‘Well, that is something we shall both have to risk.’
They stopped where a cellar trap-door was open and two men like black dwarfs were unloading casks of ale from a dray. Beside it someone had tipped a load of bricks, making passage along the uneven pavement impossible.
‘Does Demelza know aught of this?’
‘No, and must not! Nor Caroline. Fortunately there is only a day to wait. Remember this, Dwight; you are sworn to secrecy. No one must be told.’
‘And are you proposing that we should go to Strawberry Hill tomorrow as arranged?’
‘Of course. Otherwise they will guess something is in the wind.’
Dwight shook his head in despair.
‘And when will you get your pistol practice?’
‘First thing. We don’t leave until ten.’
‘So I must also be about early on my efforts at a reconciliation. Ross, what are the grounds on which you would agree to withdraw?’
‘I have nothing to withdraw, Dwight. I have only accepted the challenge.’
Dwight gestured irritably. ‘To say that you meant no offence in the House?’
‘I apologized to him at the time.’
‘Did he hear it?’
‘He should have done.’
‘Did you mean it?’
‘No.’
They turned back, towards the top of the Garden and the better houses.
‘So . . . I never thought when I came to London that I should be involved in such a childish, wicked affair as this. Because it is both, Ross. When there is so much suffering and pain in the world already . . . And when we are at war. There is enough killing to be done without fighting among ourselves.’
‘You must tell Adderley that. If he wishes to withdraw his challenge on those grounds – or on any other honourable grounds – I’ll be willing to let the matter drop.’
Dwight said: ‘You speak as if you would not really be willing.’
After a moment Ross said: ‘You know me too well, Dwight. Anyway, I leave it in your hands.’
II
At ten next morning the quartet set out for Strawberry Hill. The house, built by the great Sir Horace Walpole, was one of the sights Caroline had planned they should see. It was fine again, after the cold rain of yesterday, with balustrades of white cloud arranging themselves in the west; a good day to clear the smells of London; a good day for riding; and the distance little more than ten miles.
In a few minutes alone before they left Dwight was able to gesture his disgust and say: ‘If it were possible, he is more intransigent than you. But while perhaps he has some excuse, being unstable, you have none.’
‘What would you have me do?’ Ross asked. ‘Go to his lodgings and knock on his door and when he comes kneel and offer him an abject apology? An apology that I became annoyed at his insult to my wife?’
‘Are you sure it was intended as such?’
‘Of course. Nothing else.’
‘In any event a challenge like this is not important coming from such as him. I would suggest you go to see him this evening and tell him you have no interest in his false heroics. You are a veteran of the American war. If he calls you a coward people will only laugh – at him.’
Ross smiled but did not reply.
They reached Twickenham at midday. Walpole had now been dead a couple of years, but the Hon. Mrs Damer, the daughter of Walpole’s great friend, General Conway, was in residence and was maintaining the tradition of allowing only four people to visit the house daily.
Demelza found the gardens inspiring. Flowers she had never seen, trees and shrubs she had not imagined. ‘And, Ross, if we could have a lawn like this – or just a little like this – at Nampara. It is so smooth, so green.’ More indulgent towards her than he had been of late, Ross explained that grass would never grow so lush in the sandy soil of the north coast, and that this was all scythed to an inch in height by apprentices learning to be gardeners. Well, Demelza said, when she got home she would do something. She could have a lawn of a sort, not just tufts of grass pitted with rabbit scratchings and Garrick diggings. Think how much better her hollyhocks would look if you saw them across an expanse of neat, tidy, green lawn! And she saw a shrub like the one Hugh Armitage had given her, and it was called a magnolia. As soon as she saw the name she remembered it.
There was much of interest, too, in the eccentric house with its differing styles; and inside it was a treasure trove; one complete room full of Italian cameos, another with snuff-boxes and miniatures. There were water-colours and oil-paintings and rosaries and bronzes and French glass and Brussels lace and porcelain figures from Dresden and Chinese masks and Turkish swords, and ivory figurines, and fans and clocks, and in a library so many books it was impossible to guess at the number.
