They walked on. The children had seen them coming now and were running to meet them.
‘And Lord Falmouth? Do you see much of him?’
‘I have dined at his house once and we have supped over at Wood’s Coffee House in Covent Garden, where the exiles meet two or three times a year. It is called the Cornish Club. I think we have come to be a little on each other’s nerves, but I have to tell you that he has not attempted to influence my conduct in the House so long as I support Pitt on most major issues.’
The children were racing now. Jeremy had outstripped Clowance’s fat little legs, and Clowance, it seemed likely, was going to go into a sulk.
‘And you are home, Ross, for all the summer?’
‘All the summer. And I hope you have something good for dinner. Last night – and the air this morning – has made me hungry.’
Chapter Four
I
Since the persecutions instituted by Mr Tankard at Mr George Warleggan’s suggestion ceased, Drake Carne’s business had prospered. Even in times of war, even in times of scarcity, even in times of depression, people needed a blacksmith, especially one who could also make a serviceable wheel. Drake had had the great advantage when he began of taking over a going concern, even if run down; there had not been any need to create a new connection in the face of opposition. ‘Pally’ Jewell had been there forty years before him; the difference was a young man in place of an old.
It was sourly observed of Methodists that they prospered more than other men. The reason was simple: once they had truly laid hold of the faith they eschewed gambling, wenching and, for the most part, drinking, so that, aside from their religious meetings, they had not much else to do but work. While regarding this world’s goods as of secondary importance, Wesley had never for a moment forbidden his followers to prosper, so long as they did so in a godly and modest and sober way. And this was happening to Drake, and faster even than most; for the loss of Morwenna left him without the solace of a wife and the distraction of a family. He worked. From dawn till dark – and often after by candlelight, he worked. With the shop went six acres of land, and this he farmed, mainly growing animal feed which he sold to the big houses round. (Not, of course, to Trenwith.) He kept chickens and goats and a few geese. When for any reason business slacked off he made spades and shovels and ladders, and the mines bought them from him. Recently he had taken on two undersized boys of twelve, the Trewinnard twins, as assistants. He was putting money in the bank, not because he felt it was any use to him, but because he had to put it somewhere.
Sam, his brother, still came every Tuesday and Saturday and stayed and talked a while and prayed with him. Drake had broken away from full participation in the life of redemption, and, although still a member of the Connexion, he had never returned to it in the way Sam would have liked and nightly prayed for. Sam, whose religion had been the cause of his failure to win Emma Tregirls, pursued it with unremitting zeal, and saw no cause to abate his conviction that divine love ruled and must continue to rule the spirits of those who dwelt in Christ. He would gladly and joyfully have married Emma unredeemed; Emma, though she loved him, could not accept the fact that she needed redemption.
One day Drake received a note from Demelza asking him if he could spare a few hours to put in a new fireback she had bought for the library. ‘I have not seen you at all this month,’ she wrote. ‘We have been so Busy haymaking the Storm all but ruined one field but the rest was in and thanks be the ricks stood the strain. Ross is back from London looking so pale as if he had been living in a Vault but well and he has already made his mark upon the House of Commons. Though he denies it. Have you time to take a meal with us? You know four people who would like it among them your loving sister Demelza.’
The boy was waiting – it was Benjy Carter, now thirteen, with a scar on his face, though on the other cheek, not unlike that of the man he had been named after – so Drake said he would be over about four the following Wednesday. On the Wednesday, having left the forge in the care of Jack Trewinnard, the elder by half an hour, he walked to Nampara and saw to the fireback.
It was a simple fitting and one, Drake would have thought, any handyman could have managed; but he fixed it, and then drank tea with his sister in the old parlour which remained, in spite of alterations and extensions, the life centre of the house. Demelza was looking very well and specially pretty – she bloomed at regular intervals like a perennial flower – and the children clambered all over Drake for a while and then were gone. Ross was still up at the mine.
Drake said: ‘A fine pair of children you have, sister.’
‘Grufflers,’ said Demelza.
‘Please?’
