The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  Of the male diners all but three were elderly, and Governor Melville was of the opinion that it would be improper of him as a military man to take any part in suppressing a civil disturbance unless civilian authority failed; so Ross and Rogers himself and two others accompanied the groom to Tehidy.

  There, though the countryside through which they passed was peaceful enough, they found great activity. The rioting had in fact taken place the day before. A crowd of angry miners, estimated at five or six thousand, many accompanied by their wives, had assembled and descended on the village of Camborne, in the neighbourhood of which a number of millers had their mills, and had demanded corn at a price decided on by themselves. The millers had appealed for help to the local gentry, but such as there were had been afraid to stir. So, to the accompaniment of rebellious songs, the corn had been seized and distributed and the miners paid the arbitrarily low price. What was worse, some houses and barns were broken into and the goods in them stolen and various persons who tried to impede the rioters were roughly dealt with.

  About thirty men were assembled in the big hall of Tehidy and were being sworn in as constables. This number was ever growing as de Dunstanville’s messengers brought in fresh recruits from outlying districts: farmers, factors, farriers, clerks, anyone who could be relied upon to do his civic duty in an emergency. Ross went into the drawing-room where the depositions of the millers were still being taken, and was greeted in a most friendly but grim manner by Basset, who clearly took the gravest view of the disturbance. Possibly, Ross thought, it was not so much the gravity of the acts committed, for it seemed, listening to the depositions, that the violence had been small and the thefts petty; it was the failure of his fellow magistrates to act which caught Basset on the raw. Let it be once seen and widely known that magistrates were afraid or powerless before a rioting crowd and all authority would be at an end. Basset himself had only arrived from London that day – last night he had been at Ashburton – and he was resolved that lawlessness and anarchy must not be tolerated in the district in which he was the principal landowner and held the King’s authority to maintain the peace.

  Once apprised of the facts, Mr Rogers was of the same mind, and an air of general resolve and determination ran through the assembled men, some of whom were the men who had not stirred yesterday. They had lacked a leader of sufficient energy and courage; now they had one.

  Ross, with his usual split sympathies, would have been glad to have excused himself and ridden off home. The millers and merchants were a well-fed lot and not people for whom he had any tender feeling. But to have gone off now would have been to take sides against his own class in a situation where the issues were no longer clear cut. It was not in fact so very long since he had led a riot himself; but the mutinies in the navy – particularly the later ones where men such as Parker had set themselves up as little dictators hardly distinguishable in manner from their French counterparts – had hardened his feeling against mass lawlessness; and to refuse to help now that he was here would have aligned him with ideas that he had come to detest.

  So he went along, though finding the action when it took place hourly more distasteful. This being a country district, the names of most of the ringleaders were known and had been attested by the millers in their depositions, so identity was not a problem. Eighty constables in all were sworn in, and Basset divided them into ten groups, each of whom had the allotted task of arresting five of the rioters. If by morning fifty of the leaders were under lock and key there would be no risk of further disturbances. Basset took one group, Rogers another, Mr Stackhouse of Pendarves a third, Ross a fourth, and so on.

  In the event nothing could have been more peacefully effected. By the time all arrangements had been made it was one o’clock in the morning and nearly two when most of the arrests were complete. The miners were in bed and asleep, except for one or two who were in work and happened to be on night cores; they were knocked up, taken by surprise, and arrested without resistance and mainly without protest. For an extempore operation Ross had to admit it was well done, and he could acknowledge Basset’s ability as an organizer. By the time the men were lodged in lock-ups under guard day was beginning to break. Ross declined the offer of a bed at Tehidy but sat and dozed in a chair for an hour until he could set off home.

  On the way he called at Killewarren and found Dwight up, though Caroline still abed, and learned to his further discomfort that Dwight had been sent for on the previous night and had refused to go. After Ross had sourly recounted the events of the night, Dwight said:

  ‘Oh, well, our situations were quite different. You were there, I was not. I had an excuse, you had not. You are a landowner of the district, I am only recently such by marriage. I think you did right to help.’

