So the sisters went to London together, and arrived at the Star & Garter Hotel in Pall Mall at four in the afternoon, four hours late, to be met by Lieutenant Christopher Havergal, who had been inside the hotel for four hours, desperately resisting the temptation to drink himself into a stupor while waiting.
Without regard to decorum Bella flung herself into his arms. When Christopher at length disengaged himself and bent over her sister’s hand – they had never met – Clowance looked at him with smiling interest, this sturdy, blue-eyed, moustached figure with the limp and the military bearing and the long fair hair. He was a very attractive man. He would have little difficulty in charming women if he had the mind to. Yet spying Isabella-Rose in Paris three years ago when she was literally a child, he had apparently had eyes for no one since. Of course he might have had other ladies on the side, there would be no knowing, but his real love for Bella was plain to see. And she returned it, which to Clowance was less hard to understand. There could be no hidden motive on his part – Bella was no heiress, nor was she titled or came of an influential family. It had been love at first sight.
A pang went through Clowance’s breast. Had it not been the same with her, the same with her and Stephen? Once they had met, exchanged glances, exchanged kisses, no one else would do. And at last they had come together and married and lived in harmony – a sort of harmony, until at the end it came out that he had lied to her continuously, had married her bigamously, after his son by his former marriage had turned up. Pray the gods that this love between her young sister and this charming soldierly man would turn out better.
What if she did not become a prima donna, but only climbed as far as back row singer? Or became a teacher? Were these high hopes worth the risk of disappointment?
That was Tuesday evening. On Wednesday Clowance went with Bella to the Fredericks Operatic School for Young Ladies in Woburn Court, off Chancery Lane, and left her there, and met her again at five, this time with a footman to accompany them home in the dark.
Although still bubbling, Bella seemed slightly more serious as they walked home through the noisy pulsating streets. Something in that first day had opened up to her the enormity of the task.
On the Thursday Mrs Pelham took the two sisters and Geoffrey Charles, who, by arrangement, had just turned up, to a performance of Iphigenia in Tauris at His Majesty’s. (Christopher was working late at Rothschild’s in order to make up some of the time he had missed on Tuesday.)
It was not a good performance, the name part sung by a French prima who was well past her best, but Gluck’s music was unfamiliar and tuneful, and Isabella-Rose drank it in with uninhibited zest. Clowance had never been to a London theatre before, and realized that in spite of its noise and smells and artificiality London had something to offer that Cornwall could not provide. Geoffrey Charles admitted to being tone deaf, but sat through it with polite good humour.
In the second entr’acte there was a tap on the door of their box, and a footman came and offered a card to Mrs Pelham. She peered at it short-sightedly, then: ‘Of course, pray ask him in.’
Clowance was talking to Geoffrey Charles, and did not at first realize that she knew the heavily built young man who was shown in.
Then she got up. ‘Lord Edward!’
‘Please do not disturb yourself, Mrs – er – Carrington. It so happened that I was sitting in the box on the opposite side and I instantly recognized you. I felt I must come and intrude upon your hostess, whom I had not previously had the honour of meeting.’
‘Pray sit down, sir,’ said Mrs Pelham.
‘Miss Isabella,’ said Lord Edward, bowing over the girl’s hand. ‘We met once before, you will remember – or perhaps you will not remember – coming out of the theatre in Drury Lane. You were with your parents.’
‘Of course I remember,’ said Bella, dimpling at him just as she had done four years ago. ‘Do you often go to the theatre, sir?’
‘As often as I am able. Sometimes I make the excuse—’
‘Would you care to stay here for the third act,’ said Mrs Pelham, ‘as it seems you are all such old friends?’
‘I am with my brother and sister-in-law. I should be delighted to stay, and can send a man round with a note. Sir, you are Major Geoffrey Poldark? We have not met.’
