The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  ‘Kind words . . . If they were deserved they couldn’t hardly fail to spoil what they try to praise.’

  ‘That I cannot believe, and will not believe.’

  ‘I suspect you build something, Lieutenant Armitage, that isn’t really there at all.’

  ‘You mean I set up an ideal woman which cannot be attained of? On the contrary. On the very contrary. Let me explain—’

  But he could not explain because a footman came to show them the way upstairs. They changed and supped at a long table at which, apart from the family, there were twenty guests. After supper another twenty-odd people arrived, and they danced in the great parlour, that room in which, not so long ago, Mr Hick and Mr Nicholas Warleggan had had their protracted and uncomfortable wait. But now much of the furniture and armoury had been removed and a three-piece band played in the corner by the empty fireplace with its large caryatids supporting the wooden chimney piece.

  His Lordship had come to dinner, and his manner was gracious; but there was a reserve about him that made high spirits seem out of place in his presence, and no one complained when he disappeared as dancing began.

  Most of the other guests were young, and it made for a lively party. Lieutenant Armitage acted the part of host, and behaved very circumspectly towards Demelza; and it was half through the evening before he approached Ross and asked if he might dance with his wife. Ross, who had just done so and found the evening warm, smilingly agreed. He stood by one of the double doors and watched them go on to the floor: it was still a formal dance, this, a gavotte, and he saw them talking to each other as they came together and separated and met again. Demelza was one of those women who usually contrive to retain some element of attractiveness under the most adverse conditions; and he had seen her in plenty – hair lank and sweaty with fever, face twisted in the pains of childbirth, dirty and unkempt from taking some nasty job out of the servants’ hands; bitter from that long disastrous quarrel. But perhaps her greatest asset was an ability to bloom with excitement at quite small things. Nothing ever seemed to stale. The first baby wren to hatch was as fascinating this year as last. An evening out was as much of an adventure at twenty-six as it had been at sixteen.

  So he must not take too much account of the way she was blooming tonight. But he suspected there was something different about it; some look of serenity he had not noticed before. Of course any woman likes admiration, and new admiration at that, and she was not different. They had quarrelled once on a ballroom floor – God knew how long ago it was – that time, if he remembered, he had angrily accused her of leading on a pack of undesirable and undeserving men, and she had retorted that he, Ross, had been neglecting her.

  This time he was not neglecting her, and only one man, the man she was dancing with, was in any way being led on. Armitage was an honest, charming and likeable chap, and there was nothing whatever to show that Demelza was more than the passive recipient of his admiration and attentions. Ross hadn’t really very serious doubts about Demelza; he and she had been so close so long; but he hoped she didn’t allow Armitage – almost by default – to imagine something different.

  A throat was cleared behind him, and he turned. A white-wigged footman.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, but his Lordship says would you be kind enough to wait on him in his study.’

  Ross hesitated. He had the least possible desire to talk with his Lordship, but as he was a guest in the house he could hardly refuse. As he walked through the hall Caroline was coming down the stairs and he said:

  ‘Will you tell Demelza, if she should come off the floor, that I’m in his Lordship’s study. I shall not, I trust, be long.’

  Caroline smiled at him. ‘Of course, Ross.’

  It was not until he had followed the footman into Falmouth’s study that the faint surprise registered that for once she had not returned some flippant or satirical answer.

  III

  ‘I am the unhappiest of men,’ Hugh Armitage said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Demelza.

  ‘Because the woman I have come to hold dearer than life is married to the man to whom I owe my life itself.’

  ‘Then I think you should not say what you have just said.’

  ‘The condemned man must surely be allowed to speak what is in his heart.’

  ‘Condemned?’

  ‘To separation. To loss. I leave for Portsmouth tomorrow.’

  ‘Lieutenant Armitage, I—’

  ‘Will you please call me Hugh?’

  They broke apart but presently came together again.