‘Grufflers. That’s what Jud calls them.’
Drake smiled. ‘They have a betterer start than we had.’
‘Their father is a small matter different.’
‘And their mother.’
‘You never knew Mother, did you?’
‘Not so’s I recall. You was – you were always mother to the six of us.’
‘I knew her till I was eight. Then I – came in for her family. When you’re young like that you don’t think, you don’t compare, you don’t wonder. As you get older it’s different. Oft I’ve puzzled since why she ever wed Father. She was an orphan – I b’lieve she was a love-child – but her aunt brought her up on their farm. She used to send me to sleep when I was little talking about the ducks and the hens and the geese. She was pretty. At least I think so. Till she was dragged down with all us children and all that poverty. I never knew Father come home in the evening till he’d drunk what he’d made.’
‘Father ever good-looking, was he?’
‘Tis hard to say for sure, isn’t it? It’s hard to see when people are old. Was Dr Choake ever good-looking? Was Tholly Tregirls? Or Jud?’
Drake laughed. ‘I must go, sister. Thank ee for the tea. Will Jeremy go away to school soon?’
Demelza wrinkled her eyebrows at the thought. ‘I am trying to teach him what I know and then he can maybe have a tutor for a while. I shall never hold him in if he has the wish to go away, but at seven or eight it is savage for a boy to be torn from his home. Ross did not go till after his mother died, when he was turned ten.’
‘Of course,’ Drake said, ‘and Geoffrey Charles, he was eleven when they sent him to Harrow.’
This was such a sore subject that for a few moments neither spoke.
‘Here’s Ross now.’
Then there was pleasant talk for a space, while Ross refused fresh tea and gulped a cup from the old pot standing up and asked Drake to come to the mine one morning, for they had recently received a consignment of tools, screws, nails and wire from Bristol, and he suspected the quality was inferior but was not sure enough to be able to complain.
Drake said he would come next Monday at seven, and was edging his way towards the door, when Demelza said:
‘I believe Rosina Hoblyn is just leaving. D’you know her, Drake? She’s from Sawle and lives with her family. She does needlework and millinery for me.’
Drake hesitated. ‘I expect mebbe I seen her about.’
‘I’ve given her a stool – you know the old one, Ross, that was in the box bedroom. It will be useful for her at home, but as she is a little lame it is a long way to carry it.’ Demelza went to the door and called. ‘Rosina.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Rosina came to the door, needle in hand. When she saw the two men she looked surprised.
‘Are you ready to go? That must be near finished.’
‘Oh, it is. I was but adding a stitch or two, here and there, waiting for you to come see twas right and proper.’
‘D’you know my brother, Drake Carne? He’s going your way; he lives at St Ann’s, so it’ll not be out of his way at all, and he can carry the stool.’
Rosina said: ‘Oh, ma’am, I can manage that. Tis no great weight; and I’m used to fetching and carrying water and the like.’
‘Well,’ Demelza said, ‘Dra
ke is going that way and is about to leave. You do not mind, Drake?’
Drake shook his head.
‘Then go get your bonnet.’
The girl disappeared, and soon came back, carrying her workbasket and the stool. This was handed to Drake, who took it, and they set off, over the creaky wooden bridge and up the may-lined lane out of the valley. Ross and Demelza watched them go.
Ross said: ‘Is this another of your matrimonial experiments?’
Demelza narrowed her eyes. ‘That little limp stays with her in spite of all Dwight has been able to do. She’s a nice girl.’
‘A more flagrant contrivance I never saw.’
‘Oh, no it was not! I don’t think so . . . Since they both happened to be here at the same time . . .’
‘At your invitation.’
‘Ross, Drake needs a wife. I don’t want to see him dry up in his youth from disappointment and loneliness. I want to see him – in joy again, as he used to be. He’s my favourite brother.’
Ross poured himself another cup of tea. The teapot just filled his cup with its last dregs. ‘There’s something in what you say. But have a care: matchmakers often burn their fingers.’
‘I shall do no more. It is just – putting them together once or twice – that’s all.’
