The Black Moon

by Winston Graham

  ‘I would like to take George down a mine,’ said Ross. ‘I wonder if he has ever been down one. Do you think you could arrange it?’

  Henshawe said: ‘I beg you, sur, to say nothing of this t’anyone, for twill not be public for a month or more. But I felt I had to tell you. I’d like your word.’

  January ended and February came in with the winds and the frosts unchanging. Caroline, unable to journey to London except by sea – which was something even she did not care to face – instead took up the cause of the poor as Demelza, and more particularly Ross, had asked her. Accompanied by a groom, she slipped and slithered on her white horse from one big house to another, cajoling, bullying, or enticing its owner to contribute to a subscription she was raising for the labouring poor and the starving miners. She started the fund with twenty guineas herself, and Ross gave the same. She considered that everyone of their standing should be expected to contribute no less; but she had hard work in some of the houses. Sir John Trevaunance, who did not like her very much since she had refused Unwin, argued that he was already giving corn to his own workmen at a reduced price and had been doing so for three months – why should he be expected to contribute a second time? He offered £2. Caroline refused it and sat on. When she had been there three hours she rose and said, well, perhaps tomorrow he would feel better disposed: she would call back tomorrow. Sir John increased his subscription to £10. Caroline accepted this but said she would call for the other half next month.

  Old Horace Treneglos was willing but his son John laughed in her face and said he hadn’t that much ready cash in the world. Caroline then said she would send a cart over and take the contents of one of his barns. In the end they found fifteen guineas. Sir Hugh Bodrugan happened to be in a good mood and gave her twenty without argument. There was no one at Trenwith, so she wrote a letter to George and sent it in by groom. The groom came back with twenty-five guineas. Caroline thought, five guineas extra to be at the top of the list? Then she started on the smaller fry, from whom she could expect less. But like an Irish priest who knows what every member of the congregation can afford, she set a figure, with the help of her bailiff, Myners, before she called at each house. In this way she surprised £10 out of Mr Trencrom before he could formulate the proper excuses.

  The object of this subscription was not charity as such, but to buy the contents of a corn ship which was due in St Ann’s shortly and sell the contents to the miners and their families at a reduced price. Only in the direst cases was the corn to be given, for the Poor Rate was supposed to keep everyone above starvation level.

  At the end of January Aunt Agatha told Ross that Elizabeth had written to say they would not be back just yet as Valentine was unwell, and they could not move while the bad weather lasted. Nor did Geoffrey Charles and Morwenna and the older Chynoweths return.

  On February the 16th Demelza was feeding the birds in her frozen garden – those which had not died of the cold being tame that they would take bread from her hand – and she came on a first snowdrop opening its white star through the crusty earth. She at once ran in to tell Ross – but it was the only sign. The east wind blew an eternal grey cloud over the land, and the land shivered and crouched. Sam, though preoccupied with the number of souls he had to save, found himself forced to consider their bodies as well. Works, he knew, did not go before faith, but necessity sometimes drove him to act as if they did.

  One casualty was Nick Vigus, surprisingly, for he had cheated his way through life so successfully that one wondered he could not lie his way out of the pneumonia which attacked him. But even Dr Choake’s ministrations, costing 1s 6d a visit, did not help him, and, no cleverer than the rest when his time came, he died quietly in the night; and Jud had the privilege of digging the hole to contain his old friend and companion in wickedness. Vigus left a widow, a son, three daughters, and two daughters by his eldest daughter. They were soon on parish relief.

  Wheal Leisure closed on the 25th of February. On the following day Ross took on twenty more hands. It was a measure of charity which he explained to Demelza he felt he had to afford. Not to bring up more ore from the floors of tin at present being worked but to explore the ground further, chiefly in the direction of old Wheal Maiden.

  ‘If I mine more now I defeat my object. But our margin of profit will permit this extra expenditure, and who knows, one may be discovering some new lode for the future? It simply means that our costs will rise relative to what we raise.’

  That same week the ship with the corn came in, and the contents were brought ashore and sold off the following Sunday morning and each succeeding Sunday from the parish schoolroom of St Ann’s. The price for wheat was set at 14s a bushel and barley at 7s a bushel, this being about half the price they were fetching in Truro market. Distribution and sale were conducted in a most orderly fashion, the queue forming about two hours before the sale began. The sale was conducted by the parish overseers, but Caroline or one or other of the main contributors was there each week in case of dispute over price or quantity.

  Having seen the scheme launched, Caroline at last went off to London; but not before she had held a meeting at her house for the French émigrés. She invited both Ross and Demelza, but Demelza could not go, Jeremy having caught the prevailing influenza and being dangerous feverish. Demelza missed Dwight almost as much as Caroline did. The heavy-handed, stertorous Dr Choake with his liking for the knife always scared her, especially when directed towards one of her children. Jeremy hated him, ever since he had stripped him naked and lugged him down the bed by his ankles to get a better look at him. It was a long way from Dr Dwight Enys, who came and sat by the bed and quietly talked and sympathetically asked questions and then gently examined, and all the time, with eyes that were weighing and assessing, was reaching a conclusion and a diagnosis.

