the floor when Ross Poldark asked her if she would dance.
She was very surprised; and so was he; because it was Demelza’s idea. ‘Go on,’ she had whispered. ‘I dare you. Quick! Go on.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’
‘I am not stupid. It is unmannerly to leave her to walk off the floor on her own – I’m a little surprised at Dwight – you must go as a duty!’
‘Rubbish!’
‘It is a time of good will. I dare you. Or perhaps you will annoy George! I’m sure she won’t mind!’
Ross ground his teeth. ‘Damn you! If I fall in love with her and leave you it will be your own fault . . .’ He strode across the floor.
‘Captain Poldark . . . What an honour!’ Lady Harriet’s eyes were lit with cool amusement.
Ross said: ‘Lady Harriet, the honour would be on the other foot, if I knew which foot to put forward.’
‘Do you not waltz?’
‘Is it very different?’
‘Quite different.’
‘Then shall we sit out?’
‘It’s not my way to refuse a gentleman’s offer.’
‘That I can’t for a moment believe, if the gentleman displeased you.’
She gave a low chuckle. ‘Then let me explain. It is half way between a formal dance and a country dance. See, the way they go.’
‘You do not change partners?’
‘You do not change partners. Really, it is rather a lascivious dance. Can you not hear the beat? terrer-um, terrer-um, terrer-um, tum, tum. Look, take me round the waist, the way they are doing. See? Hold me closer. Forget the steps if you can listen to me: terrer-um, terrer-um, terrer-um, tum, tum. Now start with the right foot: you do not need to make much progress, you may if you want, almost pivot on one spot.’
‘If we did that we should be trampled underfoot.’
‘Very well, then, just gently, out into the stream.’
They ventured out into the stream.
Clowance, coming up behind Demelza, breathed in her ear: ‘Papa dancing with Lady Harriet! There’s a topsyturvy! What can have induced him . . .’ When her mother did not speak she said: ‘Don’t tell me you induced him!’
‘I think in his heart he rather wanted to,’ said Demelza, ‘otherwise I doubt me that anything I could have said would have persuaded him.’
They watched the dancers for a few moments. ‘He’s doing real well,’ said Demelza. ‘Now he’ll be able to teach me.’
‘I could teach you,’ said Clowance.
‘Well your father was always one for pretty women.’
‘Yes, I notice he married one.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Go on, you started young. And I know you. You’ll attract men till you’re sixty.’
‘Really, Clowance – oh, my dear life, I trust John Treneglos is not coming over! You take him, will you, my dear. Perhaps he is coming for you – I trust so – I pray so – I’ll say I am a small matter tired!’
II
It had been a very unfortunate occurrence in the small winter parlour, to which Dwight Enys had been summoned. A woman had fainted, and she was very slow to come out of her faint. They did the conventional things, patting her hands, burning a feather under her nose, fetching smelling salts, but it took quite a time to bring her round; and when she did come to it was as if her mind was troubled, as if she needed some reassurance that none of the people round her, not even her husband, could give her.
Drake and Morwenna, having been persuaded to stay on week after week, had taken their full share in preparing for the party; they had enjoyed that to the full. But at the party itself they had wanted to take a back place, and only the joint commands of the two young Poldarks had brought them out to share in the evening as guests. Even so during tea and supper they had been inconspicuous, and when the dancing began they took no active part. Drake had never learned, and Morwenna was content to watch. Her own experience of dancing had been confined to a short and unhappy period in her life when
George had brought her out and was considering what husband he might find for her most suitable to his own ambitions.
So when Drake went across to help move the spinet after Isabella-Rose’s performance, Morwenna strolled on her own back into the small winter parlour. It was the one room in the house which had really happy associations for her. It was here that she and Drake had met all through the early part of the winter of 1794 – nineteen years ago; it hardly seemed possible. She was then only eighteen, Drake the same. They had met here in the presence of the boy Geoffrey Charles, now the owner of this house, and had silently declared their love for each other.
It had always been rather a neglected room, and because of that little in it had been altered, even when George closed the house down and carried the best furniture to Cardew. The heavy blue velvet curtains which pulled together on rusty brass rings; the turkey carpet, part worn through at door and fireplace. And the old spinning wheel. Elizabeth’s spinning wheel. Strange that George had left that.
