The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  So there was, as George explained to Elizabeth, now no political difference in the make-up of the Council from last year. Indeed he thought, he ventured to think, that certain steps he had taken to increase the obligation of certain councillors towards his family and himself would result in a larger majority than the very narrow one by which he had been elected last time.

  It was the usual nasty journey home, bumpier than usual even, and dustier; but at least the extra riders who came with them were not needed to draw them out of the mud, and in spite of her sick headache, Elizabeth sent off a little card to Morwenna inviting them to supper on the Monday, and Morwenna replied that they would be delighted to come.

  Elizabeth almost asked Rowella and Arthur as well; but somehow one just couldn’t bring oneself to invite a librarian, not to supper at least, and she knew it would have made George angry. Also of course she knew of the continuing, and puzzling, ill-will between the sisters.

  When the guests arrived that evening George was absent, but she did have a few minutes alone with her cousin while her cloak was being taken, and she asked, first, of course, after the health of John Conan, and then, casually, after Rowella.

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ said Morwenna.

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You are lucky to live by the river. Truro has been very close and unhealthy, I expect. I trust she’s well.’

  ‘I trust so.’

  ‘We shall be here about three weeks now before going to London, so I must ask her down to tea.’

  ‘You must come to tea with me,’ said Morwenna.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. But will you not come and take tea with me when she is here?’

  ‘Thank you, Elizabeth. I’d really prefer not.’

  ‘My dear, you feel very hard upon her? She was very young and no doubt has erred in her judgement. But . . .’

  ‘Dear Elizabeth, it is something I prefer not to discuss. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘But does not your mother write and ask you about Rowella – as she’s not yet sixteen?’

  ‘I believe Mama and Rowella correspond direct.’

  ‘I have seen her husband in the library. He seems a courteous young man.’

  ‘Yes, I believe he is.’

  Elizabeth sighed. ‘Very well, my dear. Let us go in, for Ossie will be all alone and feeling neglected.’

  As they walked down the hall Elizabeth noticed that her cousin had not bothered even to pat her hair after taking off the crepe hood of her cloak. Her long frock of blue lawn with fichu at neck and lace at wrists was one Elizabeth had not seen before, but it was so creased the girl might have slept in it. Yet for all that she was not unattractive; it seemed as if she walked and talked with a new certainty which was no less becoming than the old shyness. Her face looked as if she had been through troublous times, but more men would look at her now than when she had been so young and innocent.

  Ossie was indeed alone in the parlour and pondering a further strange and disturbing event in his life. Today, for the third time since they had parted, he had passed Rowella in the street. And this time, glancing at him obliquely through her lashes, she had half smiled. So difficult was the expression to interpret that it could have been a smile of derision, of triumph, of satisfaction, of would-be friendship or even of invitation. It had left Ossie hot and newly angry all over again and desperately aroused. It lent encouragement to his worst fantasies, and it had taken him all day to shake off the effects.

  Now, however, he was himself again, and they drank canary and listened to his monologue on church affairs until George joined them.

  George was not greatly pleased to have Osborne at his board today, nor in fact any day. Hardly a month went by but that Ossie wrote to George with some new request. His latest objective was the living of St Newlyn, which had fallen vacant; but everyone was turning a deaf ear to his pleas – in so far as anyone could turn a deaf ear to Ossie – the general feeling being that plurality for him had gone far enough for the time being. George would have borne with his importunities more patiently if his uncle, Conan Godolphin, had proved of more use to him in London. But Conan had turned out to be a fop, consorting with people of like mind, and although knowing and being often in the company of the Prince of Wales, peculiarly inept at introducing his new relative by marriage into any of the company that his new relative by marriage sought.

  This evening George had come in directly from the office, where he and his uncle, Cary, had been looking over a number of account bills that were due and considering which might be renewed; and he was in no mood for idle chatter. This indeed eventually made itself perceptible even to Ossie, for, after a considerable silence because his own mouth was full, he noticed that no one else was speaking.