Lord Edward Fitzmaurice had changed scarcely at all, Clowance thought, since he had proposed marriage to her. She wondered if she had changed. For an aristocrat, living a life of ease and plenty and with all absence of stress, probably the years would have slipped by easily and elegantly enough. For her it had been a lifetime – or seemed it. She wondered how much she had altered in his eyes. For this occasion she was very plainly dressed: she had not expected that Mrs Pelham at her age should be so much in society. No doubt to Lord Edward she now looked a dowdy country girl. Did it matter? Not in the least. She had never been in love with him. Certainly not now. Probably he was remarking to himself how fortunate that she had turned him down. What a lucky escape, he must think!
She looked up and met his eyes and did not see any such thoughts there. She looked away again quickly towards the stage, wishing the third act would begin.
During the rest of the opera he sat just behind her, with his face occasionally touching her hair. He smelt of some pleasing pomade.
‘Miss Clowance,’ he said at the end.
She withdrew herself to turn in her chair.
‘Lord Edward.’
‘Do you remember at Bowood you used to call me Edward?’
‘That was a long time ago. But yes, Edward, I did.’
‘And I called you Clowance. That is what I would like you to allow me to call you.’
‘Of course.’
‘It does away with disagreeable surnames.’
‘I do not find my surname disagreeable.’
‘Nor should you. I meant that they were disagreeable, like a fence, between friends.’
Isabella-Rose and Geoffrey Charles were laughing together.
‘What is it, seven years?’
‘It must be,’ she said.
‘I remember that visit with the greatest pleasure.’
‘So do I.’
‘You met my brother and sister-in-law, of course.’
‘How are they?’
‘Very well. They have two children now.’
‘And you, Edward?’
‘Not married – yet. I was grieved for you when I heard of your tragic bereavement. It was at Waterloo, was it not?’
‘No, a riding accident.’ Why did people always seem to get this mixed up?
‘Do you live with your mother and father again?’
‘No. My husband left a small shipping business and I am continuing to run that and live in Penryn.’
‘It must be lonely.’
‘I manage. And of course I have made many friends there.’
‘I would like you to meet Henry and Catherine again, but we are supping with the Beresfords, who are sharing our box, and I cannot keep them waiting. Clowance.’
‘Yes?’
‘It would give me the greatest personal pleasure if you were to visit us at Bowood again sometime this coming summer. If your mother were free we should all be happy to see her too. She stayed, you know, at Lansdowne House while she was in London waiting for news of your father . . .’
‘Thank you. It might be – a little difficult for me to get away, but it is a very kind thought. How is Aunt Isabel?’
‘No longer mobile. But she is still able to enjoy life. Did you say you were going home tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please give my respects to your mother and pray pass on the invitation. If she and you would consider it, I will send you a few dates from which you may choose your time.’
‘You’re very kind. Unfortunately, as I said, I own this small shipping line, and this is the first time I have been away from it for more than a week since Stephen died. It is only a very small affair, but I suppose I am continuing to opera
te it in memory of my husband.’
‘I appreciate how you must feel. Perhaps you would permit me to write you a little later in the year?’
Clowance smiled at him. ‘Of course. And thank you. I remember my first visit to Bowood with great pleasure.’
‘So do I,’ said Edward.
Chapter Ten
On the following day in the afternoon, while the coach was proceeding on its jolting leisurely way towards Marlborough, and while Demelza spent her last day with Verity, Ross had a visitor at Nampara. As soon as he saw him and saw the expression on his rufous face he knew this was not to be a pleasant interview. Could there be only one cause?
John Treneglos was now approaching his sixty-second birthday. Some of the powerful muscles in his arms and back had turned to fat, but he still made a formidable figure. Years of over-indulgence had left lines on his face and pits in his skin, but his red hair, now almost white, was as upthrusting as ever and his strong, heavily freckled hands looked capable of handling any miscreant who happened to cross him. Though Nampara and Mingoose were only a mile or so apart, they saw, and had seen through the years, very little of each other. This absence of neighbourliness had not been helped by the fact that John had married Ruth Teague, who had hoped to marry Ross on his rebound from Elizabeth and had found her place taken by an insolent miner’s daughter who had worked in the Poldark kitchen.