  ‘Well, then, Hugh, if it must be . . . I don’t think you’re condemned to loss – for how can you lose what you haven’t never had?’

  ‘I have had your company, your conversation, the inspiration of touching your hand, of hearing your voice, of seeing the light in your eyes. Is that not grievous loss enough?’

  ‘You’re a poet, Hugh. That’s the trouble—’

  ‘Yes, let me explain, as I wished to explain before. You think I set up an ideal which is impossible of attainment. But all poets are not romantic. I have not been a romantic, believe me. I’ve been in the navy since I was fourteen and I’ve knocked about and seen a lot of life, much of it sordid. I have seen and known a number of women. I have no illusions about them.’

  ‘Then you must have no illusions about me.’

  ‘Nor have I. Nor have I.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you have. That poem . . .’

  ‘I have written others. But I couldn’t venture to send them.’

  ‘I think you shouldn’t have sent that.’

  ‘Of course I should not. It was wholly improper of me. But if a man sings a love song he hopes that once, just once, the object of his love may hear him.’

  Demelza said something under her breath.

  ‘What? What did you say?’

  She raised her head. ‘You trouble me.’

  ‘Dare I hope that that means—‘

  ‘Don’t hope anything. Can’t we not be happy just in – in being alive? D’you mind what you told me at Tehidy about appreciating everything over afresh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You turn my own words against me.’

  She smiled at him brilliantly. ‘No, Hugh, for you. In that way – that way we can feel affection, and hurt no one and come to no hurt ourselves.’

  He said: ‘Is that what you feel for me – affection?’

  ‘I don’t think you did ought to ask that.’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I have cut off the sunshine – all that your smile is. But it was worth it, for I see you’re too honest to deceive me. It’s not affection that you feel.’

  ‘The dance is ended. They’re going off the floor.’

  ‘You don’t feel for me what you would feel for a brother. That is true, Demelza, isn’t it?’

  ‘I have a lot of brothers, and none of them quite like you.’

  ‘Sisters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. Alas. It would be too much to ask. God does not repeat his masterpieces.’

  Demelza took a deep breath. ‘I’d dearly like some port.’

  IV

  ‘This smuggling,’ said Viscount Falmouth, ‘has reached outrageous proportions. Do you know that last week a schooner, the Mary Armande, arrived in Falmouth harbour with a cargo of coal. But someone had told upon her and she was boarded by preventive men while the coal was being unloaded. She was found to have a false bottom, under which was hid 276 tubs of brandy.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Ross said. He reflected idly that this at least was something Falmouth, Basset and George Warleggan had in common: a hatred of smuggling. Since he, Ross, had not been above indulging in it himself, and not so very long ago, he felt that the single word was all he could suitably offer. In any case he did not suppose he had been invited to see his lordship to discuss such a matter.

  Falmouth was sitting beside a small fire, which was smoking and looked as if it had been recently lighted. He was wearing a green velvet jacket and a small green
skullcap to cover his scanty hair. He looked like a well-to-do gentleman farmer, youngish-middle-aged, healthy, putting on weight. Only his eyes were autocratic. A bunch of hot-house grapes was on a plate at his elbow, and occasionally he plucked at one.

  Suitably, they talked of the crops. Ross reflected that they might have talked on almost any subject to do with the county: mining, shipping, boat building, quarrying, fishing, smelting, or that new industry of the south-east, digging up clay to make pottery, and Falmouth would be likely to be involved. Not on any such down-to-earth basis as the Warleggans, not a question of becoming personally involved; but an interest looked after by managers, by stewards, by lawyers, whose livelihood it was to see their employer’s business done and well done; or by possession of the land on which industry or mining stood.

  Presently Lord Falmouth said: ‘I suspect I am indebted to you, Captain Poldark.’

  ‘Oh? I was unaware of it.’

  ‘Well, yes, doubly so, I think. But for you my sister’s son was likely to be still languishing in a foul prison in Brittany. If by now he had not been already dead.’

