The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  She thought about it.

  ‘I shall accuse you, Vicar.’

  ‘No one will believe you. It is my word against yours.’

  ‘Five hundred and fifty pounds is the lowest I could get Mr Solway to accept.’

  ‘You shall have nothing now!’

  ‘I am a dean’s daughter. People will listen to me. I will even write to the Bishop.’

  ‘The wild accusations of a hysterical child.’

  ‘You have a scar on your belly, Vicar. It was made by a boy you were tormenting at school. He took a knife to you. You were lucky not to be more serious hurt.’

  Ossie licked his lips. ‘I spoke of it once to you in jest. Anyone could know.’

  ‘And a mole on your left buttock. Of a peculiar shape. I will draw it for the Bishop.’

  Mr Whitworth did not reply.

  Rowella said: ‘If you will give me a pen I will draw it for you. It must be difficult for you to see. It is black and slightly raised from the skin. If you will give me a pen . . .’

  ‘I will see you dead first,’ Osborne whispered. ‘I will see you dead before I pay a penny to you or to that snivelling yard of pump-water you hoped to marry! That I should have been brought to the pass where an insolent slut of fifteen presumes – presumes to dictate to me what I shall and shall not do! Where you came from, how your father bred you, it is beyond my capacity to imagine. Get out of my life! Once and for all, get out of my life!’

  They settled for five hundred pounds.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  A week after these events a French raiding force of four vessels, manned by the riff-raff of their armies and under American command, landed by surprise at Ilfracombe and Fishguard and made a brief nuisance of itself before retiring and sailing hurriedly back to France. But the rumour spread that Bristol and the west had been invaded and that large areas of territory were in enemy hands. Many country people had already withdrawn their money from banks and hoarded their gold where they felt it safer against invasion. Now a run began throughout the country, and every bank was besieged with customers trying to get their money out before it was too late. The country, they thought, was going bankrupt, and to justify all these fears the Bank of England suspended payments.

  The situation was very tense in Truro, where all three banks were under pressure, the question being whether they could all weather the storm or whether one, or even two, must close their doors. In the end it became clear that the two larger and newer banks were coming through best, chiefly because of the known wealth and industrial strength of the Warleggans and because of the great wealth and prestige of Lord de Dunstanville. The third, and oldest and smallest, still known as Pascoe’s Bank in spite of its enlarged name, teetered on the brink of disaster. It seemed, Harris Pascoe said, as if, far from aiding him, or even standing neutral, the other two banks were using their strength to assail his credit in order to ensure their own salvation. But after several days of mounting tension Lord de Dunstanville arrived post from London, there was a switch of policy, and new credits became available to Pascoe’s Bank which just saved the day.

  Ross was in Truro the day after the worst was over. He found Harris Pascoe looking thinner and greyer, as if two years rather than two months had passed since their last meeting.

  For a time Pascoe seemed to want to talk not about his personal peril but about the more general one, as if it eased his mind to see it all in perspective, helped him to defuse his own emotions.

  ‘Pitt has been walking a tightrope for years. The strain of the war upon the whole economy . . . A crisis was bound to come.’

  ‘Which has been set off by a handful of Frenchmen who landed and burned a farm house and ran away or surrendered at the first sign of resistance! It wouldn’t have happened in Elizabeth’s time!’

  ‘That was the spark. Another might have done as well. It’s a crisis of nerves, Ross. Except for the last one, a succession of bad harvests . . . we’ve had to buy overseas. Two and a half million pounds spent on foreign grain last year alone. Then the cost of maintaining our forces and bolstering up our allies – s-six million pounds lent to Austria in one year – and of supporting Ireland too. All this has been financed by borrowing; and rising prices and falling output have gone hand in hand. Everything is more expensive to buy and there are fewer people with the money to buy it. Even relief to the poor has become vastly more expensive because there are more poor to be cared for. Also – and this is a wry reflection – while French currency ran riot foreign investment in England rose. Now, with the new type of government there and with the success of their arms, the franc is at last beginning to look more stable and the flow of gold into England is drying up.’

