The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  Believe me, most cordially yours,

  Frances Gower.

  Demelza was examining one of Garrick’s ears, which she suspected of harbouring some parasite. There had been a number of years when Garrick was forbidden this room altogether, but as age lessened his tendency to sudden violent movement and thereby made the furniture and crockery a little safer, he had been allowed to insinuate himself into the parlour. As Demelza had said when Ross made a half-hearted protest: ‘Every other gentleman has his dogs about him in his parlour.’ To which Ross had replied: ‘Every other gentleman doesn’t have Garrick.’

  Ross took a drink of beer and picked up the letter again.

  ‘How did it come?’

  ‘By the Sherborner.’

  ‘Our friend Lieutenant Armitage didn’t ride over with it, then?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘All the same you’re looking a morsel wide-eyed about the whole thing.’

  Demelza looked up. ‘What do that mean?’

  ‘Well . . . stirred . . . emotional, is it?’

  ‘Dear life, your ideas are some funny, Ross. I have – you know I have some gentle feelings for Lieutenant Armitage; but you must think me a holla-pot to get emotional all just because of an invitation.’

  ‘Yes . . . well, maybe I imagine things. Maybe it’s worrying about Jeremy that gives you that look . . .’

  He went on with his food. Garrick, who enjoyed every attention paid him, had continued to lie on his back waiting for more, one front paw half bent, one eye showing white and wild among the straggling hair. Now he snuffled loudly to regain Demelza’s attention.

  ‘What a day,’ Ross said. ‘It has never stopped since dawn.’

  ‘Our hay looks like Jeremy’s hair before it has been combed in the morning.’

  ‘I saw George Warleggan after dinner.’

  ‘Oh! . . . Oh?’

  Ross explained the circumstance. ‘So in a sense it was peaceable. But disagreeable none the less. There is some element in the composition of his character and mine that immediately sets off a physical reaction. When I saw him sitting there I disliked being asked to sit down beside him, but I had no intention whatever of saying anything to provoke him! Possibly he feels the same.’

  ‘At least they’ll not be at Trenwith for so long this year.’

  ‘And I shall put up a stone myself for Agatha without bothering them further.’

  Demelza bent her head again over Garrick, and Ross looked at the acute curve of her figure: small firm buttocks and thighs, soles of slippers showing light like the palms of a negro’s hands, blue silk blouse and holland skirt, dark hair falling over and touching the, dog, a glimpse of neck with wisps of hair curling.

  Presently he said: ‘What are we going to do about this?’

  ‘About what? Oh . . . well, I cannot say this time, can I?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If I press to go this time you will think I am pressing for my own special reasons.’

  ‘I certainly don’t wish to go.’

  ‘Well, then, it’s better we should not.’

  Ross got up from the table and stirred Garrick with his foot. Garrick coughed with delight and rolled over and hoisted himself on to his considerable legs.

  ‘There,’ Demelza said, ‘you’ve spoiled it now. I think it’s the rabbits he’s catching these crawlers from.’ She sat back on her heels and dodged Garrick’s attempt to lick her face.

  Ross began to fill his pipe. ‘Devil knows what we can say to this woman without giving offence.’ He was so used to being pushed into accepting invitations that he felt the sudden lack. His distaste for company – high company – was completely genuine, but with the perversity common to human nature, his reason began to list the difficulties of a refusal here. If he had sprung Hugh Armitage from his prison – however inadvertently – Hugh Armitage in turn had probably saved Dwight’s life by his superior knowledge of navigation (another night at sea might have killed him). To refuse this invitation, unless he could think of some cast-iron excuse, would be churlish and unmannerly. And although he knew Demelza was affected by this young man, it hardly seemed likely that the friendship would burgeon uncontrollably at a final meeting.

  He said: ‘I quail at the thought of a day and a night in the company of George Falmouth. Harris tells me he behaved disgracefully at the election.’

