The Four Swans

  Morwenna drew her hand back from the candle. ‘Why are you back so soon?’

  Ossie grunted. ‘Pearce had an attack of his old cholicky gout, played only six hands. Said then he was in too much pain to continue. If it were not for those I meet there I’d drop him completely. The fellow’s never well these days!’

  ‘Well, he is old, isn’t he?’

  ‘Then he should give us due warning! By the time he gave up it was too late to find a fourth.’

  Mr Whitworth went across to a mirror and patted at his cravat, stared at himself. His eye caught Morwenna’s looking at him through the mirror. He had not been in this room much recently, for during her illness they had slept separately and he had not rejoined her since, except occasionally to claim his rights. Of course the awful regularity of the early days had never been resumed; but Morwenna knew instantly that that was what he had come in for tonight. After all, his whist game had gone wrong.

  For a moment or two as he stood there, still looking at himself, he attempted to make conversation about the wedding, but it remained a monologue. After replying, yes, once or twice, his wife said nothing more, but just let him go on. And so presently his voice stopped.

  There was silence. The pendulum of the French ormolu clock on the mantelshelf wagged a small admonitory shadow on the wall.

  He said: ‘Morwenna. No doubt you have rested this evening after the events of the day—’

  ‘No, Ossie,’ she said.

  He still did not turn. ‘No? You have not rested? But all this evening you—’

  ‘I mean no to the question that you were about to ask. I hope – I hope now that you will not have to ask it.’

  ‘I was going to say—’

  ‘Please do not say it, and then – and then this conversation can end before it has begun.’

  ‘My dear,’ he said. ‘I think you forget yourself.’

  ‘I think – I think perhaps, Osborne, it is you who forget yourself by coming in here tonight!’

  Her face was almost grey when he turned. She had never spoken out so freely against him before, and his body seemed to swell, as it often did when anger gripped it.

  ‘Morwenna! What an outburst! I have come in here in all friendliness to see you before I retire. Certainly I had in mind, and still have in mind, the natural attention that a husband properly owes his wife, and I expect you as my wife to consider her duty under the terms of our holy marriage bond—’

  ‘That I have done. But will no longer—’

  He was not listening. ‘To – to attempt, even to attempt to rebuff me shows a wilful and contrary spirit which I had never thought to find in you. Nor shall I take any notice of it, for it deserves only to be ignored. But I would warn you that I—’

  ‘No, Ossie,’ she said, sitting up in bed.

  ‘What do you mean, no!’ he half shouted. ‘Merciful heaven, what fancy has got into your brain that you think yourself able to refuse the love and affection that it is a husband’s pleasure and duty to bestow? What—’

  ‘I ask you, Ossie, please to leave this room and do not come near me tonight – or any other night!’

  ‘Any other night? Have you taken leave of your senses, woman?’ He began to unpin his cravat. ‘Certainly I shall not go. And certainly I will have my way.’

  She drew a deep breath. ‘Is it – was it with such brutal words that you took Rowella?’

  His hands stopped. They were not quite steady. He put down the cravat. ‘What lewd and indecent thoughts can be passing through your mind?’

  ‘None except such as have been put there by your behaviour.’

  He looked as if he might strike her. ‘Are you meaning to imply that I laid so much as a hand on that brazen, wanton child who has just left this house for ever?’

  She put her hands to her face. ‘Oh, Osborne, do you think I have been blind?’

  There was a pause. Then he said: ‘I believe your sister has some evil within her which only some special rites of the church could exorcise. But I did not think she would ever try to poison my name to you by uttering such slander—’

  ‘I said blind, Osborne. Blind! Do you know what that means? Do you think I have never seen you creeping up the stairs to her room? Do you think I did not once, just once, pluck up the courage to follow?’

  The solitary candle flickered with some gesture she had made, and the shadows grimaced as if shrinking from the words she had spoken. Nothing now could ever be the same again.

  Osborne took off his coat and hung it on a chair. He rubbed a hand across his eyes and then took off his waistcoat and folded it beside the coat. Whether it was the anger that was going out of him or just the divestment of clothes, he looked a smaller man.