  ‘So what is to happen?’

  ‘Now? We shall struggle along as we are for a while. The Bank of England has been empowered to issue £1 and £2 paper notes as legal tender. They have also stated that they have more than enough assets to meet all claims on them. It will steady the country. But will people in general be c-content with paper when they have been used to gold? Certainly not in the provinces. Certainly not here.’

  ‘The worst is over in Truro?’

  ‘So far as one can reasonably s-see. It was fortunate that we had been so cautious in our extension of credit and in our discounting of bills, for, as you know, no bank can hope to meet its liabilities if called upon to do so at short notice. It will, of course, mean a heavy loss for us, for we have been compelled to sell valuable stock at much below its true worth in order to remain solvent.’

  ‘A year or two ago everyone was expanding, money was easy, interest rates low . . .’

  ‘Conditions change, the grey-heads weigh up the situation and reach quiet conclusions of their own. And then who is it, who among them first begins to narrow his commitments, to shorten the credit he gives, to draw in his resources, to call in money already owing – and finally to turn his paper wealth back into gold? No one knows, but it happens, and one affects another, and another another; and then the slide begins. And once it has begun no one knows where it will stop.’

  ‘George Warleggan is in Truro?’

  ‘He arrived back a week or so before the panic began. He returned to London by this morning’s coach.’

  ‘And – Elizabeth?’

  ‘I believe she remained in London.’

  ‘Basset’s bank was helpful to you?’

  ‘Right at the end. Else we might have gone, for a mere five thousand pound.’

  ‘So he clearly owes you no ill-will for your voting defection.’

  Pascoe met Ross’s look.

  ‘I had thought the opposite until near the very end.’

  II

  The rest of the spring slid by against a background of crisis and counter-crisis. The gloom of a nation bankrupt of money and ideas was lit briefly by news of a great sea victory won against the Spanish by Admiral Jervis, who destroyed an enemy fleet twice his own size and ended, for a sensible time, the awful danger of a union between the Spanish and French navies. Aside from Jervis and the other admirals a new name was being talked of. It seemed that Commodore Nelson’s actions had been conspicuous for the most brilliant and unorthodox sea tactics and the most daredevil personal bravery. His name was emerging from among a group of brilliant naval officers, just as Buonaparte’s had from among the French generals.

  But relief at news of this battle was soon tempered by terrible tidings of some sort of a mutiny in the British fleet at Portsmouth. True it was a rather respectful rebellion against unbearable conditions; and some of the demands were met and the meeting collapsed without much hurt; but there were mutterings in other ports, and the confidence of the nation took another knock.

  Ross grew more and more restless, as if he felt that living a comfortable squireen’s life in a west-country backwater was no place for a man who could bear arms. Training with the Volunteers was no real substitute, for this force seemed more and more to him a refuge for the inefficient and the half-hearted
. Demelza would have been glad to keep the weekly newspaper away from him had she known how. He spent ever more time meeting with his fellow landowners to concert means of area defence. Yet they seemed often to be more concerned with taking measures to guard against subversion from within.

  In late February Miss Rowella Chynoweth was wed to Mr Arthur Solway at the Church of St Margaret, Truro. The vicar of St Mary’s performed the ceremony. The vicar of St Margaret’s gave the bride away. He had never in his life been so glad to give anything away as his sister-in-law. The ceremony was a nightmare to him, especially that question put by his colleague to the small congregation: ‘Therefore if any man can show any just cause why they may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony ye are to confess it . . .’ It deeply angered him to go through this farce in his own church when the girl should by rights have been hounded out of the town in disgrace as a fallen woman.

