The Four Swans

  He got to the table and an extra silence fell. The mayor looked at him over his glasses. Mr Pearce stuttered and then spoke.

  ‘Captain Gower and – and Mr Warleggan.’

  Someone tittered behind Ross as Mr Pearce staggered away. He had done his best, he seemed to say, making a gesture with his free hand; he had tried to please both sides. In fact both sides would be furious; yet they would be hard put to it to accuse him of betraying them. With an old notary’s cunning he had made the best of an impossible dilemma.

  Others were approaching the table more freely now, as if glad to be done with it. Polwhele and Ralph-Allen Daniell were for Gower and Poldark; Fitz-Pen, Rosewarne and Michell for Warleggan and Trengrouse. Then Mr Prynne Andrew stumped up. Elizabeth had been prevailed upon to call on him on Tuesday, much to her distaste, and had received what seemed a favourable answer.

  ‘Captain Poldark and Captain Gower,’ he said.

  So that was a smack in the face. George’s expression tightened but he made no comment to anyone, and his gaze was fixed elsewhere as Mr Andrew came past him.

  Another man walked up, called Buller. He had a small estate and enough money to sustain it and owed nothing to anyone. He said: ‘Captain Poldark and Mr Trengrouse.’

  A second cross-vote, which could complicate the issue. The mayor looked down at his book and shook sand on it. There were nine more to vote.

  Fox was the next, and Ross knew by the uneasy way he hobbled past that this choice would come from pressure and not preference.

  ‘Mr Warleggan and Captain Poldark.’

  Well. Pearce’s example was catching. Fox had also obeyed his masters and defied them. It was a touching tribute to old loyalties.

  Four more, including General Macarmick, voted conventionally, two each way. Then Mr Samuel Thomas of Tregolls. When he got to the mayor he seemed to hesitate, as if his mind still had to be made up, as if there were some conflict in his own thoughts deeper than mere obligation. Then he said firmly, ‘Captain Gower and Mr Trengrouse.’ George went white.

  Three more to come. One was Dr Daniel Behenna, who, it might not be indelicate to say, had a finger in almost every pie. On him a lot might depend. But he had done his sums the night before. ‘Mr Warleggan and Mr Trengrouse,’ he said.

  The last two were inoffensive men, one called Symons, a little dandy who always wore two watches. The other, Hitchens, was known in the town as Mister Eleven, from the thinness of his legs. Neither was susceptible to pressure, but while Symons was predictable, Hitchens was not. Symons in his mincing voice said: ‘Captain Gower and Captain Poldark.’

  Hitchens followed close behind in a dead silence broken only by the sound of Symons’s little heels as he clicked away. Hitchens said: ‘Captain Gower and Captain Poldark.’

  A muttering growl instantly broke out, some crying one side, some the other. There was a scuffle in a corner as two men came to blows. Friends pulled them apart as the mayor, pen wagging while he counted, totted the votes. He went over it twice and then put down his pen, cleared his throat and looked down at the book before him.

  ‘The voting has been as follows. John Leveson Gower, thirteen votes; Ross Vennor Poldark, thirteen votes; George Warleggan, twelve votes; Henry Thomas Trengrouse, twelve votes.’ George had lost his seat by the margin by which he had been elected.

  III

  Amid the noise and argument which followed, Nicholas Warleggan could be heard challenging the validity of two of the voters, on the grounds that their property was outside the town boundaries; but in fact he knew it was no good – the objections if they were to have been made should have come earlier. The two men separated had fallen to fighting again; councillors on the winning side were shouting their elation. Harris Pascoe gripped Ross’s arm and said: ‘Good, good, good. That is the b-b-best result.’ Captain Gower shook hands with Ross for the second time, his face flushed with relief.

  The mayor gave the official return to the clerk to post on the outer door of the chamber, so that the public might be informed. Lord Falmouth had not come over to congratulate the two winners. Nor had the two losers. Henry Trengrouse was talking to Fitz-Pen and trying to hide the disappointment in his face. (The Warleggans had been so sure.)

