The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  The rain was getting heavier. The turning world had moved into deeper regions of cloud.

  He said: ‘Come inside, Emma.’

  ‘Nay. It wouldn’t do for ee. And I must be off back.’

  But she did not move either way. He blinked the rain off his eyelids.

  ‘Emma, dear, I don’t know what the truth is of anything you say. I’m all confused. We live in a world where malice and uncharitableness d’constantly rise within the souls of elsewise godly men. I’ve had reason to know that, and he was a leader ’mong us, and twas because I heeded his thoughts that I’ve seen little of you these pretty many days. So tis hard for me to deny that good men and women think ill when tis unchristian to think ill . . .’

  ‘So there.’

  ‘But I believe, Emma, I truly believe, Emma, that love will overcome all difficulty. The love of man for his Saviour be the greatest possession we can have in this life. But the love of man for woman, though it be lesser, can be sanctified by the Holy Spirit and, when such do happen, it be above carnal bonds and above the ill thoughts of lesser men, and – and it can triumph over all. I do believe it, Emma! Emma, I do believe it!’

  His voice was trembling, and he blinked again, but this time it was not to get rid of the rain.

  She came a step or two forward, walking awkwardly over the muddy earth. ‘You’re a rare good man, Sam.’ She briefly put her hand on his arm and kissed his cheek. ‘But not for the likes of me.’ She drew back and pushed the strands of wet hair away and pulled her shawl more closely over her face. ‘Tis not in me to be so good, Sam. You believe because you’re good. I’d be much better wed to a hard-swearing, hard-drinking jack like Tom Harry. That’s if I wed ’tall. You go on with your classes, your Bible reading, your praying; that’s your life – not tangling wi’ a woman like me. Honest, Sam, dear. Honest, love. Honest to God. There, I said it! I said His name, so mebbe there’s hope yet. But tis a long way off. Too far for you, Sam. So I’ll say goodbye.’

  ‘I’ll never say goodbye,’ Sam muttered indistinctly. ‘I love you, Emma. Do that mean nothing to ee?’

  ‘It mean I should go away and leave you alone,’ said Emma. ‘That’s what that d’mean. For twould be ill-wished from the start.’

  She turned and began to plough her way back to the firmer ground of the moorland. He stood with his head bowed, his hands on the spade, the tears dripping on his hands.

  Overhead the seagulls were still swooping, crying and moaning their intermittent litany.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter One

  I

  The summer moved gently towards its close. It had not been much of a summer anyhow, the land having been swept by constant south-westerly breezes – and sometimes gales – which brought with them dark days of cloud and drifting rain. Moulds sprouted, slugs and snails abounded, moths laid their eggs in clothing, toadstools and mushrooms prospered, wood beetle multiplied.

  On the Continent the French flag sprouted in as many places as the toadstool. The cost of articles in Parisian shops might have gone up by twelve times in a year, but her armies marched where they would, and plunder of all sorts, including forty million francs in gold, flowed into the capital. Prussia, Sardinia, Holland and Spain had all made or were asking for peace. Austria was tottering. England’s grand alliance had finally been holed below the water line. Opposed by his king, Pitt began to consider coming to some accommodation with the enemy across the Channel.

  It was after all, as more and more people said to each other, only a war of principle on England’s side, of opinion even. She wanted nothing from France, or indeed from anybody, no extra commerce, no new overseas possessions, no naval or military supremacy. She just detested Jacobins and Jacobin propaganda and bloody revolutions. And maybe now the worst of that was over. Revolutionaries who become rich and successful generally tend to care less about revolutions. It might be worth a try. One could even consider bargaining for peace by giving up a few islands or pieces of overseas territory. In the last two years England had lost forty thousand soldiers in the West Indies, almost all from tropical disease. It was a high price to pay for Empire, and no one the better for it.

  At home, except for the occasional flash of a small naval victory, life looked as dark as the weather. The closing of more and more Continental ports to English trade set off a succession of bankruptcies, which in turn began to shake the banks and send some of the smaller ones into liquidation. Taxes and the national debt mounted together, and in the defence of freedom, freedom was being put in pawn.

  In the middle of it all Pitt introduced some startling new ideas for giving more justice and fairer treatment to the poor. He was trying to counter the grim decisions of Speenhamland, and proposed to introduce insurance on a national basis, old age pensions, loans to buy cattle, training in crafts and trades for both boys and girls, and a family allowance of a shilling a week per child for all who were in distress. The measure delighted some of his supporters but incensed more. Ross read about it in the Mercury and thought, in the middle of a war, this was the way to fight the Jacobin. If he ever got a vote he decided he would vote for Pitt.

  It was a thought that for different reasons was also in the mind of Sir Francis Basset, for, as Lord Falmouth had acidly predicted, Sir Francis was just then ennobled and assumed the old family name of de Dunstanville, becoming Baron de Dunstanville of Tehidy, thereby ensuring Pitt of the support of that small group of Members he controlled in the House, and necessitating a further by-election, at Penryn.

