The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  It was a silent breakfast, Jeremy and Clowance still sleeping after being late to bed. Most meals had been silent recently and it had been a hard week. None like it since the last months of ’93. Demelza was plainly grieving for Hugh Armitage, and waited all the time for a message of good or ill news. Ross, his feelings bruised but judgement half suspended, watched her anxiety and said nothing. If she wanted to speak about Hugh she could speak. If not, not.

  He did not know the meaning of the poem he had read; it might mean that Demelza had been unfaithful to him, it might all be poetic licence. He had not asked her and would not ask her. What was plain during this week was that she was being unfaithful in spirit, her thoughts, her emotions, her heart, deeply engaged with another man.

  And that man was gravely ill. How did a husband feel? Jealous and injured? Inadequate and angry? Sympathetic and understanding? Why did one’s throat tighten at every other thought?

  He left before eight, riding up the bare but smiling valley among the nut trees and the hawthorn, the bubble of the stream keeping him company. His land. Crickets sawed in the hedges, swallows were wheeling and swooping, cattle, his cattle, grazing in the fields. Wheal Grace smoked quietly and a couple of tin stamps clanged. The countryside looked benign, as if the summer had ripened every leaf and berry. It was all his – his, changed from the overgrown worthless ruin he had come back to fourteen years ago. But today there was no ripeness, no contentment in him. So man set his hopes and endeavours high and when he had achieved them they were so much dross and clinker in his hands.

  He was in Truro too early and left his horse at the Red Lion and took a walk down to the quay. He had no wish to meet anybody, neither his opponents nor his supporters, nor even his sponsor until the required time.

  The tide was in and water lapped close against the uneven stone of the old quay. Here the last of the town fell down into a huddle of warehouses and sheds and half-derelict, over-peopled cottages. Littered about the quay among the wagons and the hand-carts was the usual detritus of a small port: rope ends and broken spars, rags of tarpaulin and sail-cloth, broken jars and a dead seagull. A three-masted lugger was being unloaded, and men were rolling barrels down a narrow plank on to the shore. Farther on two other craft were moored alongside, making the most of high water. Two beggar children came whining to Ross but he waved them away: if you gave to two there would soon be twenty. Women screamed at each other from a window. A horse tossed its head in a nosebag to reach the last of his meal.

  Past all this you came to grassland and a sort of pool of the river before it widened out towards Malpas and St Margaret’s Church. Here it was utterly still, sun-lit, tree-sharpened at the edges, a few river-birds skimming low. Near the bank were four swans, almost stationary, moving so slowly that they appeared only to be drifting with the tide. Each one was mirrored, duplicated in the still water. It seemed sometimes that they could see their own reflections and were admiring themselves. Then one or another would break her reflection by dipping a delicate beak. Graceful things. White things. Like women. Unpredictable. Gentle. Fierce. Faithful or unfaithful. Loyal or traitorous. God, who knew?

  A gust of gnats moved around him, and he waved them away like the beggar children. They departed as reluctantly. Smell of wood smoke drifted on the air. Leaves were turning colour early. In the massed trees of the other river bank copper and ochre was staining the green.

  The swans were separating little by little, inertly, more it seemed by vagaries of the current than by design. The one nearest the bank had a more slender neck and a more graceful way of holding it, like a question mark. She drifted towards him, wings a little elevated, head to one side, fate or errant fancy bringing her. Then she suddenly turned away, foot lazily moving, rejecting any interest she might appear to have shown. He had made no movement either to entice or rebuff.

  Four women in his life? Four with whom he had been concerned this year? Demelza and Elizabeth, of course. Caroline? Who was the fourth? One of the swans had a damaged wing, feathers awry and stained. On Sawle Feast day Ross had been turning to leave his pew when Morwenna had smiled at Drake, and he had caught a glimpse of the smile. The damaged swan. Appropriate image. So she would stay while she remained linked to that man. But who was to alter that now? Whom God hath joined . . .

  And his own marriage? And Elizabeth’s? And even Caroline’s? All in the melting pot? Certainly his own. This was the worst of it, when he had thought his own the most deep-rooted, the most secure. Like a rock. But the rock was on sand. One man, a likeable man but in his own way unprincipled, had come into their house and come between them. Now she was part lost – or wholly lost – he did not know.