Ross swallowed his second cup. ‘Does Drake ever mention Geoffrey Charles when you see him?’
‘He mentioned him today. Why?’
‘He’ll see a big change in Geoffrey Charles if he comes home this summer. I took him out when I was in London. I didn’t tell you, did I, I took him to Vauxhall. It seemed a suitable thing to do.’
‘George would not like it.’
‘George can rot. We listened to music and, avoiding the harlots, sipped a glass of wine in the gardens; then we went into the Rotunda to admire the statuary. I took him back at seven. He has changed. He is very – grown up. Next term, he tells me, he will have Lord Aberconway as his fag.’
‘Well, that is what happens to boys isn’t it. They grow up very sudden. There’s nothing you can do about it. But I’m sorry if it isn’t a good change.’
‘Well, I’m not saying he’s disagreeable now – far from it! – he’s very good company. It’s just that these years at Harrow have turned him into a worldly-wise young man. Do you know more than anything what I felt as he walked beside me? That his father had been born over again. I knew Francis from childhood, of course, but it is in his teens that I remember him most vividly. Geoffrey Charles has become the living repeat of his father. And as I liked Francis – most of the time – so I like Geoffrey Charles. He’s witty – lively – perhaps a little unstable at the moment – but good company for all that.’
‘But not good company for Drake.’
‘I don’t think it will work between them any longer.’
II
On the way up the lane and then across the moorland towards Grambler nothing was yet working between Drake and Rosina. Rosina was wearing a yellow bonnet and a faded but clean yellow muslin dress with a white frilled hem, from under which small black boots appeared regularly as she strode beside her tall companion. Her limp was hardly noticeable on level ground. With the stool over his shoulder Drake was trying to pace himself to her speed. He was wearing green barragan trousers and a coarse shirt open at the throat, with a green neckerchief.
The silence had lasted such a long time that at last he forced himself to break it.
‘Going too fast for you, am I?’
‘No, no, tis just right.’
‘You’ve only to say.’
That ended conversation for a time.
Then, after moistening her lips experimentally once or twice, she said: ‘I go over most once a week now. Tis easier for Mistress Poldark if I d’go there to work than she sending it over. Mending and patching I do for her an’ all.’
‘I never seen my sister make much sewing,’ Drake said.
‘No. She d’say she’s not handy with a needle. But she have the ideas. Oft when I got there she have the idea and I make it up just as she want.’
‘Who learned you?’
‘Mostly myself.’ Rosina pushed a strand of hair out of her mouth. ‘Being laid up so long, see, you start to work with your hands. Then I borrowed a book on it from Mrs Odgers.’
‘You can read?’
‘Yes. Mother would bring home laundry from Trenwith, and often twas wrapped in newspaper. Mind, I don’t read easy.’
‘I could neither read nor write till I was past eighteen. Then my sister learned me.’
‘This sister?’
‘I’ve only the one. Several brothers.’
‘Sam is your brother, isn’t he? The preacher. I seen him about often. A rare good man.’
‘Are you a Methodist?’
‘No. I just go church Sundays.’
They had reached the outskirts of Grambler. Both knew that if they once walked through the village together and as far as Sawle the news would be everywhere that Drake Carne was courting at last, and it was to be Rosina Hoblyn.
‘Look,’ said Rosina. ‘I can manage from here. Reely. There’s no weight to the stool, is there.’
He hesitated, the busy wind pushing and thrusting at him.
‘No. Tis of no moment. That is if you don’t have the mind to wish otherwise.’
‘If you have not I have not,’ said Rosina.
III
So exercised in mind was the Reverend Osborne Whitworth in matters closely concerning himself that he did not open Nathaniel Pearce’s letter until two days after his return home. Of late Ossie had been finding excuses for refusing the old man’s invitations to whist because like as not when the day came Mr Pearce would be laid up with gout and have to cancel, or when he played be too absent-minded to return his partner’s lead. For a time Ossie had borne this because of the chance of meeting the notary’s influential clients, but now he felt he had met them all and knew them well enough to do without an intermediary. But when he did finally read the letter it was not after all an invitation to whist. Mr Pearce was ill and urgently wished to see him.