  Nor was it only Demelza who missed him. Typhus first showed itself in the Poor Houses which were situated between Grambler and Sawle, and there it stayed for a month or more; but everyone knew that, once fledged, it would move and spread in its own ill time. Smallpox of course was endemic but on the increase. Choake was shocked that Jeremy had not yet been inoculated and wanted to do it at once; but Demelza, who knew that the surgeon always cut the patient’s arm to the bone, postponed the evil day and said she would consider it and privately prayed for the return of Dwight.

  Drake heard twice from Geoffrey Charles, childish letters saying little, and almost nothing of Morwenna. They told of Geoffrey Charles’s doings and of Geoffrey Charles’s undying affection for Drake and each promised an early return. The second letter said they had been further delayed because of Valentine’s illness, but that he and Morwenna would definitely be back at Trenwith by March the 6th.

  On March the 5th it began to snow again.

  Valentine’s illness was a serious one. As he approached his first birthday his appetite fell off and he was troubled with vomiting and diarrhoea. Then he began to sweat heavily in his sleep and kick off his blankets even on the coldest of nights, and Polly Odgers was kept awake continually covering him. When Dr Behenna found the child’s bones to be very tender and the wrists and ankles to be swollen, he recognized the onset of the common and disabling disease.

  Rickets was a frequent ailment of childhood, but one from which the Poldark family had been singularly free. Aunt Agatha, when she heard of it in the letter from Elizabeth, pronounced that there was ‘poor blood on both sides’. It was very worrying for the Warleggans, for to them Valentine was the crown prince, and it would be humiliating if the child who was to inherit all they had were to grow up deformed or handicapped.

  Daniel Behenna, riding the cobbled sickly streets of Truro like a demi-god, pronouncing his judgments with the confidence and certitude that all men needed, called each day to see his little patient, and very shortly decided on the best treatment, indeed the only treatment for such a case. At six in the evening, which was Valentine’s normal bed-time, he called and opened a vein in both of Valentine’s ears betw
een the junctures. He mixed the blood thus obtained with twice the amount of aqua-vitae – the alchemic name for unrefined alcohol – and with this mixture he bathed the neck, sides and chest of the child. Then he took a green ointment of his own preparation, heated it in a spoon and rubbed it briskly and very hot into the screaming boy’s wrists and ankles where the bones were at their most tender. This went on for ten nights, during which the child was not allowed to leave his bed or to have his night shift changed. At the end of that time he was fitted with splints to both legs and both arms.

  It was a remedy to which Valentine did not respond. He developed a high fever and at times seemed on the point of death. Another doctor was called, who endorsed the treatment so far given but thought more extensive bleeding and a purge should now follow. Also a flannel wet with hot spirits should be applied regularly to the child’s feet. A week later the anxious parents called in Dr Pryce of Redruth, who being in fact more a mine surgeon than a general physician had had long experience with rachitic illness. He thought the boy should be released from his splints, kept quiet and warm, entertained in bed but restrained from standing and given as much warm milk as he could be persuaded to drink. A few days later recovery was on the way.

  Through all this, although both parents were equally distracted, George had continued to discharge his business and to further his own ideas for the future.

  In one respect George had been quite wrong about Ossie Whitworth. Being of non-genteel birth himself, he had supposed that any conversation between himself and the young clergyman on the matter of a marriage settlement must necessarily be discreetly approached and discursively conducted. Not at all. Not for the first or indeed the last time, George learned that the higher you were born the more you were inclined to call a spade a spade.

  George had been thinking of a dowry of £2000. When the figure at last came to be dropped into the conversation Ossie spurned it. He had, he said, debts of over £1000. To live at St Margaret’s, Truro, in any style at all, meant looking for a sum which would enable him when it was invested to enjoy an added income of around £300 a year. If with Morwenna he received only what would amount to £1000 clear of debt he could do virtually nothing at all. Carefully put about, it might bring him £70 a year, but that would scarcely double his income from the living.

  Plain speaking now clearly being the order of the day, George politely asked him what figure he had in mind. Osborne said not less than £6000. George was now beginning rather to dislike this conceited young man. Only the thought of his mother’s connections kept George’s tongue in check, however, this did not restrain him from pointing out the facts of the case as he saw them. In the first place, Morwenna was eighteen, the daughter of a dean, and came of one of the very oldest families in the country. Further, she was devout, healthy, of a good temper, particularly fond of motherless children – of whom Mr Whitworth would no doubt remember he had two – a good manager in the house and very comely to look at. In the second place he, Mr Warleggan, only acted towards her in loco parentis and had nothing to gain in promoting her welfare except a desire to please his wife and a genuine affection for a very good girl. There was no reason why he should lay out any money at all, but he was prepared to give the girl a dowry of £2000. For that sum, which was no mean sum these days, there would be plenty of young men available. If Mr Whitworth felt that elsewhere, somewhere near at hand, he would find a pretty young lady with £6000 of her own who was prepared to link her destinies with a debt-ridden and almost penniless clergyman, then of course he was entirely free to seek her out.