  ‘I’m happy to seem to possess merit in your eyes. But I must point out that I went to Quimper solely to try to release Dr Enys – who is here tonight – and the rest was accidental.’

  ‘No matter. No matter. It was a brave enterprise. My soldiering days are not so far behind me that I can’t appreciate the courage of the conception and the overwhelming risks you ran.’

  Ross inclined his head and waited. Falmouth spat some pips into his hand and put three more grapes in his mouth. Having waited long enough, Ross said:

  ‘I’m happy to have given Hugh Armitage the opportunity to escape. But I cannot imagine what second obligation you may feel you have towards me.’

  Falmouth disposed of the rest of the pips. ‘I gather that you refused the nomination to opposite my candidate at the by-election in Truro.’

  ‘Oh, dear God in Heaven! . . .’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I say it because apparently it is impossible to have any conversation, however private, without the substance of it being disseminated throughout the county.’

  Falmouth looked down his nose. ‘I don’t suppose it is widely known. But the information reached me. I take it it is true.’

  ‘Oh, true enough. But my reasons, I must tell you again, were wholly selfish and in no way concerned with obliging or disobliging other people.’

  ‘Others, it seems, are not at all unwilling to disoblige me.’

  ‘Some people have one ambition, my Lord, others another.’

  ‘And what may yours be, Captain Poldark?’

  Faced with the sudden sharp question, Ross was not sure how to answer.

  ‘To live as I want,’ he said eventually; ‘to raise a family. To make the people round me happy; to be unencumbered of debt.’

  ‘Admirable objectives but of a limited nature.’

  ‘Whose are less limited?’

  ‘I think those with some ideal of public service – especially when the nation is at war . . . But I suspect from your adventure of last year that you understate your aims – or possibly lack a channel to direct them.’

  ‘At least they don’t tend towards parliamentary life.’

  ‘Whereas Mr George Warleggan’s did.’

  ‘Presumably.’

  Falmouth chewed another grape. ‘It would give me pleasure one day to obstruct Mr George Warleggan’s parliamentary life.’

  ‘I think there is only one way you may do that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By composing your differences with Sir Francis Basset’

  ‘That will never be!’

  Ross shrugged and said no more.

  Lord Falmouth went on: ‘Basset forces himself into my boroughs, buys influence and favours, contests rights that have been in my family for generations. He is no more to be commended than his lackey!’

  ‘Is not all borough mongering a matter of buying influence and favours?’

  ‘At its most cynical, yes. But it’s a system which works adequately for the maintenance and transaction of government. It breaks down when brash and thrusting young landowners with too much money interfere in the long-established rights of the older aristocracy.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ross said, ‘that the maintenance and transaction of government is at all well served by the present system of representation and election. Of course it’s better than anything that went before because neither king nor lords nor commoners may rule without consent of the other. It may save us from another 1649, or even, if one looks to France, from a 1789. But since Sir Francis invited me to contest the seat in Truro I have been taking more notice of the system as it exists in England today, and it’s – it’s like some old ramshackle coach of which the springs and swingle bar are long broke and there are holes in the floor from bumping over rutted roads. It should be thrown away and a new one built.’

  Ross did not bother to mince his words, but Falmouth would not be ruffled.

  ‘In what way do you suggest there should be improvement in construction of the new coach?’

  ‘Well . . . first some re-distribution of the seats so that the interests of the country as a whole are more evenly represented. I don’t know what the population of Cornwall is – I’ll wager less than 200,000 – and it returns forty-four Members. The great new towns of Manchester and Birmingham, whose populations can be little short of 70,000 each, have no parliamentary representation at all!’

  ‘You are an advocate of democracy, Captain Poldark?’

  ‘Basset asked the same question, and the answer’s no. But it cannot be healthy that the big new populations of the north have no voice in the nation’s affairs.’