  ‘There must be hard feelings between them now, Ross. If we went, should it be thought that we were, you were running with the hare and – and—’

  ‘Hunting with the hounds? Oh, you mean . . . I see no reason why. What Basset and Falmouth think of each other is their concern. I take no sides – still less so as Basset chooses in such a cavalier fashion to ignore my quarrel with George Warleggan.’

  ‘D’you know what I’m always afraid of when you meet George, Ross? That you’ll quarrel – as you usually do – and then the next thing is you’ll be set to fight a duel.’

  Ross laughed. ‘There I think you can set your mind at rest. George is a man of business, with a very level head and a very good brain. I know we have come to blows twice or thrice in our lives, but that is in the heat of the moment – and the last time was several years ago, and we are growing older and a little wiser every day. He would gladly fight a commercial duel with me on any ground on which I care or dare to challenge him. But pistols – they are in his view the melodrama belonging to aristocrats and squireens and military men who know no better.’

  ‘What a small matter concerns me,’ she said, ‘is when you meet him in the company of these great men you are now mixing with. Isn’t there the danger that he might find himself drove into a corner where he would be forced to challenge you because they expected it of him?’

  Ross was thoughtful. ‘I know no woman whose conversation is so much to the point.’

  ‘Thank you, Ross.’

  ‘But it is really George you should be warning, since I am the soldier and he the trader. He would be much more greatly at risk from such a challenge, so I suspect his good sense will keep him safe.’

  ‘And I trust you’ll not have to meet too often in such high company.’

  A few minutes later Ross went out to look at two newly-born calves, and Betsy Ann Martin came in to clear the table. When this was done Demelza pushed Garrick out of doors and was alone. She went upstairs to peer at the children. Jeremy was breathing noisily; the fever had left him with a blocked nose. Clowance slept like an angel, clenched fist against lip, thumb not quite in mouth.

  Demelza went into their own bedroom and dug into the inside pocket of her skirt. She took out a second letter which had also been delivered.

  It came from the same address as the other but had a separate seal and was written in a different hand.

  It said simply at the top: ‘D.P. from H.A.’ and it went on:

  To D.

  She walks as peerless Dian rides

  In moonlight and in rain,

  As sea-bird gently windward flies

  O’er wave and watery main.

  Thus heavenly light and earthly tides

  Combine in her as twain.

  She smiles as sunrise on the wave

  In summer and at dawn,

  As daylight enters darkling cave

  To bring the breath of morn.

  Thus day and night in joy behave

  With ardour newly born.

  She walks like air and smiles like light

  ’Mong sinners yet unshriven,

  But one among them knows his plight

  Excluded yet from Heaven.

  Chapter Ten

  I

  In mid-June it was Rowella’s birthday: she was fifteen, and her mother, by the coach, sent her a cake. Morwenna gave her a little silver crucifix which she had ordered from Solomon, the gold and silversmith. Mr Whitworth gave her a book of meditation on the Revelation of St John the Divine.

  It was also a month to the day since John Conan Osborne Whitworth was born.

  He was prospe
ring mightily, but his mother was still unwell. She had been able to attend the christening and got up each afternoon for about three hours, but she was so pale and listless, could not feed the baby, and her former gentle good looks had utterly faded. Dr Behenna said she was suffering from an excitability of the blood vessels pertaining to the womb, and bled her regularly. The infection, he warned Osborne, might spread to the pelvis, and to counteract this Morwenna was wrapped for two hours each morning in blankets saturated in warm vinegar. The nurse they had engaged for John Conan was also instructed to rub mercurial ointment into Morwenna’s thighs and flanks. So far the treatment was bringing no improvement.