  Ross grunted. ‘Well, I did not at all like knocking up those half-starved devils and turning them out shivering in the dark. It is not a picture I shall live with very comfortably for some time to come.’

  ‘What is the plan to deal with them?’

  ‘Well, thank God I am not a Justice. Oh, I expect it will all be sensibly tidied up. Basset was talking of dealing summarily with about thirty-five of them and then sending the other dozen-odd to Bodmin on the more serious charges. He’s not at all a vindictive man and now that he has exerted his authority I think he will be satisfied with light sentences.’

  Dwight pursed his lips. ‘Let’s hope so. It’s a bad time for those who get at cross with the law.’

  Ross rose to go. ‘My respects to Caroline. I trust she’s over her indisposition.’

  ‘Not altogether. I believe her to be anaemic, but she’s a hard woman to doctor. Most of my potions, I suspect, are secretly tipped into the flower bed.’

  ‘Why d’you not take her away? You’ve had no proper honeymoon, and you’re much recovered yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps next year.’

  ‘That’s a long time away. D’you know, while you were in prison Caroline drooped and faded like a cut flower that’s been left out of water. When you returned she blossomed over again. I think – you’ll consider all this an impertinence, no doubt.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Ross contemplated his friend before going on. He felt in a mood for plain speaking. It was the shortness and discomfort of his own night . . . ‘Well, I believe she is a young woman whose looks and health are peculiarly susceptible of her good or bad spirits. You suffered greatly at Quimper – but not so much spiritually, I venture to think, as she did here. You were – you have the nature and the mind to be always busy. What she had here was the waiting and the anxiety and a dying man to care for who for months would do everything but die. I would guess she still suffers from that in her own way as much as you have suffered physically from the hardships of the prison camp. She needs a change, Dwight, a stimulus.’

  Dwight had coloured. ‘Dr Poldark.’

  ‘Yes . . . I’m fond of Caroline. Through the years I’ve seen a good deal of her and conceit that I know her next best only to you. Perhaps in one way better, because I am more detached.’

  Dwight said: ‘We have discussed this together, Caroline and I, not so long ago, the difficulty of our adjusting our way of living, each to the other. I have attempted to – to meet her ideas in a number of ways.’

  Ross grunted, as if unconvinced.

  Dwight said rather sharply: ‘If you attribute her health to her mood then you point the obvious cause of her lowered spirits. Namely that our marriage is not the success it should be. Who am I to say you are not right?’

  Ross picked up his crop. ‘If it is not the success it should be, then I would add the word, yet. The fact that you’re opposites in many things is not the end of the world, nor even the end of a marriage. You know it, you both knew it long ago. So far you have had less than two years to make the appropriate adjustments. It’s only time and patience that are needed. Caroline, I know, is not notable for her patience, but you both have time. And I think you must go along with her more, Dwight. A
ll right, all right, still more, then. You must count your blessings and take the consequences . . . This lecture, I know, is the height of interference and you would do right to call for pistols; but remember I have a vested concern for her happiness and yours.’

  ‘Since without you,’ Dwight said, ‘there would have been no marriage. Doubly so.’

  ‘Doubly so,’ Ross agreed. ‘It’s a chastening thought.’

  ‘So I’ll not call for pistols,’ said Dwight, ‘but only for your horse. And send you on your way, with no chastening thoughts, happily, about your own marriage.’

  ‘It has had its storms,’ Ross said. ‘Make no mistake. We none of us come to port without risk of shipwreck.’

  II

  Demelza was giving Jeremy his early lessons when Ross arrived. That was, she had the boy on her knee with a horn book teaching him his letters while Clowance, not at all co-operative, beat out a regular rhythm on the floor with an old tin cup she had found. Demelza had got into this routine during the fine summer so that Jeremy was obliged to do a little learning before being allowed his first bathe.