  He said: ‘What I have just told you about your sister is still true. She has some evil within her which – which drives one out of one’s mind. I had never thought – never dreamed that anything could ever happen between us. She is – possessed. For a while I became possessed. There is nothing more to say.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Well, little. Except that your illness deprived me of the natural outlet for my feelings. She – she preyed on that.’

  ‘And now she is married off in shame to a man she hardly knows – to hide your shame?’

  ‘I do not think you have the right to say that!’

  ‘And do you have the right to – to return to me now that she has left us?’

  ‘What happened was nothing, meant nothing; a temporary aberration on my part.’

  ‘Which she has connived at helping you to cover up?’

  ‘At a price.’

  ‘Ah . . . so I suspected . . .’

  His face flushed again. ‘I do not like your tone. Not at all, Morwenna, not at all.’

  ‘I have not liked your behaviour.’

  He went across to the window and parted the curtains, looked out. He had never known his gentle, submissive wife so fierce, so cutting, or known her answer him back in this way. Normally a raised voice, a stern word was enough. Of course he was at a disadvantage, a grave disadvantage, because he had erred in his own conduct and she had found him out. He was shocked that she had known, and wondered how long she had known, and was angry and fretful that she should seek to censure him for what in essence had been caused by a failure on her part. And surely the very fact that she had known implied a degree of complicity. If she had known she should have instantly sent her sister off back to Bodmin – as any decent wife would. Perhaps the two sisters had conspired together against him! He felt he would never be free of their toils and heartily wished he had never married this useless creature who, it was true, had borne him a son but who otherwise had been a passive thorn in his flesh ever since he married her.

  He turned and stared at her, sitting up in the bed in her fine woollen nightdress, ashen-faced, dark-eyed, tragic. Her long white hands were gripping the sheet, her black hair hanging lank upon her shoulders. For three weeks now he had been deprived of any woman. It was grossly unfair. He licked his lips.

  ‘Morwenna . . . your sister is gone. She will never return. What has happened between us – little enough as it was – is over, finished. Perhaps there were faults on both sides – on all sides. I have suffered much, I assure you. Only God can determine where blame may rest. Not us. Not mortals. Therefore I suggest that we close a page and begin again. We have been joined together as man and wife, and no man shall put us asunder. Indeed, our union has been blessed by the gift of a son. I suggest that we say a little prayer together and ask God’s blessing on our future union and the fruit that may spring from it.’

  Morwenna shook her head. ‘I cannot pray with you, Ossie.’

  ‘Then I shall pray alone – and aloud – beside this bed.’

  ‘You may pray – I cannot stop you. But I must ask you to look elsewhere for the – the satisfaction of your desires.’

  ‘That I cannot do. I am bound to you by the sacrament of the church.’

  ‘It has not prevented
you from disgracing my sister.’

  ‘Then you must help me to try to avoid such error in the future. It is your duty. Your bounden duty.’

  ‘It is a duty I cannot fulfil.’

  ‘You must. You swore it.’

  ‘Then I must break my oath.’

  He began to breathe more deeply, as anger and frustration grew in him again. ‘You must help me, Morwenna. I need your help. I will just – say a little prayer.’

  He came to the foot of the bed and knelt down in his tight nankeen trousers. She stared at him with horror.

  ‘Lord God,’ he began, ‘creator and protector of all mankind, giver of all spiritual grace, and Author of everlasting life, send Thy blessing upon us, man and wife, that we may cleave again and be of one flesh. We beseech Thee—’

  ‘Ossie!’ she screamed. ‘Ossie! You shall not touch me!’

  ‘—and look mercifully upon Thy servants, that with meek and quiet spirit we may enter—’ He broke off his prayer and looked at his wife. ‘You cannot deny me, Morwenna. It is against the teachings of the church. It is even against the explicit law of the land. No man in law can commit rape upon his own wife. The definition of marriage renders this impossible—’

  ‘If you touch me I shall fight you!’

