‘I been thinking,’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘You realize, being invited here when Valentine’s not home – it means we’re accepted in a new way. I expect it’s me being married to you that’s done it; but it’s significant.’
‘Well, it’s better to be friendly.’
‘Not just that. Clowance, I wonder if twould be fitting if I spoke to Sir George tonight – later on if the opportunity arises.’
‘About what?’
‘Business. I just opened this bank account with Carne’s; but it would be little inconvenience to bank in Truro – at Warleggan & Willyams. I was wondering whether to transfer – to mention that I’d like to transfer.’
‘Tonight? Oh, no, Stephen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Yours is a very small account so far. I think Sir George, fond though he is of money, would only wish to talk business at a party like this if it were really big business.’
‘Mine may be big business someday.’
‘When it is . . . But even then . . . Certainly not tonight.’
Stephen looked at her with a trace of annoyance, then his face cleared.
‘Ye know these things better than I do, dear heart. I shall not go against your advice.’
George glanced at them from the end of the table; at her flowering fairness. So someone had got her at last. No longer the tempting maiden. Used goods. But she looked no different. The bloom was still just the same, the same candid innocence. Strange if it was her husband who was led away tonight. A worm of sexual malice moved in him. From the day he first saw her trespassing in his house, barefoot, carrying a sheaf of foxgloves, he had felt her physical attraction – a rare thing for him. As with Morwenna Chynoweth many years before, there would be extra pleasure in hurting someone he felt for in that way and knew was personally unattainable.
Someone was talking to him; it was Unwin Trevaunance, booming away about something, across Clemency Trevanion, whom Harriet had put next to him.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You didn’t ask how I got on with Selina Pope.’
‘What? No, I didn’t. Thought you might prefer to keep it to yourself.’
‘Not at all. I never mind if my business is public property.’
How true and typical of him, George thought. ‘You found the lady at home?’
‘Oh, yes. Recently returned from London, but very much at home. She has grown an inch since Hubby died.’
There was a movement among the servants by the door, and George half started up. But it was not Blencowe with the pre-arranged signal. Three servants came in bearing the dishes of gulls’ eggs which were to be served with a shrimp sauce as a first course.
Unwin said: ‘I can tell you this, George, she knows nothing of mining but cares a great deal for her own dignity; and she thinks, like my benighted brother, only of preserving the amenities. It was this chap Barrington Burdett, this lawyer fellow, who put her up to the idea of making me an offer for the mining rights. He advised her, damn the fellow . . . Still, she’s offering a fair price, and a bird in the hand etc. What’s this wine? Was it run?’
‘No, a new shipment from one of the Hanseatic towns. The commercial world is going to be turned topsy-turvy with the opening of the Continental ports . . .’
‘A cup of tea on Saturday?’ suggested Jeremy.
‘What?’
‘At the Red Lion at four. Or take dinner with me there and tea right after. Clemency can come and sit between us so that I am not able to touch you.’
She began to eat one of the eggs, stopped and delicately licked a finger. ‘I would have to ask Clemency.’
‘The last meeting, then? The last before you marry. I shall certainly not return home again before Christmas. After Saturday your path will be unimpeded. I shall not even be a ghost at the feast. By the time I return it will all be over.’
‘You will always be a ghost at the feast, Jeremy, and you know it!’
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I am thinking of taking a leaf out of my cousin Geoffrey Charles’s book and bringing home some plump little Flemish girl for wife.’
She looked at him slantwise, through her lashes. ‘Indeed.’
‘They run to plumpness out there. Like little pouter pigeons. Some of ’em anyhow. A few are quite slender.’
‘Better to marry a slender girl,’ said Cuby. ‘They can always plump up afterwards.’
‘That’s what I thought. But the one I have in mind, called Lisa Dupont, already tends to plumpness. Do you think she would be suitable for me?’
‘Any woman, I imagine, would be suitable for you in your present mood!’
‘There is a truth in that. But pray don’t confuse the issue. I am only thinking of Lisa Dupont as a possible substitute for yourself when the time comes. Can you imagine what Cornish society will be like in a few years if we have such mingling of races? For take heart – or do I mean take warning? – we shall all have to meet and mix in the future, for the county is too small for us altogether to avoid each other. We can discuss this on Saturday.’
‘On Saturday,’ said Cuby, ‘I shall certainly not be there!’
‘Come, come. You cannot deprive a condemned man of his last happy hours.’
Jeremy could have been speaking little more than the actual truth if he had known what Sir George Warleggan had in store for him. As they were talking there was a further stirring at the door and George received at last the signal he expected. He excused himself abruptly from his neighbours and rose and went to the door, went out.
Hector Trembath was there, holding his black tricorn hat, looking flushed.
George’s eyes went up the stairs. ‘You’re damnably late! What kept you? Is he already changing?’
‘No, Sir George. I fear he is not here at all.’
‘What? What in God’s name do you mean?’