There were only three people in the room when she entered, and presently they moved out to dance. Morwenna went to the fireplace, remembering that in those days there had been miniatures on the mantelshelf of Jonathan and Joan Chynoweth, her aunt and uncle. They at least had gone. She wondered if George had taken them to Cardew or whether they had been pilfered by some straying thief.
It had not all been happiness in this room of course; there had been heartgrief too when she had had to break the news to Drake that she was expected to marry the Reverend Osborne Whitworth. Even to think that name in her own mind gave her an unpleasant frisson. The thought of him even after all these years still filled her with a sensation of nausea and dread. Whitworth with his arrogance, his booming voice, his conceit, his thick legs and heavy body, the peculiar oppressive driving dominance of his personality, the way in which he used his considerable knowledge of the Bible to quote and reinforce his purposes; and that with never a thought in his head that he might be misusing it. The small, evil, petty and cruel practices that he associated with sex. His affair with her sister Rowella. The very memory of his great body, great in all ways, his smell – which was not offensive in itself but offensive by association; the stirring of him in the night, the heavy breathing; the lowering eyes when he came to her bed and said, ‘First I will say a little prayer’ . . . the pain and the dread.
Even at this remove of time she felt breathless, sick at the recollection. She had learned to fight the memory, to turn her back on it in her mind and to face outwards to the present where she was truly loved by a man she truly loved and they had one child of their union, Loveday.
Loveday was here tonight and happily joining in the party. So was Drake, her husband, who through the years by the most endearing patience had conjured her back to normality. So was she, until this minute when the happy thoughts connected with this room had somehow turned sour on her, brought to her mind the memories she most feared.
There was a footstep in the room, quite close behind her. It was a heavy footstep and reminiscent nerves lurched at the sound of it. She clutched the mantelpiece and turned.
Facing her was a tall boy, almost a young man. His face was fatter than his body; the short-sighted spectacled button eyes were squeezed between accumulations of fat, the skin pale and pimply. His hair grew very short and tight and fur-brown upon his head. He was dressed in a red silk corduroy coat gilt-buttoned from neck to hem, black silk trousers and patent shoes. He was staring at her intently. He smelled like Osborne Whitworth.
The thick lips parted. The voice came.
‘Good evening, Mama.’
Chapter Fifteen
I
When Andrew Blamey left Trenwith at midnight Clowance went with him out to his waiting horse. Music drifted after them, pulsing, beating into the lonely night.
‘How long will it take you to reach Falmouth?’ she asked.
‘Oh . . . four hours, I suppose. Thereabouts. I’ll have a beam wind – what there is of it.’
‘Take care for footpads.’
Andrew patted the pistol attached to his saddle.
‘Let ’em try.’
‘How long before you are home again?’
‘Not sure – there’s all sorts of comings and goings these days.’
‘Well, let us know next time you get some leave.’
Andrew hesitated. ‘Of course. Yes. Of course. That goes without saying.’
The groom had drifted away.
Andrew patted his horse’s nose but made no attempt to mount. ‘I hope that – what’s her name – Morwenna Carne, your aunt – hope she will be better. Strange to keel over like that.’
‘We’ve put her to bed with a hot drink. She was shivering when she came round. I expect she has been overdoing it. Though Dr Enys seemed to think she’d had a shock. I asked my mother what he meant, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it.’
‘Well, I suppose I had better be on my way.’
‘Andrew,’ Clowance said.
‘Yes?’
‘I suppose you know now the name of the other young man you saw in Plymouth Dock that night.’
‘Here, you mean? Yes. Paul Kellow. I asked. Then I went to speak to him. Not about that of course! That’s better forgot.’
‘I am so glad you think so.’
‘Well, who’s to benefit? Not the poor fellow that got the knife in his guts.’
Clowance shivered. ‘I hope you’ll not mention your suspicion to anyone – ever.’
He said jocularly: ‘To think I thought you were coming out of the party to bid me a personal farewell! I had hopes of my pretty cousin!’
‘Oh, Andrew . . .’