After dinner, on the way home, Demelza suggested that perhaps sometimes it was possible to be too rich and so accumulate too much of everything. Nothing, she thought, could be more exciting than to have a passion for something, whether it was fans, or ivory or glass, and then, if you could afford it, to build up a collection, precious piece by precious piece, so that you could put it on your shelves and take pleasure in it every time you saw it. But Sir Horatio, even though he had lived to be old, must have made some of his collections in great quantities at the same time. How, then, could you find the same pleasure? Six lovely things would always be six lovely things. Six thousand and you’d lose appreciation.
‘It’s like wives,’ said Ross. ‘Enough is enough.’
‘That cuts both ways,’ said Caroline. ‘Though I’m told there is a maharajah in India who lives in his palace, the only man among a thousand women.’
‘From what I hear,’ Dwight said, ‘women were one of the few treasures Walpole did not collect. But I agree with Demelza; a man of the most exquisite taste can still lack taste if he indulges it too freely.’
‘Like a man of courage?’ Ross asked.
‘Exactly.’
As they drew near London Caroline said: ‘Why don’t you two sup with us? My aunt always has more on her table than she knows what to do with.’
‘I had thought,’ Ross said, ‘of visiting the theatre again. There is a change of programme. It is a comic play by Goldsmith.’
They all looked at him in surprise.
‘We’ll scarcely be back in time,’ Caroline said. ‘We should have no time to change.’
‘Then go as we are,’ said Ross. ‘Or miss the first act. It will be easy to pick up the story.’
‘Let’s go as we are,’ said Demelza immediately. ‘What is the hour now? Oh, yes, we could do that! And then, perhaps, we could sup afterwards.’
So it was agreed. They stabled their horses at an ostler’s in Stanhope Street and found seats in a box only five minutes after the curtain had gone up.
Thereafter for two hours they were brilliantly amused by the play. Sometimes Dwight glanced across at Ross. He knew that neither Ross’s nor his own enjoyment could be anything but assumed. It was a remarkable effort of controlled behaviour on Ross’s part, and Dwight now and then wondered if the other man, in one of his moods of dark fatalism, had almost totally accepted whatever the future had to bring.
They did not stay for the later plays, but just remained long enough to hear the orchestra in: ‘Shepherd, I have lost my waist, Have you seen my body? Sacrificed to modern taste, I’m quite the Hoddy-Doddy.’ Demelza humming it in her slightly husky sweet voice, they were at Hatton Garden by nine o’clock.
Mrs Pelham was out so they supped alone. It had just been announced that both Houses of Parliament would adjourn early and would not be likely to reassemble before the third week in January; so this set Demelza off – in high spirits after the play – with thoughts of Christmas. Last year had been such a success that she wished exactly to repeat it. Caroline said it was always a mistake to attempt to repeat anything, and anyway Demelza could not, for she, Caroline, intended to spend Christmas in Cornwall this year, and that would break the pattern. Dem
elza said it would only improve the pattern, whereupon Caroline replied not at all so, and in fact, although personally she would look on it with some misgiving, she intended to command an attendance at Killewarren of all the Poldarks she could muster, not excluding the Blameys, however many of them happened to be not afloat at that particular season. She had heard what a ravishing young man James Blamey was, and she hoped to see for herself. And as for the children, well, she said, Killewarren’s bigger than Nampara, so let us hear some little feet pattering about it, even if they are not Sarah’s.
In a half-wry, half-jolly wrangling supper proceeded, until Mrs Pelham arrived back with three guests, the first being that tall dark man of forty, the Hon. St Andrew St John, who was at present her ‘special friend’. This devoted adherent of Fox was a bachelor, a landowner and a barrister and had been under-secretary of state for foreign affairs under Fox when only twenty-four. Since then he had been in the wilderness with him; but he enjoyed London social life and most of all, it seemed, Mrs Pelham. The second was Mr Edward Coke of Longford, Derbyshire, a man of about the same age, who had made no mark in the House but had much to say out of it, another adherent of Fox; and the third, a rich, sour, sardonic old bachelor called Jeremiah Crutchley, who was member for St Mawes and had been a friend of Samuel Johnson.