Trembath swallowed his bony Adam’s apple. ‘We just caught the coach this morning, sir. Mr Rose was still not at all well and complaining bitter of the gouty pain in his head – wishing even to delay another day, sir! – but I induced him, persuaded him, almost led him, linking arms, like. Once in the coach things seemed to be going better, and for a while we even had a lengthy conversation on legal matters . . .’
‘Get on, get on!’
Nankivell was in the hall now, nervously fingering his crop. Three other servants were nearby.
‘Then at Tresillian, just as we came in sight of the river, Mr Rose complained that the pain in his head could no longer be borne, the jogging of the coach, he said, had made it insupportable. The coach was stopped for near on half an hour. We lifted him out – a very big man, sir, very heavy, with heavily flushed face and white hair – we sent to a cottage for water – a man on the coach had brandy – he could not drink. After half an hour, since there was no help or apothecary near, we somehow got him back into the coach. The other two inside passengers said they would cling on outside to give the sick man more room – and so we came to Truro. There he was took out and carried up to a chamber. I did not know what to do, but felt it my duty to stay with him; a doctor or apothecary might bring him round and I might yet be able to persuade him to come on. Sir George, I intended to have sent you a message, but the coach, being much delayed, left without warning . . .’
‘Yes, yes. Go on, go on. How is he now?’
‘We were fortunate enough to find Dr Daniel Behenna at home – our most respected physician – your physician, if I remember, of course! By the time he arrived Mr Rose could not move his right side at all, and could not speak. He had talked so much all last evening and throughout the early part of the journey, that it was pitiful to behold him unable to utter a word, could only pluck now and then at his lip with his swollen left hand—’
‘What did Behenna say?’
‘That he had suffered an apoplexy of the brain, and he at once bled him by means of an insertion in the external jugular vein. I swear, Sir George, it made me quite faint to see the
blood—’
‘Spare us your feelings. How is he now?’
In spite of his nervousness, Mr Trembath would continue with his story.
‘Dr Behenna stayed half an hour; and I did not know what to do then; for clearly there was no hope of carrying Mr Rose here tonight or of him being helpful to you in any way if he did so come. So I took the liberty of sending to my house for my own horse and having him brought to Pearce’s Hotel . . .’ Mr Trembath cleared his throat. ‘However, before I took my leave – to hurry here with the bad news – the servant girl who had been put to watch over Mr Rose came rushing down to say there was a change in the patient. So I and the innkeeper went up with her. She was right. A grave change had come over Mr Rose. It took no more than two minutes to summon an apothecary who had just entered the inn for some refreshment, and the apothecary at once pronounced him dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I see.’
After a moment George found he had in his hand the wineglass which he had brought from the dining room. It was his first impulse – to smash it on the ground. Instead of that with a twist of his powerful fingers he snapped the glass off at its stem and handed the pieces to a staring footman.
He went in to rejoin the party.
IV
Stephen Carrington enjoyed the evening right to the end, always winning enough at the table to off-set Clowance’s losses; in his element as he had been all evening, mixing in a higher level of society than he had ever done before, being accepted by them without apparent eye-raising comment on his voice or manners, married at last to the girl he had coveted from the day he saw her. He had never been in anything like this position before, never. His misdeeds, he felt, were behind him. The accidental stabbing of an able seaman was more than two years old, and the only person who had recognized him on that night was now his partner and close friend. The chance of his being identified by anyone else for that offence so late in the day seemed very small – though he would still steer clear of Plymouth for a while to be on the safe side.
As for his later adventure in the coach, that was a little nearer in time and a little more sensitive. But Stephen believed in riding his luck. It had all gone so well for him so far; and the money from that robbery had financed his maritime start in life. Many men, he felt, he knew in his bones, had turned a more or less dishonest penny to begin. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if his sour-looking host had done much the same – only in Warleggan’s case it probably consisted of cheating widows rather than the bolder and more risky form his had taken.
So Stephen, unaware of the mountainous body of Mr Arthur Williams Rose, at present being conveyed out of the back door of Pearce’s Hotel on its way to the boneyard, held his head high and looked forward to the future with supreme confidence . . .
As for Jeremy, he too had wrung a sort of pleasure from the evening, though it was of an altogether more wry and perverse kind than Stephen’s. He had in the end persuaded Cuby to take tea with him next Saturday, with Clemency. It was prolonging the agony, yet it appealed to Jeremy as a more suitable end than muttering together over a card table. So be it. He would return to Lisa with the confirmed knowledge that Cornwall held nothing for him any more. On his way home, riding over the dark moors, taking his time lest Colley should stumble and throw him, he presented a figure which even in the star-lit gloom of the early night was likely to deter footpads. Cut purses and the riff-raff of the mines did not attack soldiers.
Jeremy was no more aware than Stephen of the narrow margin by which he had escaped the risk of denunciation; but on his long ride he began to think of the practical problems of the money still left to him. When he had taken a substantial part of it to pay for his army outfit he had been aware that the damp of the cave was beginning to damage the notes. At the time he had done nothing, but now, on this leave, it seemed sensible to try to find some means of preserving the rest.