  ‘How is it, Cousin George? You seem a thought down-in-the-mouth today. I trust you’re not sickening of a summer fever. My man has had it; sweating like a pig he’s been for three days; I’ve dosed him ten grains of jalap but he seems little improved. There’s much of it about. I buried a girl last week who could not shake it off.’

  ‘I have seldom felt better,’ George said, ‘so I don’t think your official services are likely to be required.’

  ‘Nay, no offence meant. Do you not think he looks a shade bilious, Elizabeth? Well, no doubt you’ve enough to occupy your mind, what with the war news no better and this coming election. It’s time, I believe, our legislators made some move to put down unrest in this country before they continue the war in Europe. We cannot fight – indeed we cannot do anything – while so much revolution is being talked and bred on every hand.’ He paused to stoke up, and again no one spoke while he chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed.

  Morwenna said: ‘It is the election on Thursday? But I thought almost everyone—’

  Ossie said: ‘It will be a hard tussle to gain re-selection now Basset has gone. D’you think your new opponent will carry many votes on account of his so-called popularity?’

  George looked up. ‘Gower? I doubt it. I don’t know who the other will be yet—’

  ‘Oh, had you not heard? I heard from Polwhele this afternoon. You know how thick he is with the Boscawens? He supped with them last night. I went up this morning on church business. The Archdeacon, you know, is coming again, and I wish all my influential parishioners to be there at the Visitation dinner.’ He stopped for another intake.

  George sipped his wine. ‘I do not suppose that Falmouth has—’

  ‘It’s to be Poldark,’ said Ossie, swallowing. ‘Poldark of Nampara. Myself, I should have thought him too much of a fly-by-night adventurer to be worthy of Falmouth’s attention. But then you see – no doubt he conceits to turn his late notoriety to some account.’

  For a while there was silence as supper proceeded. From below, outside, came the cupped clatter of horses’ hooves, tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, slow past the window.

  George motioned to a footman.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Take this wine away. It is unpalatable. Bring a bottle of the vin de Graves.’

  Ossie took a gulp at his glass. ‘It’s not the best, I agree. Maybe you’ve had it up out of the cellar too long. There’s one thing I could do with at St Margaret’s, a more adequate and cooler cellar. They say being so near the river one can hardly go deeper and remain dry.’

  ‘Do you find the vicarage damp?’ Elizabeth asked Morwenna. ‘Of course, we too are on the river here, but it’s less enclosed than among your lovely trees.’

  ‘We have damp upstairs,’ said Morwenna. ‘When it rains. Where Rowella used to sleep. But not from the river, I believe.’

  ‘We have damp in the church,’ said Ossie. ‘In the churchyard too. A great problem with the stones. The moss grows quick and the names quite disappear.’

  ‘I was asking Morwenna about Rowella,’ Elizabeth said to Ossie. ‘Whether you had seen anything of her and if she is well?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Whitworth noisily. ‘Nothing at all. For
us it is as if she had never existed.’

  ‘Forgive me, Ossie, but isn’t that rather a harsh judgement on so young a girl for merely having married so much beneath her? She married precipitately – but for love, I presume?’

  ‘I have no notion,’ said Mr Whitworth. ‘No notion whatever! Nor do I wish to think of it.’

  The manservant came back with a new bottle of wine and fresh glasses. Anxiously he waited while George tried it; then, having received neither complaint nor approval, he proceeded to fill the other glasses. Presently it was done. Ossie tried the old wine again and then the new, and agreed that the new was better. Silence fell and endured.

  ‘So Ross Poldark enters politics,’ said George, looking across at Elizabeth.

  ‘I never cared for the fellow,’ said Ossie. ‘But I suppose he’ll draw a bit of water in the town.’

  George said to Elizabeth: ‘And as a Boscawen nominee. That’s a cynical turnabout for a one-time rebel. To what desperate straits are some men driven to achieve respectability in middle life.’