  ‘Almighty and ever-living Father, who by Thy ordinance did institute the holy state of matrimony in the time of man’s innocence so that—’

  ‘Ossie!’ she whispered vehemently. ‘Ossie! And I shall do something else. Listen to me. If you force yourself upon me – tonight or any night in the future – the next day – some time during tomorrow or the next day – I will kill your son.’

  The praying stopped. Mr Whitworth unparted his hands and looked across the length of the bed at the anguished woman pushing herself away from him towards the curtains of the bed canopy.

  ‘You will – what?’

  ‘You think I love our son? Well, yes, I do. Partly I do. But not so much as I hate what you have done. We are bound together by the vows of matrimony, and so I cannot leave you. And so – and so, if you agree never to touch me, never even to touch me again, I shall continue as your wife, shall be it in name, shall look after our son, shall be a good mother to your daughters, shall tend the house and help you in parish matters. No one shall say I ever fail in my duty to you or to them! But – come near me, touch me, force your body upon me, and next day or the day after I will kill your son! I promise it, Osborne, I promise it before God! And nothing, nothing you can do or say will alter me!’

  He got up. ‘You’re mad! You’re insane! Merciful heaven, you are utterly out of your senses! You should be locked away in Bedlam!’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps that is what will happen to me after John Conan is dead. But you cannot have me locked away before, for I have done nothing and would deny that I had ever threatened you – or him. But I’ll do it, Osborne. I swear it to you! I swear it to you! Before God I swear it to you!’

  He was on his feet, licking his lips, staring at the fury he had aroused. Could this be the demure girl he had married? This drawn-up, convulsed, tear-stained shrew who was prepared to spit at him like a cat if he made another movement towards her? And threatened such a thing! And threatened his son! John Conan Osborne Whitworth, his first male heir! And her son too! Could she possibly mean a word of it? Nonsense! It was just the hysteria of an overwrought woman working herself into a frenzy over some real or fancied wrong she had suffered! He remembered the convulsions she had had during childbirth. It was clearly all part of the same nervous malfunction. Tomorrow she would altogether have forgotten what she had said tonight. Yes . . . was it not best to leave her just this once? Was it not better, a little bit safer this once not to bring the situation to a head, especially with the other beastly sister in the house?

  What a day! A dreary wedding, offensive to his very soul; a frustrated whist evening thanks to that old crock Pearce; and now this! He stared at Morwenna again to see if by any chance her mood were changing, if perchance, having made her vehement protest, she was likely any moment to dissolve into tears, whereupon he might comfort her and then a little later come almost casually to share her bed.

  But the tears on her face were tears of determination not of near-collapse. The dementia was still upon her. He knew it was dangerous to give her best even once, lest she should think herself able to dictate to him in the future. Yet the alternative was to assert himself now, to crush her physical resistance and to claim his marital rights. It would not be difficult and it was not an unattractive prospect; but the threat, the spoken threat, echoed uneasily through his mind. If he took her now he would be worried tomorrow, worried for the health of his baby son. It was outrageous but it was a fact. Tomorrow would be another day. Everything would seem different once Rowella had been out of the house and out of sight for a while.

  He said: ‘You are grossly over-wrought, Morwenna. You have been ill and – I do not wish to upset you again. I will leave you now. Leave you to think over your position in this household and your duties to me. But never again let me hear you say what you have said tonight! Never! It is the greatest blasphemy that can be conceived of, even to utter it as an empty threat. Drive such evil from your mind, or you will indeed become deranged and have to be put away. As your father’s daughter pray for forgiveness that such thoughts have ever been allowed to enter your head. I too will pray for you. If you are not better in a day or so I will send for Dr Behenna.’

  He turned and left her, shutting the door behind him with unnecessary force. It was a fair exit, covering up what he believed to be a temporary set-back. But that he forgot to take his coat and waistcoat with him was a measure of the defeat he had suffered.

  Chapter Eight

  I

  Just before Easter Drake learned that the Warleggans were back at Trenwith House, so he decided to call on Mrs Warleggan.