For an hour he thought about it and then came to a decision. The Gatehouse, from which they had galloped out on their foolhardy enterprise and to which a day and a half later they had returned, was still empty and part furnished, just as it had been when Clowance’s and Stephen’s engagement had been broken off. Jeremy, who knew the little house intimately remembered a loose floorboard in the backroom at the top of the narrow stairs. It would certainly prise up and could be knocked back into place again. He also knew that in the kitchen was an old box iron. If you took out the part that went in the fire to be heated it left a substantial cavity which could well contain what was left of his money; and the notes would be safe from deterioration. He would make the transfer early on Thursday morning.
Jeremy had none of Stephen’s ebullient belief in his own luck; nor had he his ability to throw off a sense of guilt. The robbery seemed to have succeeded, and one simply went on from there. Jeremy had felt less unbalanced about it since his impulsive confession to Geoffrey Charles. His cousin’s laughter had put the adventure into perspective – so had his warning that they were not yet out of the wood, perhaps never could be altogether safe.
Maybe having done something like that it was not proper to be altogether safe. Perhaps his continuing in the Army created the equilibrium in his life that a sense of justice required.
Chapter Seven
I
In early June England was visited by the Heads of State of the collective Allies who had helped to defeat Napoleon. Alexander I, Tsar of all the Russias; Frederick William III, King of Prussia; the Chancellor of Austria, Prince Metternich; the Chancellor of Prussia, Prince Charles Augustus Hardenberg; Field Marshal von Blücher, and many minor princes, all reached England in the same naval vessel, but on approaching London by coach some of the more popular figures scattered and arrived privately, fearful of the enthusiasm of the undisciplined and unpoliced English crowds.
And enthusiasm there was in abundance; Blücher was mobbed, the Tsar could not issue from the hotel – where he decided to stay instead of the state apartments chosen for him – without being greeted and followed by cheering crowds. Great receptions were held: balls, dinners, operas. It would have been high noon for the Prince Regent had not the crowds greeted him with hisses and boos and reserved all their cheers for the foreigners. Canning was travelling in the north country and wrote to Ross. ‘Peace,’ he wrote, ‘which is so welcome now it comes with honour, has in a few months wrought so many surprises that one stands aghast at one’s lack of foresight and sagacity. It has indeed saved some of our industries, but it has created havoc in others. All merchantry is in the melting pot; Europe welcomes our exports with enthusiasm, but floods us with imports in return. Some of our fledgling industries, grown green and lush from lack of competition, are now cut down with cold winds which must grow keener every day. Even more so now we must press for the reforms which have been hitherto resisted.’ But Canning was increasingly preoccupied with the failing health of young George, his eldest boy.
Another one in dubious health at this time was Dwight Enys who, greatly to Caroline’s fury, had ventured once too often into the pestilence-ridden area of the Guernseys and picked up some fever of which he could not rid himself. It came on and went off and came on again, with depressing regularity. Dwight accepted a draught or two from his assistant, Clotworthy, but would not allow another physician near him. He went on a starvation diet and prescribed himself Peruvian bark and opium and continued with his work in the villages as usual.
So for the present, talk of the four of them going off for a few weeks to Paris was shelved. Dwight heard now that the Davy party, having survived the collapse of Napoleon, had left Paris for the Auvergne and were later bound for Florence. ‘The autumn is the best time in Paris,’ said Ross, with the authority of someone who had never been there. ‘We’ll go then.’
In the meantime the great Peninsular Army, forged by Moore and Wellington into one of the finest fighting forces there had ever been, marched to Bordeaux, parted tearfully from its Portuguese battalions, was rev
iewed for the last time by Wellington, and broke up for ever. The day after the review Major Geoffrey Charles Poldark went to see his commanding officer and told him that he was resigning his commission.
Colonel William Napier regarded him for a full half minute from under his eyebrows before he replied.
‘Do I hear aright?’
‘You do, sir.’
‘On what grounds have you come to such a misguided decision?’
‘The war is over, sir. I think it is time I returned to civilian life. I hope I shall be able to sell my commission.’
‘You are a professional soldier, Poldark, not a time server.’
‘The Army has been my life since I was sixteen. But I have recently married; my wife is expecting a child; I have a small estate in Cornwall that needs attention.’
‘And you will have enough to live on?’
‘Thanks to money that my wife will bring me, yes, sir.’
Napier got up and limped to the window of the cottage. He was a thin, pale young man who had himself recently married.
‘War is not altogether over yet, Poldark. Perhaps war in one form or another never will be over for a country like ours with a colonial empire.’
‘I presume we have no orders yet, sir?’
‘We shall embark for Plymouth when transport is available. Thereafter . . .’
‘I confess I have no stomach for this war in America,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘It is such a bad-tempered little squabble with no real principle involved – and no issue, unless it is the future of Canada.’