  ‘We all speak for the nation,’ said Falmouth. ‘That is one of the purposes of becoming a Member. And one of the privileges.’

  Ross did not reply, and his host poked the fire. It burst into a reluctant blaze.

  ‘I suppose you know that there’s a rumour that your friend Basset may soon be ennobled.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘He may well become one of Pitt’s “Money-bag” peers. A barony or some such in return for money and support from the Members he controls.’

  ‘As I said, it’s not a pretty system.’

  ‘You will never eradicate venality and greed and ambition.’

  ‘No, but you may control them.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘And your other reforms?’ There was a hint of irony in the voice.

  ‘These may offend you more.’

  ‘I did not say that the other had offended me.’

  ‘Well, clearly some change in the method of election. Seats should not be bought and sold as if they were private property. Electors should not be bribed, either with feasts or direct payments. In many cases the election is a mere sham. Truro, at least, has some able-bodied men who affect to be voters, however they may or may not be influenced. Others in the country are far worse. Many in Cornwall. And they say that in Midhurst in Sussex there is only one effective voter, who elects two Members on the instructions of his patron.’

  Falmouth said: ‘Oh, true enough. At Old Sarum, near Salisbury, there is nothing but a ruined castle, not a house nor an inhabitant; but it returns two Members.’ He chewed reflectively. ‘So. How would you build your new coach?’

  ‘With a broadened franchise to begin. There cannot—’

  ‘Franchise?’

  ‘Electorate, if you prefer. Until you broaden that you can get nowhere. And the electorate must be free, even if there were only twenty-five voters to a seat. And the seats must be free – free of patronage, free of influence from outside. That maybe is why franchise is becoming the word used in this respect – for it means freedom. Neither the vote nor the seat must be up for sale.’

  ‘And annual parliaments and pensions at fifty and the rest of that rubbish?’

  ‘I see you’re well read, my Lord.’

/>   ‘It’s a mistake not to know what the enemy thinks.’

  ‘Is that why you invited me here tonight?’

  For the first time in the interview Falmouth smiled. ‘I don’t look on you as an enemy, Captain Poldark. I thought I had made it clear that I considered you a man of undirected potential. But in truth, though you disown the worst extremes of the Corresponding Societies, do you believe that seats in parliament can possibly be made free of patronage, that electors can be free of any sort of payment?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘You spoke of electors being bribed. You spoke contemptuously of them being bribed by money or influence. Is it any worse to pay a reward at the time of voting than to promise a reward, a promise which you know you may afterwards easily break? Come, which is the more honest: to pay a man twenty guineas down to vote for your candidate or to promise him the passing of a law which may put twenty guineas in his pocket when you have been elected?’

  ‘I don’t believe it would have to be like that.’

  ‘You take a kinder view of human nature than I do.’

  ‘Man is never perfectable,’ Ross said, ‘so he fails always in his ideals. Whichever way he directs his aims Original Sin is there to confound him.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘A friend of mine who is here tonight.’

  ‘A wise man.’

  ‘But not a cynic. I think he would agree with me that it is better to climb three rungs and slip back two than to make no move at all.’

  Falmouth rose and stood with his back to the fire warming his hands.

  ‘Well, we are on opposite sides on this, and I imagine will remain so. Of course, you see in me a man in possession of hereditary power, and with no intention at all of giving it up. I buy and sell as I can in the world of government. Soldiers, sailors, parsons, customs officers, mayors, clerks and the like depend upon my word for their appointment or advancement. Nepotism is rife. What would you put in its place? Power is not an endlessly divisible thing. Yet it must exist. Someone must possess it – and since man is not perfectable, as you admit, it must at times be misused. Who is likely to misuse it more: the demagogue who finds it suddenly in his possession, like a man with a heady wine who has never tasted liquor before; or a man who by heredity has learned – and been taught – how to use it, a man who, having known liquor all his life, may taste the heady wine without becoming drunk upon it?’