  Mrs Chynoweth did not attend. She had been profoundly shocked by the letter Rowella had sent her, and almost more offended by the social status of the man named as father of the coming child. She had never been able to understand her youngest daughter. Rowella was the nearest in character to Amelia Chynoweth’s own father, the notorious Trelawny Tregellas who had spent all his life floating companies which never survived the first wave. Yet little Rowella, one suspected, had survival qualities unknown to her grandfather.

  Garlanda travelled down and partnered Morwenna who, after her own interview with Rowella, had been taken ill again with shock. It was a drab little wedding. The carpenter came with his eldest daughter, the one who had fits; but fortunately she avoided one for the duration of the ceremony. His wife did not accompany him as she was expecting her tenth child any day. The carpenter was not as obsequious as Ossie thought he ought to be. He was quiet and polite but he did not touch his forelock, and he had a certain rough dignity which amply explained his saucy refusal to go into the Poor House and accept the right and proper charity that the guardians offered. It equally explained his impudent refusal to vacate the council cottage just because he was behind with the rent. Arthur Solway, the thin, reedy, narrow-shouldered, presumptuous, greedy Arthur, was a chip off the old block.

  Arthur Solway appeared, in fact, much less at ease than his young bride, who contrived to look dowdy in her best frock but not at all downcast. Osborne had refused to offer them any hospitality in his house after the wedding; but two of his servants brought tea and cakes into the church, and people stayed talking for the best part of an hour before the party broke up. The young couple had found lodgings in River Street, and there they would stay until they could buy a suitable cottage.

  They were modestly comfortable now. Arthur Solway had been in to see Mr Harris Pascoe at the bank and explained that he had a legacy to invest, and Mr Pascoe had advised him to take a risk on the continued solvency of the country and buy Consols which, at their present depressed price, would yield him an income of about £30 per annum. This, with his wage at the library and the little bits of work he could pick up elsewhere, would enable them to make do. All the same, between the date of the agreement and the wedding, Rowella had often wondered if she might not have stuck out for more. Sometimes she thought she might have squeezed another hundred; sometimes she thought from the look in Ossie’s eye at that last bitter round of bargaining that he might have killed her first.

  Once they had all gone, the two sisters returned to the vicarage and Ossie grumpily went up to his room to change for cards. He had announced, when husband and wife first spoke together of Rowella’s disgrace, that because she was Morwenna’s sister he intended to give the unhappy girl fifty pounds in order that she should not sink into ultimate squalor with her vile seducer. Though she might not deserve it he would be generous. Nor, though temptation here sided with duty, would he follow the rightful course of denouncing the wretched young man to his employers. By doing that, richly though he deserved it, not only would he lose his employment but Rowella’s disgrace would become public. As it was, the fiction of respectability might just be preserved, and feeling for the vicarage would be limited to sympathy that Mrs Whitworth’s sister had made so unacceptable a marriage. It was a great pity, he observed, with his hands under his coat-tails, a very great pity, that the newly-weds should have to continue to live in Truro. He very much hoped that Morwenna would not visit her sister socially. Morwenna said: ‘It is very probable I shall not.’ Knowing the closeness of the Chynoweth family, Ossie was pleasantly surprised by this reply. He realized that Morwenna had no more patience with immorality than he had.

  When he had gone to his whist the two sisters ate a quiet supper together and talked in a desultory way before going to bed. Garlanda was returning to Bodmin tomorrow. There was no question of another sister coming to live at the vicarage. Ossie said he had suffered substantial losses in the recent bank crisis, and they could afford no further help with the children or in the house. The two little girls would be sent off to school and Morwenna would be freed to spend more time with her own baby.

  It had altogether been a trying visit for Garlanda and she was not going to be sorry when it was over. Pursued by her mother’s laments – muffled, since no one must know the truth in Bodmin – she had arrived at a vicarage where the three principal occupants each seemed ranged against the other. Mr Whitworth, it was understandable, was completely offended and alienated by his sister-in-law’s utter disgrace. Morwenna, though hiding it better and treating the unhappy girl with some degree of consideration, yet clearly felt the slur on her family and the slur upon herself that it could have happened while her youngest sister was in her charge.