  At Nampara life continued on its accustomed way. The library and new upper storey were now structurally complete. The lumber room and apple cupboard above Joshua Poldark’s old bedroom had become a passage leading into two new bedrooms above the library. Joshua Poldark’s old bedroom had been emptied of its oak box bed, the cupboards had been torn out, the heavy chimney piece removed and a lighter one put in its place; the rattling sash window that always gave notice of a rising wind – that window through which Garrick had once wriggled to comfort his mistress on her first night at Nampara – had also been removed; it had been replaced with a wider sash with better glass; cracks in the walls had been filled in and on the walls hung an almost white, figured paper; the ceiling between the beams had been re-plastered and painted: it was the new dining-room, and so light now that they might have knocked out two extra windows, and with a bright turkey rug covering all but the edges of the uneven floorboards. A new pedestal table was being made, with eight chairs to match – of Cuban mahogany and to a new and elegant design. They were vastly expensive.

  Yet to be purchased – yet even to be ordered – was new china and plate, silverware, decanters and the rest. It was astonishing, once you had created a pretty room, light and elegant, how shabby all one’s old things looked. Ross was for taking Demelza up to London for a few weeks so that they could order all they needed, but Demelza said no, this is handsome, doing it bit by bit. We shall never have this kind of fun again, let’s spread it out, what does it matter if it doesn’t all match at once?

  If the dining-room was nearly finished – they ate in it regularly now – the library furnishings were hardly yet begun. The room was complete, the plasterer – Lord de Dunstanville’s plasterer – had been, and Demelza had wanted to drop everything and stand watching him all day, his skill, his speed, his deftness, the way he created decoration, formed it seemed in no time, so that the big room was given a deep fluted cornice and the ceiling two circular Grecian motifs exactly placed and precisely similar. During his work he had lived in the house and he had charged a fortune; but she didn’t begrudge a penny. It was wonderful.

  The walls below the cornice were panelled in light pine, and some furnishings had been bought: two applewood claw tables, a sofa, a rosewood side-table cross-banded with tulip wood, a good local carpet. But it didn’t yet quite amount to a room. It was a beginning. Nothing yet clashed or was out of place, but one had to be careful. Conversations about it often went on long into the night. S
helves, for instance, had been fixed at one end to give the room a right to its original title; but most of Ross’s books – and they were not extensive – were old and shabby and well-read; they would not look right. Yet he found no attraction in the beautiful books he saw in Trelissick and in Tehidy. Their gold lettering on half-morocco bindings seemed a part of the decoration, not something to be read.

  Jeremy passed his fifth birthday and Clowance neared her second. She was quick to walk but slow to talk. Her only recognizable sentence so far was ‘Bit-a-more!’ and this she regularly uttered when sitting at the table when her plate was empty. Every fine day Demelza took them on the beach where they all paddled and Clowance frequently sat down at the wrong moment. The feel of the cold water round her buttocks, however, only made her crow the more.

  Sometimes they would go out in the boat from Sawle Cove fishing. And occasionally they would see seals slipping off the edge of rocks as they approached, and this would temporarily, disconcertingly, jog Demelza’s mind back to her visit to Tregothnan and Hugh Armitage’s leave-taking.

  ‘Whatever you say, Demelza, whatever you say now, it will not prevent me from having you in my mind wherever I go. You will be by my side, a memory of someone I have once seen – and known a little – and, with your permission, loved.’

  ‘You do not have my permission, Hugh. I’m sorry, but . . . I’m happy to be your friend, really I am. But that is all it can be. And it is wrong, I have said it is wrong in you to suppose you have met some perfect creature and hold her up in your mind so that other women don’t come to that level.’

  ‘I can do what I please.’

  ‘But it isn’t true! No one is like that! D’you know I’m a miner’s daughter, and never had no education?’

  ‘I did not. But of what importance is that?’

  ‘I would have thought to someone of your breeding twould mean a deal.’

  ‘I do not know if you misjudge my class, but you misjudge me.’

  ‘You have answers to everything I say.’

  ‘And they avail me nothing, without your kindness.’

  ‘How can I be kind?’

  ‘By letting me write to you.’

  ‘May I show your letters to my husband?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you see.’

  ‘Can you not stretch this very small point? I’m likely to be away for some years.’

  ‘But Ross is bound to see them when they come,’ Demelza had protested, weakening her position.

  ‘I can arrange for them to be delivered.’

  ‘But this makes a wickedness of it!’

  ‘May I, then, send you poetry?’

  She had hesitated. ‘Oh, Hugh, don’t you see how I am set? I’m happily wed. Two beautiful children. Everything I want in the world. I want to be kind to you. I like you deeply. But you do see I cannot be more than kind . . .’

  ‘Well, then, I will write to you by the post and you may show my letters to Ross and you may read them together and laugh together in a kindly way about this stupid young lieutenant who is suffering from an affliction of calf love. But—’

  ‘You know we would never do that!’

  ‘Let me finish. You may laugh together – kindly I’m sure – and Ross will perhaps excuse my earnestness on the grounds that it’s a youthful affliction that I will grow out of – but you will know different, Demelza, you will know different. You will know that it is not a youthful affliction, that it is not something I will grow out of at the first port of call. You will know that I love you and will go on loving you to my life’s end . . .’