  It was a mild damp Friday and after supper Osborne was in his study writing out the notes of his sermon, with the door of his study ajar – he believed it kept the servants up to scratch to know their master was not quite shut away – when he heard a footstep and a clink of metal and saw Rowella carrying the grey tin bath-tub up the first flight of stairs. Returning to his seat after having assured himself that he was not mistaken, he reflected that both Sarah and Anne were in bed by now. Apart from that, it was the larger tin bath which he used himself, on the rare occasions when he used it at all. This information registered in his mind while he tried to concentrate on his sermon. But after another rounded paragraph he heard Rowella come down, and about five minutes later a procession of Rowella and his two maids went up the stairs again, each carrying a pitcher; and a waft of steam was left behind them as they went.

  He put his pen on his desk and ruffled the end of it with his thumb. Had he not preached rather on this subject once before, and if this were so would not the notes be filed away in the box in the attic? His mouth went very dry as he thought of this; it was as if all the saliva had suddenly disappeared. He walked to a side table and quickly drank two glasses of mountain, and while he was doing this he heard the two maids come down. But not Rowella.

  In spite of his clumsy figure he could move quietly when need be, and he went silently up the first flight and listened outside his wife’s door. He heard her cough once but he knew she was not likely to get up again today. Then, like a good father, he peered in at his two little daughters and kissed them good night. They wanted him to stay but he said he could not, as he had much work to do. Then he went up the second flight. The latch of the attic lifted as if it were recently oiled, and he went in and stole across the room, sat gently on the wooden box beside the wall and applied his eye to the hole.

  At first the fact that it was still daylight put him off slightly, and he was afraid that not only was she out of sight but that the light from the window would make it hard to see. But after a moment he focused properly and saw her sitting on a chair combing her hair. In front of her was the tin bath, from which steam was rising. While he watched she put in more water out of one of the ewers and felt the result with her hand. She was really a very plain girl with her mousy eyebrows and long thin nose and tremulous underlip. She pulled up her skirts and began to drag off her garters and black stockings. This done, she sat with her skirts above her knees and tried the water with the toes of one foot.

  Her legs didn’t have much shape but her feet fascinated him. They were long and slender and excellently proportioned, with good regular nails and very fine pale skin, through which a few blue veins showed like marks in alabaster. As she flexed them in and out of the water, the bones appeared and disappeared, revealing the delicate bone structure. Feet had always fascinated him, and these were the most perfect he had ever seen.

  She got up and put a towel on the floor and stood on it and took off her two skirts and stood in her long white drawers. She looked very silly standing there while she began to take off her blouse. Under the blouse was another blouse and under that was a vest. In vest and drawers she walked away and disappeared from his sight. Osborne closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, in desperation. Then she came back with two green ribbons and began to plait her hair. All this time her lips were moving and he realized she was humming a little tune. He did not think it was a hymn but some catchy silly little tune she had picked up in the town.

  The light was fading a little now, but the day had cleared around sunset and an afterglow lit the sky. This fell softly in the room. Somebody made a noise downstairs and she stopped in her plaiting to listen, head on one side, thin fingers momentarily still. He too listened. It was that fool Alfred, his manservant, who had upset something. The man deserved a whipping.

  Silence settled and she went on with her plaiting. He waited, with no saliva to swallow.

  She stood up, long and scrawny, and pulled her vest up over her head and was naked to the waist. He almost exclaimed aloud when he saw her breasts; for it was the greatest surprise of his life. She was just fifteen and they were ripe and beautiful. They were bigger than her sister’s, rounder than his first wife’s, whiter and more pure than those of the women in the jelly houses of Oxford. He stared quite unbelieving, not crediting what he saw. How could they have been so hidden away under the lace of blouses, the pleats of frocks, the disguises of linen and cotton, the illusion of thin arms and narrowness of back?

  Then Rowella raised her arms to pin back her hair, and her breasts stood out like full fresh fruit suddenly discovered growing upon some all too slender tree. After a moment she slipped her drawers down, pulled them off and stood and then crouched in the narrow tin bath and began to wash herself.