  Ross’s arrival broke up this scene, and Demelza kissed him warmly while Jeremy embraced his leg and Clowance increased the rate of her drum beat and crowed in tune. If he had noticed, Ross might have been aware of some extra warmth in Demelza’s kiss and that her hands, holding his coat by each upper arm, retained their grip longer than usual. But, knowing of nothing at home to disturb his peace of mind, and much outside, he was preoccupied with the events of last night and anxious to tell her about them.

  So he broke his fast while he talked, and then they went to sit in the garden, and Ross pulled off his coat and Demelza took out a parasol, and they spoke of this and that, and in the course of the conversation she mentioned that Hugh Armitage had been over on Tuesday.

  Ross raised an eyebrow and said: ‘Oh? How is he?’ the question being a rhetorical one.

  ‘Very unwell,’ Demelza said. ‘Leastwise, not in ordinary health, but he has had to leave the navy.’

  ‘I’m sorry. What’s amiss?’

  ‘Who was Milton?’

  ‘Milton? A poet. There was one such anyway.’

  ‘Did he go blind?’

  ‘Yes . . . Yes, I believe he did.’

  ‘They tell Hugh that this is what will happen to him.’

  ‘Good God!’ Ross frowned at her. ‘I am sorry! When did he learn that?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know. He came over with a groom, who I think was with him because of his sight. He would not stay for dinner, but before that I took him to Seal Hole Cave. He seemed to want to go and I couldn’t properly refuse.’

  ‘. . . In the row-boat, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. He said Mrs Gower was to have come with the children but one of the children was ill and so she could not.’

  ‘The seals were there?’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . More’n I’ve ever seen before.’

  Ross’s frown deepened, and there was a heavy ominous silence.

  ‘I wonder if he has seen Dwight?’

  ‘Dwight?’ said Demelza with relief.

  ‘Well, I know Dwight has no special eye knowledge but he has such intuition, such insight on physical matters, that Hugh might do worse than see him . . . Good God, what an ill thing! Has it been brought on by his imprisonment, do they say?’

  ‘They think so.’

  Ross leaned down and patted Garrick, who was crouched in the shade of his chair. ‘An ill thing indeed. At times the world seems very senseless and cruel. Cruel enough to man without man himself inflicting further cruelties . . .’

  Demelza picked up a blue satin petticoat that needed a repair to the hem. She began to stitch. A bee, she wondered if it was the same bee, was working in and out of the lilac flowers.

  ‘What is he going to do?’ Ross asked.

  ‘Hugh? I – don’t know. I think he will go home to his parents in Dorset.’

  ‘Is he still as much in love with you?’

  She glanced up briefly, shyly. ‘I don’t know – now.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m very grieved for him, as you’d naturally expect.’

  ‘Have a care. Pity, they say, is akin to love.’

  ‘I do not think he would ever want pity.’

  ‘No. That was not what I was supposing.’

  Garrick heaved himself up from beside the chair on his bony black woolly legs and ambled off into the house.

  ‘He does not like the heat,’ Demelza said.

  ‘Who? Hugh?’

  ‘No, no, no, no.’

  ‘I’m sorry; it was not meant as a joke.’

  Demelza sighed. ‘Maybe it would be better if we did joke about it all. Maybe we all take life too serious . . . I’m that glad you’re back, Ross. I wish you wouldn’t go away so much. I wish you would not!’

  ‘It would be as well. I achieve little but frustration.’

  That evening while the last light was still luminous over the sea they made love, and he was aware, though he did not remark it, of a return of some warmth and richness in her that had been lacking these last months in however barely perceptible a degree. Not for the first time he was conscious of emotional lights and shades in his wife that could not be categorized, could not be named as sensuous or emotional as such, perhaps derived from each and gave to each but in essence grew out of a deeper fund of temperament that he still could not altogether apprehend. The simple miner’s daughter was not simple in character at all.