  And why in God’s name had he consented to come here this morning to participate in this charade? What stupid and inappropriate impulse had swayed him at Tregothnan a week ago?

  ‘I accept,’ he had said, ‘I accept your nomination on three conditions. The first is that, irrespective of any directives you may give, I may support Pitt in any measures to sustain the war.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The second is that I shall be free to support any Bill or measure which in my view is likely to bring help or better conditions for the poor.’

  ‘Agreed.’ There had been hesitation before this answer.

  ‘The third is that I shall be free to support Wilberforce against the trade in slaves.’

  A further hesitation. ‘Agreed.’

  It had been settled like that, drily, a business transaction, little more said, neither of them attempting to specify the details. Too little had been said. It might be a small matter to the noble lord: it was not small to him; it involved half his future. If the details had been spelled out it might have enabled him to see over again the absurdity of the proposition, just as he had seen it when put to him by Basset last year. He would have had time to withdraw, to back out, to deride himself even for considering it.

  There was still time . . . Well, hardly. The agreement had been made; it was a matter of honour to go through with it now. Honour? What had honour to do with it?

  All the same he might well not be elected. During the week he had heard sufficient comment to know that the town council were still in a rebellious mood. Having only just thrown off the yoke of their aristocratic borough-monger, it seemed unlikely that they would meekly accept it again a year later. It would be much better if that happened. Then all the second thoughts, the rabid self-criticisms, the mental reservations would be unnecessary.

  Ross kicked irritably at a stone. Fine. He would be defeated. So George Warleggan would be returned instead of him and go back to Parliament again. Was that what he wanted? Would this result enable him to live happily ever after? Another triumph over him for George – after all his other triumphs. Congratulations all round.

  Better not ever to have stood than be defeated. Falmouth had put it to him bluntly, and, whether he cared to admit it or not, the circumstance of his being in opposition to George had influenced his choice. A bad reason, indeed an ignoble reason, but one that should not be evaded just because it was unsavoury.

  The swans were moving away now, pale, dignified, enigmatical, out of his life for ever. Double mirrored in the soundless pool, they might have been representing some reverse side of their beings, like humans offering one image to the world and retaining another for private introspection. After all these years did he know or understand the mirror image of Demelza? Not, it seemed, in anything but the shallowest of water. Did he even know and understand himself?

  Starlings began to sweep the sky. The sun was disappearing in a watery mist. He took out his watch. Ten-thirty. He turned and walked back towards the town.

  II

  The council chamber was quite small, the numbers in it limited. Not all the voters had turned up yet, although it wanted only ten minutes to eleven o’clock. But it seemed improbable that any would fail to attend. Feeling ran high in the town. Mostly the elections in such a borough passed quietly enough and as a for
egone conclusion. But from time to time storms blew up, and the by-election of last year had seen the biggest upset of them all. Fortunately it was unlikely that there would be endless – or even any – challenges as to the legitimacy of the voters, such as occurred at so many elections. The members of the corporation, the Aldermen and the Burgesses, had all been themselves truly elected and their election acknowledged, if grudgingly, by those who opposed them.

  Ross was the last of the candidates to arrive. Lord Falmouth was already there, looking as usual like a prosperous farmer who had had a bad year. He was talking to the new mayor, Mr Warren. Captain Gower, a stocky dark-clad man of forty-odd, came across and shook Ross by the hand. Ross gave him an uncomfortable smile and glanced over at George Warleggan, who was talking to his fellow candidate, Thomas Trengrouse, who was a brother-in-law of the Cardews. It was the first time they had looked at each other, George and Ross, since the disputed wrestling match, and their glances were no warmer. Behind George was his father, and behind Nicholas the Reverend Dr Halse and Mr Hick, both life-long Whigs. Across the room was Harris Pascoe, who flushed when Ross moved to speak to him.

  ‘So you see,’ Ross said.

  ‘Yes . . . yes I see.’

  ‘It puts your conscience into more of a tangle than ever, this cross-fertilizing of so many pollens: friendship, loyalty to one’s principles and the rest. If I were you I should have stayed away.’