‘Well, John, this is a surprise. Do you come on business or pleasure?’
The visitor walked to the window and stared out, his hands clasping and unclasping behind his brown velvet riding coat. ‘Neither,’ he said.
‘Well, copper has risen again,’ said Ross. He had no intention of making it easier for this man. ‘That is not bad news for either of us.’
‘To Hell with copper,’ John shouted. ‘Your Valentine has been doing a mischief to my Agneta!’
So there it was. Trust John to express it with such elegance.
Ross went to the wine cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy. As he did so, he noticed that the contents of the bottle of port standing beside it had not gone down since Demelza left. Illogically a spasm of the need to see her again.
‘Cognac?’
‘To Hell with cognac! You heard what I said!’
Ross poured a half-glass for himself, sipped it.
‘What are you talking about? What mischief?’
‘He’s been laying his greasy hands on her! Creeping in like the snake he is, putting filthy thoughts into her head – that delicate girl, whoring after her! Being rude with her! Defiling her! You know as well as I do – and he knows well too – that Agneta has a – a handicap; she has not got the equipment to decide everything for herself. She is a gentle creature. And then this evil lecherous goat of yours has the damned insolence – indeed brutality – to take advantage of her! It is damnable! It is outrageous! Christ knows what Ruth will say when she learns!’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Know? She has told me! Agneta has told me!’
‘Do you think perhaps she is making it up?’
John Treneglos swelled like a bullfrog.
‘Devil take you, Ross! That girl could not lie! She does not know how to lie. She does not have the cunning to lie—’
‘Is she pregnant?’
‘No, thank God. She does not have the monthly menses. You are dealing with a child! And this devil has besmirched her! The shock may kill her! It may bring back the fits that Enys cured her of! And now he has left her, she says! He’s no more than Hell’s spawn to treat her like a – a street walker, like a strumpet! May he rot in Hell!’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘No! I’ve sent to his house, but the creature is away.’
Ross finished his drink. ‘And so you come to me? Why do you come to me? Twice since you came in this room you have referred to my Valentine.’
‘Well, is he not? Is he not? Why bother to deny it?’
‘I deny nothing, for there is nothing to deny. You should not pay so much heed to the scurrilous rumours you hear.’
‘Rumours? Everybody knows in this district that Valentine is your son!’
‘How do they know it? He does not know it. I do not know it. George Warleggan does not know it. Then how in God’s name do you and the gossipy scrofulous old women you listen to know anything at all?’ Ross was getting angry now.
‘Nevertheless everyone—’
‘Listen to me, John. Just listen. Valentine was twenty-five two weeks ago. If by any extraordinary freak he was my son, how should I be responsible for his actions? Am I my brother’s keeper? Still less am I my son’s keeper? Valentine Warleggan is married and lives at Trevaunance. He has a son of his own, a wife of his own. Because you say – you only say – that he has misused your daughter, you come blundering in here like a bull on heat demanding of me a satisfaction for some alleged insult paid to your family by a young man who was never in my care, and who has long since passed out of the care of his putative father, George Warleggan. You come stamping in here not knowing or caring a curse whether my wife is at home. Fortunately she is not, for she would be greatly upset and affronted—’
‘Oh, yes, I knew she would be upset and always will be upset by suggestions about Valentine’s parentage—’
‘Damn you, John, so she should be! And let me tell you this straight out. If you have a quarrel with Valentine, you have a quarrel with Valentine; take it to him; don’t dare to come here bothering us with your sordid accusations. Valentine Warleggan is a separate entity, lives in a separate house, lives a separate life. Take your complaints to him, don’t bring ’em here again!’