  Ossie said: ‘He was very put out when that brother-in-law of his was flattened by your gamekeeper. That reminds me, I’ve had no reply from him to my letter about Sawle Church.’

  Elizabeth, short of breath, said: ‘Are you sure you have the person right, Ossie?’

  ‘Oh, Gad, yes. Polwhele was somewhat entertained at the thought. Made a joke about it, if I remember. Said Poldark in parliament would provide more backbone than wishbone!’ Ossie laughed, but no one joined in.

  ‘He is not yet in parliament,’ said George. ‘Nor do I think he will get very far in seeking to further that ambition.’

  No more was said on the subject over supper. Nor did any other conversation prosper.

  II

  Cary Warleggan scratched under his skullcap and put his pen down.

  ‘It is – totally outrageous. Wait till your father hears!’

  ‘Never mind about Father – he will hear in due time.’

  Cary got up, his eyes a-glint, plucking at his bottom lip. The years had dealt less well with him than with most of the family. Chronic dyspepsia and stomachic gout had robbed him of the little flesh he had had, and his clothes hung on him as on an arrangement of bones. Yet he was seldom absent from the counting house, and often ordered what little food he ate brought to him there, rather than leave and disturb his industry. More than either his elder brother Nicholas or his nephew, he kept a finger on the pulse of all Warleggan enterprises. Whether it was arranging a shipment of pig iron from one of the foundries of Wales, or arranging for a clerk in the counting house to become secretary to a newly-formed joint stock company, it was Cary who attended to the details.

  Though never dishonest, it was he who represented the less savoury side of Warleggan activity. It was he who had exerted the pressure in February and nearly brought Pascoe’s Bank down, and, although this had been done with George’s knowledge and tacit approval, George now held it bitterly against him because (a) it had failed, and (b) it had soured the relationship between their bank and Basset, Rogers & Co. Sometimes Cary could be too clever, too much the schemer; and George, who in earlier years had more often sided with his uncle than with his father, now saw more virtue in his father’s scruples.

  Of course Cary himself had certain standards which he now proceeded to air. Not everyone would have thought them inferior.

  ‘It is absolutely monstrous that a man like Falmouth, who, whatever else, has inherited a peerage and vast estates, should ally himself with this good-for-nothing mountebank; a man with virtually a prison record and a—’

  ‘No prison record, Uncle. You will remember, he was acquitted.’ As always George seemed to appease his own enmity by fuelling Cary’s.

  ‘Acquitted against all the canons of justice! If not a record, then a history, of lawless escapades up and down the county. Having to leave England as a boy because of these episodes and clashes with preventive men, returning and breaking open a jail and taking out a prisoner! Concerned in the death of our cousin, in wrecking, in smuggling and inciting miners to riot! Now suddenly the idol of the county because of an equally dubious adventure, undertaken this time against the French! And this is the sort of man one of our premier viscounts considers suitable to represent this borough in parliament! It – it . . .’

  ‘Our viscount,’ said George, ‘has no moral standards when fighting to regain a seat he considers his. He thinks Ross’s popularity will sway the vote. We must see it does not.’

  Cary wrapped his tail-coat around him as if he were cold. Since it was forty years old it was much too large for him and there was material to spare.

  ‘We have attended to most of our supporters.’

  ‘Yes, but let us go through the list again.’

  Cary pulled open a drawer, took out a ledger, and opened it where a slip of paper was to be seen.

  ‘Well, here they are. It all looks reasonable sound. I suppose you might put Aukett among the doubtful ones. And perhaps Fox.’

  ‘Aukett,’ said George, ‘received a substantial loan in March. It was advanced to him at three per cent interest with no question of a repayment date. He knows that no repayment will be demanded unless he shows independence in his voting opinions. It was understood. It was the purpose of the loan.’

  ‘He was once a close friend of Poldark’s, you know – in that copper-smelting venture.’