  ‘If you were I you w-would have come,’ said Pascoe. ‘Which is precisely what I have done.’

  ‘To vote for me, I’m sure, and so ruin your standing as a leading Whig.’

  ‘No more than I did last time.’

  ‘Tell me, Harris, you have been at these occasions before; what is the polite procedure? Do I have to shake hands with my opponents as is obligatory at a wrestling match, or am I permitted to continue to eye them with enmity from the other side of the hall?’

  The latter, I think, is more customary. But I am interested, Ross, that you have decided to stand now, after last year refusing an invitation from the other side.’

  ‘It might have made more sense if I had accepted then, mightn’t it? Basset is more my style of man than Boscawen. Yet, really there’s little to choose, as indeed there’s little to choose betwixt the parties. Put my choice down to the waywardness of fate and the contrariness of human beings. This is what makes the world the sad and wry place it is.’

  Pascoe eyed his friend. Prosperity and the passage of a decade and a half had made little change in Ross from the days when as a bony. wounded young officer, he had returned from the American war penniless and the inheritor of a property overgrown and in ruins. Today, perhaps more than usually, he reminded Harris Pascoe of that young man. The high-strung disquiet was back at its most noticeable.

  A bell rang. The clerk of the council, one Gerald Timms, had rung it to let the company know that it was eleven o’clock and time for business to begin. As he rose with a book in his hand, two more members of the council arrived. The clerk read the Proclamation, giving notice of the election, and then the Sheriff’s precept. George Warleggan and Thomas Trengrouse moved to take seats near him, and Captain Gower nodded to Ross to join him in doing the same. As they did this the clerk continued by reading the Act of George II.2, against bribery and corruption. He had a thin voice which squeaked on the high notes, and his breath was short. From the look of his teeth, Ross thought, it was likely to be foul also.

  This done, another Act was read. When it was over the mayor came forward and was sworn in as returning officer. He sat down and signed the book, pulled his glasses farther to the edge of his nose and waited.

  George Evelyn, third Viscount Falmouth, rose from his chair, and as he was about to speak two more late-comers arrived. They were the last. Thereafter in the chamber was silence while Lord Falmouth put forward the two candidates he had to propose. He spoke first of his brother-in-law, Captain Gower, his work as Secretary to the Admiralty, his value to the town in obtaining certain contracts for supplies, his support of Pitt, his dedication to his duties both in and out of the House. He then commended his second candidate, Captain Poldark, who was new to politics but whom they all knew as a distinguished soldier and a brave one, whose daring exploit of ’95 had resounded throughout the county and whose intimate and personal knowledge of mining and local industry as a whole would be invaluable to the town he would represent.

  George Evelyn sat down, son of the late and great Admiral Boscawen (victor of Puerto Bello, Lagos and Cape Breton, the terror of the French). He had spoken with little effort and no emotion but in a manner which showed his long habituation to being heard. Nicholas Warleggan rose in his place, son of a blacksmith who still lived at an advanced age near St Day in a small house with two servants, whom he hated, to look after him. Only in the last twenty years had Nicholas become accustomed to deferential silence when he spoke, but twenty years is long enough, and to this he added an accent and a turn of phrase which his opponent lacked. He spoke of things current in the minds of all his listeners fifteen months ago when the by-election had been held; and, since he had now irretrievably quarrelled with the Boscawens, he did not hesitate to recall them or to mince his words in doing so. The squabble over the burial ground came up, the workhouse, stones from the quarry, and his Lordship’s private and totally unjustified complaints that the borough was expensive for him to maintain and his frequent attempts to sell the seats to the highest bidder. Finally his treatment of the borough as a chattel to be disposed of at will and without the consent of the electors.