  While Rowella, though occasionally tearful and downcast, as if that were the demeanour family and society expected of her, was yet subtly unchanged; one even dared to suspect in the dark of the night not utterly repentant. Until the actual morning of the wedding she continued as before, reading, ever reading, teaching and talking to the little girls, sitting silent at meals, the centre, the quiet centre of the thundercloud that overhung the vicarage.

  Garlanda had fitted in as best she was able, talking brightly of Bodmin affairs when the chance arose, other-wise limiting her observations to the trivia of everyday life. Clearly anything about the wedding beyond the merest arrangements was taboo, unless one of the other girls mentioned it first, and they did not. So had come the wedding, and the thin nervous bridegroom and the few ill-at-ease guests and the tea and cake and then the little gig to take the happy pair to their new lodgings. Rowella had kissed her sister with the casual ease of someone going out for the afternoon. Arthur took Garlanda’s hand and smiled into her eyes but made no attempt to kiss her, as if taking liberties with a young lady were the last thing likely ever to occur to him.

  And then they were gone and now with Ossie out at whist the two remaining sisters sat before the parlour fire for the last time.

  Garlanda noticed a big change in her elder sister. Her reticence before had come from shyness; her dealing with anyone with whom she was intimate had always been completely frank and unguarded. Not so now. And while Morwenna occupied herself wholly with her duties as a vicar’s wife, she no longer managed the house so well. Nor was she as careful about her own appearance. In the family of girls she had always been the precise one, taking care of her neatness and cleanliness after even the noisiest romp. Often when her mother was not around she had taken over and seen that her younger sisters, though by so little younger, were up to the mark with their hair and their frocks. Now she was untidy in dress and casual about order in the house.

  Yet she had regained her figure and seemed in good health, and Garlanda found it difficult to reconcile her present looks with the picture of the emaciated and ailing creature her mother had drawn when describing a visit to Truro last July to see her grandchild. If appearances were all, there would be little cause for concern.

  But Garlanda saw the changes in her sister’s manner as symptomatic of some deeper malaise. If she couldn’t care for her husband it was
proper enough to treat him with a polite but shallow courtesy which neither he nor anyone else could take exception to. But need this attitude apply to everyone, even her sisters? And in so far as one could relate such an attitude to a child, she appeared to carry it into her dealings with her own son. She was much more like a nurse to the baby than its mother.

  Knowing that in Bodmin there would be a desire to know all there was to know, Garlanda forced herself this last evening to discuss not merely the trivialities of the wedding but to bring up twice the not so trivial matter of Rowella’s downfall. The second time Morwenna put down her work, smiled short-sightedly and said:

  ‘My dear, I simply cannot talk of it. Not yet. It is all too raw and too sore. Forgive me, my dear. You have been very patient.’

  ‘No, no. I understand how you must feel, Wenna.’

  ‘Tell Mama I will write. It will be better that way.’

  ‘Elizabeth was not at the wedding. Nor Mr Warleggan. Did you invite them?’

  ‘They are still in London – fortunately. I believe they will be back next week.’

  ‘Shall you tell Elizabeth the truth?’

  ‘The truth?’ Morwenna looked up. ‘The truth – oh, no. What would be the purpose? The truth should be hushed up. It will be sufficient if I tell Elizabeth that Rowella has made an unfortunate marriage.’

  Shortly after, the two girls went to bed. The coach would be passing at seven so they had to be astir early. When Garlanda had climbed the second flight Morwenna went in to see if John Conan were asleep, found him so, tucked him in, and then retired to bed herself. She had a book which she hoped would take her mind off the tensions of the day; but even this, as it came from the library, was not without its tormenting links.

  Presently she gave up, set the book down and leaned over to put out the candle. On this came Ossie, still in his elegant evening suit, frilled shirt, striped canary waistcoat, tight trousers showing his thick sturdy legs.