Ossie delayed another couple of days, and then being in Truro on other business, stopped outside a door bearing a wooden sign on which was printed, ‘Nat. G. Pearce. Notary and Commissioner for Oaths’. As he mounted the shaky stairs which seemed ready to collapse under the attack of worm, following the slatternly pimpled woman who had let him in, Ossie wrinkled his nose at the stale smell in the house, a smell which became more pronounced as he was shown into the bedroom. Used to smells associated with occasional and reluctant sick visiting, Ossie did not have a tender nose, but this was distinctly unpleasing.
The Notary and Commissioner for Oaths was sitting propped up in bed in a nightshirt and nightcap. His fat face with its terrace of chins was the colour of a mulberry just before it comes ripe. A coal fire burned in the grate and the window was tight shut.
‘Ah, Mr Whitworth, I had thought you had forgot me. Come in, my boy. You will regret to see me in this state. I regret it myself. Everyone regrets it. My daughter weeps tears nightly and says her prayers at my bedside. Eh? What’s that? Speak plain, please, this gouty condition has affected my hearing a little.’
‘I have been busy with parish affairs,’ shouted Ossie, not accepting the chair he was offered and standing with his back to the fire. ‘There is a great deal to be attended to, with Whitsunday but two days off, and matters in Sawle needing my attention. I have also had business in St Austell. In what way may I assist you?’
‘One thing,’ said Mr Pearce, ‘one thing about you, my boy, is that I can always hear what you say without your having to raise your voice. Eh? I suppose it’s you being a cleric, you’re used to preaching and the like. Well . . .’ He blinked his bloodshot eyes a couple of times. ‘Was it Thomas Nash who wrote a poem – “I am sick, I must die”? Well, I am sick Mr Whitworth, and doubt not at all that Dr Behenna is right in taking a deleterious view of my chances of recovery. I’m sixty-six, my boy; though
bless my soul it seems no time since I was your age. Life is like – like one of those hobby-horses you ride at a fair – round and round you go enjoying every moment and then the – then the music stops . . .’
Ossie lifted his coat tails so that with his hands behind his back each tail was draped over one arm. He observed that Mr Pearce was emotionally moved. Indeed tears trembled and fell on to the bed sheet. The old fool was clearly very sorry for himself.
‘Gout? That’s nothing. You told me once you’ve suffered from it for twenty years. A little fasting and you’ll be up and about again. Did you forswear any luxuries for Lent? Tell me that.’
‘The gout?’ said Mr Pearce. ‘That was what you said, wasn’t it? Ah, the gout I have had in the limbs for half of a lifetime; but now it has risen to my heart. There are times in the night – I tremble at the thought of them – when I stretch up – and up and up – hoping for the next breath. One of these days, one of these nights, my boy, and the next breath will not come.’
‘I wish I could help you,’ Ossie said coldly. ‘I’m sorry if you are so sick.’
Mr Pearce remembered his manners. ‘A glass of canary? It’s on the side there. Noblemen have seen fit to congratulate me on my choice of a canary. Help yourself, will you?’ Ossie did so. ‘No, alas, I may not drink it afore sundown, Behenna says; though what difference it will make in the end, the good God knows . . . And talking of the good God, Mr Whitworth, I’d remind you that I am in your parish. St Margaret’s extends to take in this corner of Truro, even though all the rest belongs to St Mary’s. Anyway, I could not bear the comforts of the sour Dr Halse.’
Ossie for the first time realized why he had been called. Offering solace to the sick and the bereaved was one of the duties of his office that he was least attracted to, but when driven into a corner he made some show of it. For the most part, since he had a good memory, this consisted of quotations from the Bible: obviously nothing that a mere parson could say could be so apt or so authoritative. But Mr Pearce was an educated man and clearly would not respond to the first quotation that came to mind.
The Angry Tide Page 5