  He made no apology for repeating these complaints, Mr Warleggan went on, since it was only because of the indignation of the council at being so treated that Mr George Warleggan had been persuaded to offer himself for the seat vacated by the death of Sir Piers Arthur; and it was not out of disrespect for the Boscawen family but because of the council’s public-spirited and determined independence that they had duly elected him. Since he had been elected Mr George Warleggan had faithfully served the town, as several merchants and councillors of the town would no doubt be prepared to attest. He would continue to do so; and many would agree that it was a welcome change to have a local man to represent them, a Member resident in the town, and a banker, with a vast knowledge of local business affairs and needs, instead of some up-country gentleman who served other interests, mainly his own. Equally Mr Thomas Trengrouse was resident in the town and a well-known and able attorney. Between them these two gentlemen would make up a team such as had not represented this borough in living memory, if ever before. Both gentlemen, Mr Warleggan ventured to believe, were greatly to be preferred to an Admiralty official whose time was greatly taken up with naval matters or to a country squire living far off on the north coast, a gentleman of narrow outlook and unpredictable impulse, who knew little of commerce – and what little he knew he tended to despise. In any event, did the council still wish to assert this independence by electing two candidates who stood only to serve them, or did they wish to bow to his Lordship, acknowledge their error of last year, and accept his nominees who would thenceforward do whatever he bade them do, in all matters civic and parliamentary?

  It was a good speech, not eloquent but meaningful and to the point – a far better one than the one that had preceded it. Ross had to admit that it half convinced him. Had it been any other than a Warleggan speaking it and spoken of, he would have felt like voting against himself. But then he knew, as many others in the room must know, what the Warleggans really stood for, in business, in banking, in the sort of behaviour between man and man that he fundamentally and passionately rejected. But how many of the two dozen assembled voters, knowing what he did, felt as he did and were prepared equally to reject it?

  By the look in the eyes that had avoided his in the last fifteen minutes, Ross knew that not all his friendly acquaintances and well-wishers were going to vote for him. Had they been able to do so by letter and the letters kept private, it would have been a different matter. Some, he could se
e, were horribly torn, not for fear of offending him, for he had no stick to raise over them, but between incurring the anger of the Boscawens and the anger of the Warleggans. Basset with his lures and rewards was gone. But the choice was made no easier for that. The early indignation, the flashing heady independence which had occasioned the revolt last year had partly subsided. They had ‘freely’ voted then, and to the devil with the consequences. Now some at least of them had to vote under a conflicting duress.

  The mayor was sitting rubbing his eyebrow with the feather of his pen. There was a long pause. No one wished to be the first to move.

  The mayor said: ‘Gentlemen . . .’

  Nicholas Warleggan got up and walked to the table. ‘I will vote for Mr Warleggan and Mr Trengrouse.’

  There was another pause. Then a chair scraped. It was William Hick. ‘Mr Warleggan and Mr Trengrouse.’

  The Reverend Dr Halse followed him. He had been an enemy of Ross’s ever since a card game in the Assembly Rooms many years ago. Perhaps even before that when he had tried to teach him Latin. ‘Mr Warleggan and Mr Trengrouse.’

  Moving rather quickly for him, as if anxious to prevent the appearance of a rout, Lord Falmouth moved to the table. ‘Captain Gower and Captain Poldark.’

  Harris Pascoe was behind him. ‘Captain Gower and Captain Poldark.’

  Lord Devoran came, blinking, as if surprised by the light. ‘Captain Gower and Captain Poldark.’

  A further pause. Some whispering. Footsteps. St Aubyn Tresize. ‘Captain Gower and Captain Poldark.’

  William Aukett, squinting more horribly than usual in his distress, stumbling over the words he had to say: ‘Mr Warleggan and Mr Trengrouse.’

  Scrapings at the back of the hall. Mr Notary Pearce, assisted by a servant, was now seen to be hobbling, pain-racked and blowing, towards the table. Mr Pearce had not slept at all well. His spinster daughter had been up and helping him to the close-stool repeatedly. The prime example of an elector torn both ways, he would gladly have pleaded illness and failed to turn up, had he not known that this way he would equally have offended both parties. But what was he to say? He asked his daughter and he asked himself. He was personally in debt to Cary Warleggan – not even to the slightly more impersonal Warleggan’s Bank – yet he owed half his business to the Tregothnan estate, and Mr Curgenven, Lord Falmouth’s steward, had made a point of calling on him yesterday to remind him of this. It was a dire fix, and the twist of his eyebrows as he walked, the sweat starting on his brow and under his bob-wig, were not solely the result of his physical infirmities.