  But of course, George said, there was no hurry at all. Perhaps Mr Whitworth would care to go home and think it over.

  This was in late January. Osborne went home and discussed it all with his mother, as George knew he would. He left it ten days, as a matter of tactics, and then called again. He said he had given their talk the fullest consideration and he had returned only because his devotion to Morwenna was unchanged. He felt that to obtain such a lovely and loving wife he would accept £4000. This, after all was discharged, would only bring him in an income of about £200 a year, and could Mr Warleggan, or still more Mrs Warleggan, be happy at the thought of their cousin, however happily married, subsisting on less? George said he too had had time to think the matter over and had of course discussed it with his wife. But, conditions being what they were, business bad, war problems rife, mining in the depths of depression and no settled future to be seen, he felt he could not increase his offer beyond £2500. To that he said he would add as a special concession £250 to cover the repairs that he learned would be desirable at the vicarage.

  The Reverend Osborne Whitworth went away again and returned towards the end of February. The bargaining was hard and bitter and eventually agreement was reached. Morwenna was to take with her £3000. Neither of the contestants was entirely unsatisfied. Ossie had an income of £100 a year from his mother, unmentioned in these negotiations. With this and his stipend and the new increment, his total income would now be upwards of £300, and with this he would become a man who could hold up his head in any company. And as for George, he had brought another useful blood link into the pattern he was weaving.

  The other party involved in all these discussions was so far entirely ignorant of their existence. To her it was not specially significant that the Rev Mr Whitworth had called four times at the house since Christmas and that he had twice taken tea with her and Elizabeth. To Elizabeth was given the task of enlightening her.

  It was not a privilege she welcomed. She felt that as George had made all the running, indeed, all the arrangements, he might just as well complete the operation. George thought otherwise. This part was a woman’s task. All the difficult negotiation was past; this had been his problem and his responsibility. Now the pleasant outcome could be left to his wife. No woman, certainly no penniless girl, could be anything but overjoyed at the news that she was to be made an heiress and was to become the wife of the town’s most eligible young clergyman.

  Elizabeth put it off for two days, pleading Valentine’s illness as an excuse; but a note from Ossie saying he hoped to attend upon them on the morrow, forced her hand. He could hardly be expected to come into a company where his bride-to-be did not yet know of his intentions.

  It was evening before she could find the right opportunity, and even then she had to follow Morwenna into the tiny music room on the first floor and to shut the door behind her as if about to impart some dreadful secret.

  It was clear from Morwenna’s face in the flickering candlelight that the news was indeed a shock to her, and not, as George predicted, a pleasant shock.

  Taller than Elizabeth, she stood absolutely still in her dove grey velvet frock listening as if frozen, not a finger moving, only a muscle in her cheek beginning to twitch as Elizabeth went on with the story. She heard it all out and did not speak. Because of the silence which fell at the end of each sentence, Elizabeth found herself saying more than she had any real need – emphasizing the good looks of her future husband, the excellence of the match, the sudden change which would come over Morwenna’s situation, how she was to be transformed from a governess into a prominent lady of the town, of George’s excessive goodness and generosity in making such a match possible. So she went on until she saw Morwenna’s tears begin to fall. Then she stopped.

  ‘Does all our thought for you displease you, my dear?’

  Morwenna choked, and put up the back of her hand to her eyes. The tears did not stop, they fell on her hand, through her fingers, dripped on her frock and thence to the floor. Elizabeth sat on the stool by the harpsichord and idly turned a piece of music, waiting for the initial distress to pass. It did not pass. Morwenna just stood there silently weeping.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ Elizabeth said, impatience creeping into her voice, not because she felt impatient but to hide the sympathy that she felt she should not show.

  Morwenna said at last: ‘I do not care for him; how can he care for me? We have excha
nged as much intimate talk together as would two whist players of an afternoon. What can he know of me or I of him?’

  ‘He knows enough to wish to make you his wife.’

  ‘But I do not wish to be his wife! I do not wish to be anyone’s wife as yet. Have I not pleased you? Are you displeased with my behaviour as a governess to Geoffrey Charles?’

  ‘Far from it. If we had been displeased with you, do you think Mr Warleggan would have made this tremendous gesture on your behalf?’

  There was a long silence. Morwenna looked round through her tears to find somewhere to sit down. She groped and discovered a chair, her hands trembling as she lowered herself upon the seat.

  ‘You are – very generous, Elizabeth. So is he. But I had no idea, no notion.’

  ‘I appreciate it must have come as something of a shock to you. But I hope, after you have reflected on it for a while, that you will not think it too unpleasant a shock. Osborne is, after all, in holy orders. Your life with him will be all it was in your father’s house but greatly improved as to your personal position. We shall still—’

  ‘Does my mother know?’ Morwenna asked wildly. ‘I could not possibly accept without her permission! If she—’

  ‘I wrote to her yesterday, my dear. I do not think she can possibly be anything but delighted with such a match. For an elder daughter, of good birth, but without money—’