  As for that other Warleggan, George was standing with his hands behind his back, the icy sweat of anger and frustration soaking through his shirt, so upset that he could hardly memorize the way the voting had gone or which of his expected supporters had let him down. Choking, hardly able to see or speak, his fingers clenched and unclenched about whitened knuckles. He knew, or thought he knew, exactly what had defeated him. It was men like Andrew and Thomas and Hitchens, who still looked on him as an upstart and had voted for the so-called gentry. Even his partner Trengrouse, as a solicitor, had not really had the standing. Privilege had closed its ranks and chosen to forget all the illegal and near-illegal misdemeanours of Ross Poldark’s past, all his arrogant pretensions to be above the law, all his barely hidden contempt for that society which people like Andrew and Thomas and Hitchens were at such pains to preserve. A man like himself, George Warleggan, who all his life had worked steadily within the law, who had given money to appropriate causes, who had been a conscientious magistrate for over three years, whose businesses in the town and the county made him one of the largest employers of labour, such a man was regarded with patronage and contempt because his ancestry was inferior to theirs.

  It did not occur to him that other men in the county with no more distinguished a pedigree than he had were in fact totally accepted, and that in seeking an explanation he need have gone no farther than the personalities involved, of his own, of Ross’s, of half a dozen of the voters’. Lord Falmouth had seen the issues clearly enough.

  The doors of the chamber were now open and a few of the councillors were leaving. Harris Pascoe said:

  ‘There will be a celebration dinner?’

  ‘I have no idea. I have not been in this situation before.’

  ‘To t-tell the truth, Ross, half-way through the voting I feared it would be the other side which would have cause to celebrate.’

  ‘When that cross-voting took place,’ Ross said, ‘I was never more afeared in my life.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The prospect was opening up that George and I might be elected together!’

  Falmouth was at last coming across, with Ralph-Allen Daniell beside him.

  ‘Congratulations, Captain Poldark,’ said his Lordship shortly. ‘We have won the day.’

  ‘Thank you, my Lord. So it seems. By an uncommon narrow margin.’

  ‘No margin is too narrow so long as it is the right way. And, have no fears, the margin in this borough will now steadily increase.’

  ‘Indeed? . . .’

  ‘There is to be dinner at the Red Lion, but I have asked to be excused and have requested Mr Ralph-Allen Daniell to take the chair in my place. In a few days there will be a ball.’

  ‘Congratulations, Captain Poldark,’ Daniell said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Later,’ said Falmouth, ‘in a week or two I want the council to come and dine with me at Tregothnan. Naturally I hope you will come.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  His Lordship coughed drily. ‘At the moment I am not in a position to participate in the usual celebrations. I did not tell you, Captain Poldark, when we met before the election – there seemed no purpose in telling you then – but my nephew died last night.’

  Ross stared. ‘Hugh? . . .’

  ‘Yes, Hugh. Nothing could be done. His parents were with him at the end.’

  Falmouth turned away, and Ross was surprised to see that his eyes were full of tears.

  Chapter Ten

  I

  It was after six before Ross was able to get away.

  The day had clouded, but Gimlett’s prediction of rain was not fulfilled. A dry chill breeze soughed over the moors. Sheridan, having worked off the surplus energy stored in a long wait in the stables by almost
galloping up the steep hill out of the town, soon settled to a comfortable walking pace which Ross did not bestir himself to accelerate. He would get home in due course. He was not sure he wanted to get home.

  It was quite likely, knowing their friendship, that someone from Tregothnan would have sent a message about Hugh to Nampara. He hoped so. But in any case it would be an impossible meeting.