John thrust his big hands into the pockets of his breeches and stared at Ross. Since those days when John had been the elder, and a bit of a bully, their situations had changed. Ross had grown in stature, not physically but in the esteem of the county. John, by comparison, had remained a hunting squire without any special prestige. And of course Ross was a baronet.
‘Yes, well, I suppose you may be partly right. But since Jeremy died you’ve made a special friend of Valentine. He has been in and out of here all the time. And I know you helped him last August when he was in a scrape.’
‘If there is any truth in what you accuse him of, then you need not worry that I shall make any attempt to help him out of this scrape. And pray face him without making any further attempt to draw me in. Demelza is visiting my cousin Verity in Flushing, and I expect her home tomorrow. I would like your assurance that if anything of this matter comes to her ears it will not have come through you.’
John coughed and bent to spit in the fire. Spittle sizzled a few seconds on the hot coal.
‘I don’t know how it happened,’ he grunted. ‘For a long time, as you know, we had a personal maid to look after her. Then, when Enys started treating her and she seemed to improve, we dropped the maid. All the same, there were other servants always around. And Emmeline and Paula and she were good friends. Don’t know how it began at all.’
‘If it did begin. I know you will resent that remark, but the ways of young women are often hard to fathom. The fact that Agneta is handicapped may, as you say, make her incapable of lying. But it might not prevent her from seeing Valentine and perhaps liking the look of him – for whatever his faults you can’t deny his charm, particularly for women – Agneta may have pondered and fancied what it would be like to have an affair with him – and come to believe her imagination to be the truth.’
John grunted and grumbled to himself. He did not like the way the interview had gone. Eventually, without saying anything more, he turned and went to the door, clumsily as if ready to shoulder aside any obstacle that got in his way.
There he stopped and said: ‘You always stick up for your own.’
The following week a stranger was to be seen walking through the straggling village of Grambler.
It was a girl, on the tall side, very slim, in a faded scarlet cloak, a fawn bonnet, grey linen skirt, scuffed shoes
. She looked about sixteen, pale-faced, blue-eyed, blonde straight hair shoulder length but tied back with a black ribbon. She carried a black purse.
Strangers were a rarity in the district, especially on a cold March day, especially a young female, especially alone. In the more inhabited part of the village, which she passed through first before coming to the ruin of the great Grambler mine, there were various signs of life: two women – one carrying a wooden pail with water in it, the other brushing the path and steps to her cottage door; half-a-dozen children squatting in the dust playing some game with stones; two old men sitting at an open door, muffled to the eyes, talking and coughing.
The two women wished the girl a grudging good day, but one of the children playing with the stones saw a chance of entertainment and squealed and got up and fell in beside the stranger. The others stared and then followed. The thin girl proceeded down the rutted street with an escort trailing behind her. They made such a noise shouting and whistling that a half-dozen others came out of their hovels to join in. Then two mongrel dogs were attracted to the scene and leaped about, dirty tails beating the dust. The two women shouted to the children to stop, but were ignored.
The stranger was nervous. She had answered the first questions put to her pleasantly enough until she saw that the children were poking fun at her. The first girl to come up to her, Lottie Bice, was still the ringleader; she was fourteen, pock-marked and mischief-making like all her clan. She tried to take the girl’s hand to slow her down, but the girl pulled away from the grubby paw and quickened her step. Then a ten-year-old boy, Luke Billing, gave her a shove in the back that made her stumble. The girl stepped into a deeper rut and twisted her ankle and nearly fell. She dropped her purse.
Then a great deal happened in a very short time. A man was there cuffing the children and they were off like terrified rabbits. She bent to pick up the purse, and one of the dogs got there first, pulled it out of her grasping fingers. She grabbed it in her other hand and the dog snarled and bit her wrist.
Then almost in a flash it was picked up by its tail, a rope twisted sharply round its neck and it was hoisted onto a projecting beam of the nearest cottage and dangled there choking to death.
Bella Poldark Page 10