He kissed her. ‘Well, why not. Cousins have become more than cousins ere this. However, I am not too downcast – only curious.’
‘Curious?’
‘As to which of the two miscreants is the lucky one you are so anxious to protect. If it is not Stephen, perhaps it is Paul! Or do you still have a soft spot for Carrington? I promise not to tell him!’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t ask me, Andrew. Anyway . . .’
He unhitched the reins from the mounting post. ‘You really are my one and only favourite cousin . . . I think I have to tell you something. If you will promise first not to repeat a word of it in there – especially not to my father and mother.’
‘What?’
‘Swear not to tell.’
‘Of course I swear not to tell. But what is it?’
He mused, looking over the dark garden with its wide glooming shadows. ‘It will all be out in two days, so . . . But it could be inconvenient to say the least if it were out in less . . . Why do I tell you this now, Clowance? Only because I am a little bit in love with you. Put it down to the wine! In vino veritas! . . . Cousin, I am not returning to my ship at dawn tomorrow.’
She stared at him, thinking him drunker than she had supposed.
‘The second officer of the Countess of Leicester is about to fail to turn up! She will sail without him. Captain West will be in a passion. I know I should have let ’em know, but had I done so it would have been made public too soon, and then the bailiffs would have been around!’
‘Andrew, what are you trying to tell me?’
‘Remember your promise!’
‘Yes, yes, I remember my promise, but what is happening? I am totally mystified! And quite appalled!’
‘Well, no doubt it is all very sad for a young man making a steady and sober career in the Packet Service. But, Cousin, this young man has never quite been sober or steady enough. So he has run himself into debt. Very considerable debt, this time. Only my profession and my guaranteed income from it saves me from immediate distraint. But I have promised my debtors more, when I return in two weeks’ time, than I can possibly give ’em. So I estimate that I shall lose my position before the end of October in any case and no doubt cool my heels for a while in prison!’
‘But Andrew—’
‘So I have decided to
embark on an adventure which may, while being a trifle more hazardous, yet bring me in far more money than the Packet Service . . .’ He touched her on the shoulder. ‘Do not suppose that I am unaware of the distress this will give my parents. Do not suppose that, before this, I have not accepted my father’s help in bailing myself out of financial scrapes. But one cannot go on doing that indefinitely. I have writ them a letter which I will leave in their house for their return. If it does not excuse all, I trust it will explain all. When I come back . . .’
‘But where are you going?’
‘Didn’t I say? Perhaps I had better not say! It is barely a week since I saw Stephen Carrington in Falmouth. We conversed a while in The Royal Standard, and I told him of my plight. He told me then of his plans to sail with two vessels to Genoa loaded with barrels of pilchards, and he offered me command of his new vessel which was launched at Looe only last week. There’s no money in it save subsistence, until we make money; but then there’s a likelihood of a high profit. She’s in Penryn at the moment, my ship; Stephen brought her round. I’m sailing on the morning tide to pick up my cargo in Mevagissey – then we’re off and shall sail more or less together; Stephen rendezvousing with me in the Scillies; he’s coming from St Ives, you see. We shall not be back before March, but then, if all has gone well . . .’
‘Andrew, have you not thought about your whole career in the Packet Service? Like your father, you could have—’
‘Thought of it often, sweet Cousin. Though I may seem to you a bit of a scatterbrain, this has not been done easy-like.’
‘Oh, Andrew, I wish that you were not doing this! If you—’
‘Perhaps I should not have told you. It is not a nice secret to ask you to keep for forty-eight hours, but now it is on your conscience as well as mine.’ He put his face close to hers again. ‘Time only will say whether I’m as stupid as you think. But many young men sow their wild oats. It is no use getting to thirty and wishing you had enjoyed yourself while you were young. I – have enjoyed myself. I drink too much and wench too much and gamble too much. So my father gets ever more angry and my mother ever more anxious; and maybe a clean break like this will be for the best and may even help to let some of the fever from my blood. Stephen is a great character, even if once in a while he does thrust in the knife too deep . . .’ He kissed her again. ‘You know you really are very, very pretty.’
The Loving Cup Page 18