  II

  Morwenna was reading when Ossie came in. Reading had become her one escape, an escape from the debility of her own body, the miseries of her daily treatments, the claims of a child she could not feed and could not quite begin to love, and her sense of imprisonment in this house with a man whose very presence oppressed her. Thanks to Rowella and the new library she had a constant supply of new works to read, mainly history, but some geography and a little, but only a little, theology. Her deeply-ingrained religious beliefs had been under a severe strain this last year, and somehow books on the Christian virtues of humility and charity and patience and obedience did not move her any more. She had prayed about it but could not yet feel that her prayers had been answered. She was bitter, and ashamed of her bitterness, and unable to lift herself out of that state.

  As soon as she saw Ossie she knew he had been drinking. It was rare for him; normally he drank copiously but knew when to stop. She had never known him unsteady on his feet or slurred in his speech. He had his standards.

  Now he came in in his thick pleated silk canary-yellow dressing-gown, his hair awry, his eyes suffused.

  He said: ‘Ah, Morwenna,’ and sat heavily by her bed.

  She put the bookmark in her book.

  He said: ‘These weeks, these months, during which you have been the pr-proud bearer of our child, it has been a trying time for you. I know it well, don’t deny it. Pray don’t deny it. Dr Behenna says you are much recovered now but still need care. That as you know, I will endeavour to give you. Have done and will continue to do. Care. Great care. You have given me a fine child, from which you are now much recovered.’

  ‘Did Dr Behenna say that?’

  ‘But I think you must give a thought – a thought to the strain it has been – all these weeks and weeks and weeks – on me. On me. D’you understand, on me. That is the other side of the coin. During your pregnancy there was much patient, anxious waiting. At the birth, at the parturition, there was more anxiety, more waiting. At one time your life, I may say, was despaired of. Though one never knows how much Behenna exaggerates the seriousness of a disease in order to gain credit for its intermission. But be that as it may. Since then a month has passed – four long weeks – still of anxiety for me, still waiting.’

  A little touched in spite of herself, Morwenna said: ‘I shall be better in a while, Ossie. Perhaps if these treatments do not have effect Dr Behenna will essay something different.’

  ‘It cannot go on,’ Ossie said.

  ‘What cannot go on?’

  ‘I am a cleric, a clerk i
n Holy Orders, and I endeavour to perform my duties in accordance – in acc-accordance with my oaths of office. But I am also a man. We are all people of this earth, Morwenna, don’t you understand that? I sometimes wonder if you understand.’

  She looked at him and saw with horror that it was not only drink that made him tongue-tied. Perhaps it was not drink at all.

  She said: ‘Ossie, if you mean . . .’

  ‘That is what I do mean—’

  ‘But I am not well! It is too soon!—’

  ‘Too soon? Four weeks! I never waited so long as this with Esther. Do you wish me to be ill too? You must know that it is not in human nature—’

  ‘Ossie!’ She had raised herself in the bed, her plaited hair reminding him maddeningly of other plaited hair he had just seen. And all else that he had just seen.

  ‘It is a husband’s right to desire his wife. It is a wife’s duty to submit. Most wives – Esther among them – she was always gratified by the resumption of her husband’s attentions. Always.’ He seized her hand.

  ‘Ossie,’ she said. ‘Please, Ossie, do you not know that I am still—’

  ‘Say no more,’ he said, and kissed her on the forehead and then on the lips. ‘I will just say a little prayer for us both. Then you must be a wife to me. It will soon be over.’

  III

  Nampara Meeting House had been opened in March, and a leading preacher of the circuit had been there to speak to the faithful and to give it and them his blessing. It had been a notable triumph for Sam, for in addition to the twenty-nine of his flock, all of whom he could sincerely and devoutly vouch for as having found Christ, there had been another twenty-odd cramming into the tiny chapel, most having come out of curiosity, no doubt, but some having been deeply moved by the preacher, and Sam’s total flock had afterwards risen to thirty-four, with a number of others still wrestling with their souls and ripe for conversion. Afterwards the preacher had congratulated Sam and had eaten with the elders of the class before leaving.