  Geoffrey Charles had not come home at Christmas because his parents were in London, and Drake knew that the Easter holiday at Harrow was of only two weeks’ duration, so there was no prospect of his being at Trenwith too.

  He did not intend his call as in any way a presumption, and he would certainly try to make that clear at the outset; he just wanted a few minutes to speak respectfully to Mrs Warleggan about Geoffrey Charles and about the increasing persecutions to which he himself was being subjected. Having seen Mrs Warleggan in the distance more than once, and knowing the respect in which she was held in the surrounding villages, he could not believe she could be privy to what was going on.

  He wanted to point out first that, though his liking and esteem for Geoffrey Charles was great, his continuing friendship with him was not of his special seeking. But living where he now did, he could hardly rebuff the boy or refuse to speak to him when he called. He valued his friendship and hoped it would continue all through their lives; but if, as seemed to be the case, Mr and Mrs Warleggan disapproved wholly of the association, then please would they put a stop to it from their end. If they wanted this, and then forbade Geoffrey Charles to come to Pally’s Shop, that would finish it. By no act on his part would he attempt to revive the friendship. But did Mrs Warleggan know that the farm immediately above his shop had been bought by a Mr Coke, who everybody said was a nominee of the Warleggans, and that as a result of this the stream running through his shop had been diverted so that in dry weather he hadn’t enough water to ply his trade? Did she know that attempts, partly successful, had been made to poison his well-water by dropping dead rats into it? Did she know that often carts and other articles he repaired for people one day were found broken again the next? Did she know that some folk were no longer coming to him because they feared the consequences?

  All this he was hoping to say, quietly and respectfully, and then he hoped to ask her if she could do anything to bring these occurrences to a stop. And supposing she were to tell him that these were all imaginary persecutions on his part, he had some small pieces of evidence to produce to prove his points.

  He
knew there was a risk that he might be refused admittance at Trenwith House. He knew he was only a humble tradesman and he knew his unpopularity with Mr Warleggan. So he had hoped for a day or two that he might be lucky enough to catch Mrs Warleggan when she was out in the village. But he did not see her.

  So on Maundy Thursday he set out to make his call. It was a brilliant day but with a fierce east wind which made one walk brisk in the sun and shiver out of it. A heavy swell had developed overnight and the rollers kept over-balancing and sending up siphons of spray as the wind caught the cracking tips. The sky was gun blue and the landscape without colour.

  Since his business was formal he did not take the forbidden short cut but went up to the gates and along the main drive. It was a way he had taken many times to see Morwenna and Geoffrey Charles two years ago. Whenever he passed the gates the pain-pleasure of that time returned; walking up the drive made it all more poignant.

  As the house came in sight a solitary man crossed his path coming from the direction of the wood where he had picked the bluebells. Drake recognized Tom Harry, and he very slightly quickened his pace to avoid him.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Harry.

  Drake had almost reached the second gate, which led into the garden.

  ‘Hey, you! Where d’ye think you’re a-going?’

  He could only stop then. Harry was carrying a stick and he hastened up, his face sourly swelling.

  ‘Well?’

  Drake said: ‘I come to ask if Mrs Warleggan’d kindly see me for favour of maybe five minutes.’

  ‘See you? What for?’

  ‘I come to ask a kindness of her. Just to see her on a matter as concerns me close. I just want to go to the back door and ask. If she says no, I’ll come away again.’

  ‘You’ll come away again afore ever you get there!’ said Harry. His dislike for the Carne brothers had grown over the last year. First, Sam the Bible-preaching one, had tried to worm his greasy way round his girl, trying to turn her into a praying Methody; and although he’d failed and although she laughed at Sam every time they passed each other by, he, Tom, was not quite convinced that there hadn’t been some ill-wishing along the way, some stinking, crapulous Bible-spell that had been put on Emma – for though she was still his girl she still wouldn’t marry him, and upon times she was moody and discontented and her big handsome laugh disturbed the crows less often than it had been wont to.