More seats were drawn up round the table, servants scurried with napkins and glasses and wine and dishes of food, and general chatter began. Presently Ross heard St Andrew St John mutter something in an undertone to Dwight, and he immediately said:
‘May I ask you to repeat that, sir?’
St John said: ‘Supper, I think, is a time for bavarderie, not serious talk. But I mentioned to your friend that it is reported General Buonaparte has given the blockading squadrons the slip and reached France.’
‘When?’
‘Early this month,’ Coke put in. ‘They say the great man was at sea six weeks and scarcely escaped capture! He landed at Fréjus with a bare half dozen of an escort, and was greeted like a king. Fox was thinking of sending him a message of congratulation.’
There was silence. Ross held his tongue.
Presently he said: ‘Certainly, since Hoche died, Buonaparte stands alone. The French armies no doubt will look on him as their saviour.’
‘Which is doubtful if he can be,’ said Crutchley, who, like Ross, supported Pitt and the war effort. ‘While he’s been bottled up in Egypt, all his conquests in Europe have been lost. Now we have a firm foothold in Holland it will be no time before Russia joins us there. Nearly all the French possessions overseas are in our hands: Ceylon, all of Southern India, the Cape of Good Hope, Minorca, Trinidad. The best that their “saviour” can do is rally the defeated armies and sue for peace.’
‘There’s been a great bungling of our efforts in the Helder,’ said Coke, with some satisfaction. ‘More determination would have given us the whole of Holland by now.’
‘If Abercrombie had not been forced to use his raw militia last week—’
‘Gentlemen,’ Caroline said. ‘Mr St John is right. The supper table is for light talk, however weighty the platters we put on it. This soirée you have been to: was it an interesting evening?’
III
They stayed late drinking and laughing and talking. It had been a long day in the open air and Demelza’s eyes were pricking with sleep long before they finally said good night and took two hackney chairs home. Ross had been slow to leave, and she could not know that it was a part of his design that she should be tired and sleep late in the morning.
When she lay in bed at last she talked for a moment or two about the Strawberry Hill garden and all the fascinating things there were in it. No one in Cornwall, it seemed to her, had begun to lay out a garden like this. There was a small formal garden at Tregothnan, and splendid landscaping had been done at places like Tehidy and Trelissick. But this was small landscaping, within the compass of a few acres; superbly arranged trees of all shapes, sizes and colours; golden bushes, blue pyramids, grey towering sentinels, with all the profusion of flowering plants set between and showing them off. Where did you get such trees and shrubs: where did you buy them; did you have to order them from the Indies and Australia and America? Ross answered, yes, and, no, and, I have little idea, and, perhaps we can inquire. He should, he knew, have warned her again that not a quarter of the plants she coveted would stand the sandy soil and salt-laden winds of the north Cornish coast; but for the moment he had not the heart. He waited until she had fallen asleep, and then he quietly undressed and slid into bed beside her and lay for a long time, hands behind head, staring up at the ceiling.
He had arranged to be wakened at five; and he rose and by the light of a shaded candle washed and shaved and brushed and combed his hair. It was still pitch dark outside, and was likely still to be so at six. He supposed that by the time the preliminaries had been gone through dawn would be breaking. One presumably had to be able to see one’s opponent.
He had never himself fought a duel before, but he had been second to a brother officer in New York when he had quarrelled with a lieutenant in another regiment, and they had fought it out in the fields behind the encampment. Both had been severely wounded. Even then, when he was himself only twenty-two and more romantically inclined, he had thought the whole procedure an exaggerated and out-dated way of settling differences. In the camp at that time there was an average of one duel every week, and frequently good men killed; and he knew that although decrees had been issued both by the civilian and the military authorities, the frequency of such affairs had scarcely dropped since then.