  ‘Forget it. Or if you wish to underline the point, remind him. But friendships do not wax strong when a threat of the debtor’s prison hangs over a man’s head.’

  ‘Fox also was in the smelting venture but less deeply involved – he drew out early. More recently he has had transactions with the Boscawens. Through them he received some contract for carpets; so he may be torn both ways.’

  ‘Let us see that he is torn the right way.’ George peered at the ledger over his uncle’s shoulder. ‘If it is a tug-of-war between obligation and indebtedness, then indebtedness should win . . . Yes, it must surely win. A letter tomorrow perhaps making his position plain, though in guarded terms.’

  ‘No letter,’ said Cary, pulling his skullcap down. ‘A word is the thing. He lives distant. I’ll send Tankard in the morning.’

  A clerk knocked and came in with some enquiry, but George gave him a look and he shrivelled back out of the door.

  ‘Polwhele?’ said Cary.

  ‘Hopeless. He’s committed to the Boscawens and banks at Pascoe’s.’

  ‘Notary Pearce?’

  ‘We shall take care of him.’

  They went through the rest of the names. A few were Portland Whigs who nevertheless could be relied on to vote against Pitt, however much collaboration between the two groups there might be in the House. Others were Tories of the old school and equally pledged to the opposite side. Of the twenty-five voters, it boiled down to about ten who could sway the vote and could themselves be swayed.

  It was past eleven o’clock and time to finish for the night, but they spent another half-hour in the dark little office discussing tactics. On a count yesterday they had made it out that George and Trengrouse would have a safe majority. Now that there was this added menace of the Poldark name – and the added goad – they wished to be doubly sure. At the end – assuming that Aukett and Fox would toe the line – it really seemed to depend a lot upon two names, and two rather distinguished ones at that: Mr Samuel Thomas of Tregolls and Mr Henry Prynne Andrew of Bodrean. Both had dined with the Warleggans recently; both were very old friends of Elizabeth’s parents; both had expressed themselves gratified at certain small favours George had been able to do them. If both these gentlemen voted for him, George counted on a majority of five. If one of the two chose wantonly to vote against him, he should have a majority of three. Even if by some extraordinary misfortune both defected to the other side, he would still get in by the single vote by which he had been elected before. It seemed safe enough. The point that waited decision was whether any form of request could be put to either of these
two gentlemen, if so how it might be phrased, and whether there was the risk of its doing more harm than good.

  It seemed certain that Falmouth would not leave them unregarded. But there was some story of Falmouth and Prynne Andrew having been involved in a dispute a couple of years ago over mineral rights.

  Eventually, since Uncle Cary seemed to have no finesse in his nature which was not in some way connected with the manipulation of money, George put the sheet of paper back in the ledger and shut and locked the ledger away in the drawer.

  ‘I will ask Elizabeth’s advice. She’s known them both since she was a child and will be more likely to know how far they would respond, and in what way, to a polite solicitation.’

  Cary drew in his lips, as he usually did at mention of his niece by marriage – they seldom spoke. ‘Why do you not invite her to ask them? They are old friends. Let her make the contact. Let her go and see them. Let her take a ride tomorrow afternoon – take tea with ’em, or whatever is the polite thing to do. Eh?’

  George looked at his uncle without much favour. ‘I’ll discuss it with her. But nothing shall be done in haste. We still have a little time.’

  Chapter Nine

  I

  The dawn of September the fourteenth was brilliant, new-lit by the sun rising behind a sky as red as a wound. Gimlett said the weather would not last the day. The sea’s darkness under the sun presaged the autumn. All the corn was in, and Ross had sent two of his farm men to Sawle to help draw in another catch of pilchards. Demelza’s hollyhocks, dying hard in the warm and windless days, were flaunting faded colours from the last flowers.

  Ross had told her that he had to be in Truro early and, lacking other information, she supposed it to do with the reorganization of the Volunteers.