  Such a declaration is not something a woman may easily get out of her system, and Demelza particularly was not of the temperament to do so. She loved Ross no less and was no less contented with her house and family, no less able to pluck enjoyment like a wayside flower from simple things as life passed. But the words remained, often warming her heart, but sometimes ringing disconcertingly clear, as if they had been spoken only yesterday and needed an answer.

  Hugh Bodrugan, that hairy old baronet, and Connie, his young stepmother, called a couple of times and Sir Hugh asked Ross if he might buy a few shares in his mine. Ross replied politely that at the moment he had no need of further capital, but he gave a faithful promise that if he disposed of any holding in the mine Sir Hugh should have the first offer of it. Bodrugan grunted and went away dissatisfied. At least Ross thought him so, but he must have continued to have some hopes in this direction because a couple of days later he sent over as a present for Demelza a couple of black and white piglets of a new breed which were claimed to come to a better weight than any that had gone before.

  The two piglets were so small and so engaging that they immediately made friends with the elderly Garrick and became pets for the children, who occasionally would allow them to escape into the house. Ross solemnly warned them that if they continued to do this there would come a day when the piglets would suddenly swell up and grow so big they would never be able to squeeze out of the doors again. Demelza named them Ebb and Flow.

  In the dark days of late summer moths became such a problem in the house, there never being a candle lighted and a window ajar without the room being filled with fluttering wraiths of all shapes and sizes, that a general war was declared on them. To amuse the children Demelza kept them up late one night to go on a moth-sugaring expedition. This was done by mixing sugar and beer in a bowl and stealing out into the dusk and brushing the sugared beer on to tree stumps and fence posts. By the time this was done you could go round with a bucket of water and pick the moths off the sugary surface – where they clung with quivering pleasure feeding on the liquor – and drop them in the water. But Demelza tired of this quicker than the children. The moths were too beautiful to destroy, and about half of them she set free. Then Garrick, having followed them out, spoiled it all by finding the sugared beer to his taste, and began to lick the stumps clean, moths and all, before they could stop him.

  Yet in spite of the weather, or perhaps because enough sun got through the clouds at intermittent intervals, and the gales were too early to do the damage, and the rain was slight in September, it was a good harvest. All Cornwall, most of England, had its best corn yield for four years – and never more welcome. And in spite of the lack of prosperity in the land and the depression which had come so suddenly after the expanding and favourable conditions of the first war years, Wheal Grace yielded up her ore and Ross invested more money in Blewett’s shipbuilding business in Looe, and talked over seriously with Captain Henshawe the building of a new and more powerful engine for the mine.

  Ross engaged the recovered Zacky Martin as underground captain. It was really more than Henshawe could do to keep an eye on everything; and miners, like other people, needed supervision. Some of them were picking out the richest ground and leaving the lower-grade stuff behind. Economics in a copper mine made this an acceptable practice; not in a tin mine, except to the tributers concerned who added to their own earnings this way. Some too, the foxiest ones, brought up indifferent stuff for a month before the next setting day so that they could argue their pitch was yielding less and bargain for a higher share in the profit on the ground they stoped. Once the contract was struck the ground miraculously improved. Zacky also discovered a little syndicate whereby some of the rich ore found its way into the barrows of those contracted to work poorer ground. The extra profit would be shared out later.

  It was all part of life, and no one thought too hard of these practices; it was up to the boss to stop them. Considering most of the bargains he struck were pretty generous, Ross thought himself entitled to stop them.

  II

  When it came to that next weekly visit to Morwenna Whitworth, Dwight had found her still improving, and he had braced himself for the unpleasant interview he had to face with her husband. After he had been upstairs he asked for the vicar and was shown into his study. Without too much preamble, since offence would be taken anyhow, he had stated his medical opinion. Bu
t he had misjudged his man. The anger and stilted dignity of last time were absent. Osborne had asked after his wife, brusquely it was true, but seemed no longer put out by this further demand on his continence. He said he supposed women were like that sometimes. Important thing was to get her right. Very inconvenient for everybody this continuing illness; sooner she was wholly recovered the better. A vicar’s wife had many duties, and it just wouldn’t do, this weakness, sickliness. Why, many women were pregnant again by this time, after a first baby, and taking it all in their stride.

  Dwight came away, not really liking the man but realizing that under that rather stupid, brusque exterior, which no doubt in the marital relationship repelled his wife, was a kinder person than he had first supposed.

  When he got home he had a bowl of soup and a glass of canary and went to his study, where Caroline found him at five on her return.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded, coming into his study like the wind. ‘They tell me you’ve had no dinner. Are you ill?’

  ‘No. I was not hungry.’

  ‘Then why are you not out succouring your patients as you’re accustomed to be at this time of day? What is wrong? Dwight, you are ill.’

  He closed his book and smiled at her. ‘I was tired. I thought I’d change my habit today.’

  She sat on the edge of her chair, burnished hair on shoulders, eyes looking into his.

  ‘Take your thumb out of the book,’ she said, ‘otherwise I’ll know you’re not attending.’

  He laughed and obeyed.

  She said: ‘Who is the nearest doctor?’