Often the dispute was of the lightest, some joke misinterpreted. Dwight was wrong in supposing his disagreement with Adderley too trivial for such resolution. Only last March when he was in London there had been a quarrel in Stephenson’s Hotel in Bond Street. Viscount Falkland had been drinking there with some friends, among them a Mr Powell, and Falkland had merely said: ‘What, drunk again, Pogey?’, whereupon Powell had made a sharp reply and Falkland had hit him with a cane. In the resultant duel Falkland, a man of forty-one, had been shot dead. So it went on, and so it would go on. But he had not supposed that he himself would ever be involved in such an affray.
Long years ago he had made a will, and it was deposited with Mr Pearce – and would now presumably have been passed on among all the other boxes of legal documents to whoever was taking over the remnants of Mr Pearce’s devastated practice – but that had been done before the children were born, when he had been about to be tried for his life in Bodmin. He supposed he should have made some later attempt to set his affairs in order. He knew one or two Cornishmen who made a fresh will whenever they set out for London.
Well, it was too late now. In less than an hour the matter would be decided. At five forty-five he heard the clop of hooves. Most of the lamps in the narrow sloping street had gone out for lack of fish oil, but the few left showed that Dwight, for all his angry protests, was not late for his appointment.
Ross glanced at the sleeping figure of his wife. Her face was half hidden and he decided not to make any attempt to touch her, for she was quick to wake. He put on his cloak and hat, tiptoed to the door, which creaked maddeningly, and then, guttering candle in hand, went down the stairs. At the outer door he blew out the candle, put it on a ledge and stepped into the street.
The air was cold, and a light drizzle was falling. Ross mounted the other horse that Dwight had brought, and stared at his friend.
‘Did you have any difficulty?’
Dwight said: ‘Only the difficulty of believing that so rational a man as yourself, and my best and oldest friend, should indulge in such madness and pursue it to the bitter end.’
Ross said: ‘Unless the sky lightens soon there will be more danger to the birds in the trees. Or do we hold a torch in our other hand?’
Dwight said: ‘Even by the absurd standards of today, this meeting is ridiculously irregular. As challenger Adderley must give you the choice of weapons. Yet befor
e you even consult me you accept all his terms.’
‘Because they suit me. I have never used a sword except in practice with the regiment seventeen years ago. At least with a pistol I have a very good idea what happens when the trigger is pulled.’
‘Did you take some practice yesterday morning?’
‘Yes, with a sergeant at the Savoy. His chief advice, however, seemed to be, “Watch how you load the pistol, sir: too much gunpowder destroys the equilibrium, too much velocity affects the precision of the ball. If anything, sir, it is better to undercharge.” Since you will be in command of the pistols and not I, I can only pass on this gem of wisdom for your attention.’
They turned and began to move up the hill. They rode along the Strand and up Cockspur Street and the Hay Market to Piccadilly, thence to Hyde Park Corner. There were a few shadowy figures still skulking about, seeking whom or what they might pick up or rob. As their horses turned up Tyburn Lane the watch was ringing his bell and calling: ‘Past six o’clock and all’s well.’ It was his last call before he went home. In the Park although there was no wind the leaves were falling regularly like some too-conventional stage set. The rain had just stopped. In the dim light there seemed no one about when they reached the ring, and, for the five minutes they sat there while the horses’ nostrils steamed in the still morning, Dwight had time to hope that Adderley had thought better of his challenge. But presently there was the clop of a hoof and the snort of a restive horse, and two figures loomed up in the semi-dark.
‘As God is my judge,’ said Monk, erect as a lancer, ‘I thought you’d run home to Cornwall.’
‘As God is my judge,’ said Ross, ‘I thought you were about to plead benefit of clergy.’
It was not a good beginning on which to base a move of reconciliation, but as they rode further into the trees Dwight drew Craven aside, and after they had dismounted there was a further conference. In the meantime Ross paced slowly across the clearing they had chosen, hands behind back, taking deep breaths of the fresh morning, listening to the occasional sleepy chirrup of a waking bird. Adderley stood quite still, like one of those thin pencil trees Demelza had so admired yesterday.