  They talked in a quiet, contented, desultory way for a while, and then he went to sleep. After lying there staring at the dying twilight on the ceiling she slipped from under his protecting arm, slid out of bed, put on her nightdress and went to the window. The stars were out in a wide gloom of sky, with the beach and the cliffs rock-dark and empty. A scar of surf divided sea from sand. Some night birds were winging their way home.

  She shivered a little, though it was warm in the room, as she considered the enormities of Tuesday.

  To her Ross had always been one step more than just a husband. He had, as it were, almost created her out of the nothing that she had once been, a starving brat barely able to see or think beyond the horizons of her immediate needs, illiterate, uncouth, lice-ridden. In thirteen odd years she had grown, with his encouragement, into a woman of some modest attainments, someone who could read and write and talk a fair English and play the piano and sing and mix and not merely in the company of gentlefolk but, recently, in the company of the great. More than that, he had married her, given her his love – most of the time – his loving care – all the time – his trust, his confidence, a fine home, servants to do any work she did not want to do, and three beautiful children, two of whom survived. And she had betrayed all that in a sudden unexpected quirk of pity and love and passion for a man she scarcely knew who happened to call and ask.

  It was not quite credible. Some years ago when Ross had gone to Elizabeth, had left her, deserted her, and gone off to Elizabeth, she had herself ridden alone to a ball at the Bodrugans’ determined to revenge herself in the only way open to her, and had thrown herself at a Scottish army officer called Malcolm McNeil. But when it came to the point, when she found herself alone in her room with a strange man who was trying affectionately to undress her, she had repelled him, actually with force, had bitten him like the brat she was and had made her escape. Whatever Ross did, she had found, almost to her own fury, that she was Ross’s woman and wanted – indeed could accept – no other man. Then when the motive was there, goading her on, with the absolute certain knowledge of Ross’s unfaithfulness burning into her soul, she had been unable to be unfaithful in return.

  Now, with no more than a suspicion that Ross was again meeting Elizabeth on the quiet, she had allowed herself to slip gently into the infidelity she had thought impossible in herself.

  She peered out at the night. It was going no darker; behind the house a moon was rising.

  But to be honest she could not allo
w herself even the luxury of blaming her lapse on Jud’s tale-telling, on Ross’s secret meetings. It had of course been in the back of her mind all these months, a little corrosive eating away at her normal contentment; and on the soft sand beside the Seal Hole Cave with the cliffs towering and a man kneeling in the sand watching her, the knowledge had come suddenly to the forefront and on the instant eroded her will. But it could only have done that if the impulses were already so strong within her that they seized on any excuse to have their way. It was an excuse, she knew that with certainty. A good one or a bad one, who knew? But an excuse for what was inexcusable.

  Nor could she really pretend to herself that she had been swept away by Hugh’s romantic approach. Of course it was delightful to be someone’s chivalrous ideal. But she was altogether of the wrong temperament to be much affected by it. She knew well enough that such a poetic view of love was impossible to sustain, and she had made this clear to him all through their friendship. Indeed his extravagances, charming though they were, would have tended to defeat their own object. (Was it unfair to him to suppose that he had tried to charm her, to weave a spell around her, to hypnotize her with idealistic attitudes and beautiful words? Perhaps it was unfair, for his sincerity could hardly be doubted.) Anyway, she had refused to be so hypnotized. Yet in the end she had not refused him. She had given herself to him with warmth and sensuous ease. There had been little or no embarrassment. It had happened, cut off from the rest of the world, under the hot sun.

  So what was the reason? Attraction, sheer physical attraction, which she had felt from the moment they had first met last year; sadness, for the news he brought of himself; opportunity, which had settled on them like a strange bird, making unreality out of isolation and giving her the feeling that she was no one, except a nameless woman to be taken by a nameless man.