  Ross’s sense of outrage over the last week or so had not yet been abated by his sense of shock. Of course he had seen Hugh to be gravely ill, but he had not quite believed there was a real risk that a man who survived twelve months in a hell-hole of a prison camp should die two years later from the after-effects. He was so young. At that age one had such recuperative power. At the back of his thoughts too, too ungracious to be given a conscious airing, had been a suspicion that a little dramatization of Hugh’s illness had not been altogether absent in order to enlist Demelza’s greater sympathy. And although he had liked Hugh, nothing he could ever do now could remove from Hugh’s name and memory feelings that arose from the normal instincts of a husband seeing his wife captivated by another man.

  But now his rival was dead, and the more he thought of it the less he liked it. It was reasonable enough to regret the passing of a young man of value to his country and his friends. He was sorry – sorry for that and regretted it sincerely. That was one thing. But what of the other? How could he ever feel that he had won Demelza back from her infatuation in fair contest? How combat a ghost? How fight a rosy memory, the memory of a man who furthered his suit in stanzas of tender verse? Hugh’s death was a tragedy for them both. It stood fair and square between them like a barricade to prevent any true reconciliation, even if either of them should want it.

  Sheridan half shied at something moving between two gorse bushes at the side of the track. It was a he-goat, dark-eyed, lantern-jawed, long beard trailing, chewing slowly. He looked aggressive, randy, like some old devil come out of a bog. Ross flicked his whip and the goat stopped chewing and watched them but did not retreat. Sheridan stepped nervously past. This being the breeding season, the smell of the goat followed them on the chill breeze.

  So if his affairs had been directed by some old he-goat out of a bog, could they have been ordered more perversely? This new adventure he had wrong-headedly embarked on had drawn its cross-grained motives from all sorts of ignoble sentiments, not least of them his estrangement from Demelza and the feeling that if she were partly lost to him it were better if he were more away. Nor had he altogether forgotten Demelza’s expressed opinion that such a position would not suit him. Nor had he lost sight of the knowledge that the position he was gaining was the one that George most hated to lose. All exalted motives that would stand him in good stead at the Day of Judgement. Generous and reputable man that he was.

  Ross reached the old gibbet at Bargus where four parishes met. The Place of Death, as it used to be called. The tall sinister post and bracket still stood – even the gypsies and the vagrants would not venture to cut it down for firewood – but it would probably never be used again. Nowadays they did it more formally in Bodmin. From here the landscape stretched away, barren and windy and dull: St Ann’s, the drunken tower of Sawle Church, St Michael, Carn Brea, the stooping trees, a mine chimney here and there; everywhere the desolate moors.

  He took a deep breath and tried to see his position more objectively, pared away from the emotions of anger or disgust. So far as the activities of this morning were concerned, it clearly put an end to any hopes of a détente between the houses of Trenwith and Nampara. A year or so ago he had had hopes that by seeing little of each other, by encouraging a slow growth of tolerance between them – because after all they were unavoidably neighbours and relatives by marriage – he and George could come to avoid that petty venomous quarrelling which was so much more suitable to the young than to the middle-aged. Not so now. George had prized his position as a Member of Parliament more highly than rubies. He had been deprived of it by Ross’s intervention. The bitterness, the hatred, would become even deeper and ever more enduring.

  The clouds were frowning in the west. As he went on the sun neared the horizon and the sunset flamed just as it had this morning, as if the scabs had been pulled off and the ugly red wound showed again. So the red sky at morning was to be followed by a red sky at night. The shepherds couldn’t have it both ways.

  Perhaps he, Ross, wanted it both ways – to justify himself and to set George down. Yet, leaving Demelza temporarily on one side, the essential ingredient for any even modest satisfaction at this morning’s work must be a positive and not a negative one. Why deprive George of his seat if he were full of doubts as to whether he really wanted it? He could not see himself fitting in, either with his patron or with the society of England’s rulers in which he must now be prepared to spend a part of each year. He had always played a lone hand. Could he learn, would he be willing to learn, to give and take, to pull in harness? Could he suffer fools gladly, or even silently?

  And yet, men of high ability – much higher than his – could do so. It was a matter of temperament, not talent. Demelza thought he did not have such a temperament. Well, who knew, perhaps he would show her – always supposing she continued to be interested.

  Who knew what the future was for them both now? Perhaps she would sail away, like those swans today, out of his life for ever. Perhaps she was the damaged swan, not Morwenna.

  As home drew near Sheridan quickened his pace, and coming through Grambler village a number of men and women wending their way home called good night as he passed. His mind went back again to that October evening fourteen years ago when he had returned from America to find Elizabeth engaged to his cousin Francis, and he had left them at Trenwith, his life in ruins, and had ridden home like this, through this same village, down to Nampara House to find it in ruins also, and Jud and Prudie Paynter dead drunk in his father’s old box bed. A different return tonight, with a house refurnished and rebuilt, clean, tidy and well cared-for, as many servants as he needed, a pretty wife, two lovely children. What a change! And yet, in one way, was there not a sinister similarity?

  Just out of the village he overtook a single figure walking in the same direction as himself. The afterlight was in his eyes but he recognized Sam.

  When he heard the hooves behind him Sam stopped to make way, but Ross reined in beside him.

  ‘Are you going to the Meeting House?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ross dismounted. ‘I’ll walk with you a few paces.’

  They began to climb the rising ground together, Ross allowing the reins to trail behind him.

  ‘There be no meeting,’ said Sam. ‘Twas just I thought to go tidy up and see all was clean for tomorrow.’ His voice sounded flat and dull.

  ‘You never stop working, do you?’

  ‘Oh . . . I find it no trouble t’keep busy. Especially if tis about the Lord’s business.’

  ‘Except the Lord build the house . . .’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Oh, it is some memory from my schooldays.’

  The clump of wind-ravaged fir trees beside Wheal Maiden were outlined against the dying light. The blood had gone, and it was all black and white like a silhouette.

  Sam said: ‘You been Tehidy?’

  ‘No, Truro.’

  ‘Oh’

  ‘What made you think Tehidy?’

  ‘Twas just in my mind.’

  ‘Are you still thinking of John Hoskin?’

  ‘No . . . I wasn’t just then.’

  ‘How is your group going?’

  ‘Proper, thank ee. Two more partook of the Blessing last week.’

  Ross hesitated. ‘And Emma?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘No . . . not Emma.’

  ‘If it is not my concern, pray say so; but what is to be done about Emma?’

  ‘There’s naught more as can be done, Brother.’

  Ross hesitated. ‘I have often thought of asking, Sam, but then thought perhaps I should not . . .
Why did you lose the fight?’

  Sam frowned and twisted his hands together. ‘Twill seem like a presumption if I answer the truth.’

  ‘Well, no other is worth speaking.’

  ‘I thought, Brother . . . it come to me in that very moment when I was near victory . . . it suddenly come to me to think of Christ and – and of how He was tempted of the Devil and of Him being shown all the Kingdoms of the Earth . . . And He refused, didn’t He? And I thought, if He refused; me in my humble way, I must try to follow where He led.’

  They had come to the Meeting House. It was quite bright here, but in the valley dusk had already accumulated, like an advance guard of night.

  Sam said: ‘Emma come to me last Tuesday sennight. We talked and talked, just like we done before. And we come to a blank wall. She cann’t pretend, she say. It might come, I say, and she say, yes, Sam, it might, but if it don’t . . . I’d be riven from you and you from your Society.’ He put up a hand to loosen his neckcloth. ‘Some day, she say, some day I may feel different. All I know is I don’t feel’n now.’

  His voice halted as he cleared his throat. ‘Well, Brother, that’s how it is. I’d best be going in. And you’ll be wanting to be home, like.’

  ‘So she’s not going to marry Tom Harry?’

  ‘No, praise be. She’s going away.’

  ‘Away?’

  ‘To Tehidy. They have want of a maid and she say, I’ll go for a year, Sam. Tis a move up in money and in place for me, she say. She’ll be comfortable there and – and not so much in the way of either one of us. Just for a year, she say. Demelza wrote for her.’