In Cornwall the rime did not leave the trees for days, and after brief sun at the end of December a darkness settled over the county like a half twilight, with an endless east wind which pierced everything in its path. A man and a woman were frozen to death at St Ann’s – both far gone in drink trying to keep out the cold. A gravel pit on the Bodrugan estate was found to have ice on it fourteen inches thick; and even the Bodrugan chamber pot had a solid crust each morning. Sir John Trevaunance’s thermometer hanging on the wall of his house several nights showed nineteen degrees of frost. To his annoyance he found when the rain came that he could not measure it because the frost had burst his gauge. The ground, even where it was blown free of snow, was too hard to turn up or to permit anything to come through. As he complained bitterly later in the month, a man might bleed to death at the nose for want of nettletops to bruise for a styptic.
In Flanders a French army, ill-conditioned and half-clad and as covered in itch and vermin as its commander, General Pichegru, was suddenly galvanized by an order to advance across the frozen Maas – which bore even the weight of cannon – and outflanked and surprised the English and Dutch and drove them before it. As one river after another solidified before the advancing army the retreat became a rout, and in every town that opened its gates to the French there were crowds to greet them as friends and liberators. On the 20th January Amsterdam fell. The sea was dotted with escaping ships crammed with fugitives and their possessions; but the Dutch fleet, anchored near the island of Texel, left it too late to move and were frozen in, whereupon the French cavalry galloped across the icy wastes of the Zuider Zee, dragging their cannon behind them. Then might have taken place a battle unique in the history of the world, between mounted hussars and warships frozen in snow like encrusted fortresses. But the Dutch, perceiving their own disadvantage, gave up without a fight. By the end of the month French control of Holland was complete.
If the weather helped the French with their plans to conquer the Netherlands, it hindered George Warleggan in his plans to conquer Cornish society. On the 31st December a partial thaw briefly set in, bringing with it hail and water snow. Even the hardiest members of Cornish society, inured as they were to privations in the pursuit of pleasure, hesitated before a journey of several miles over roads which one of them described as having the consistency of hasty pudding. Those influential and superior people who had been invited to spend the night at Cardew and had not liked to refuse because of Elizabeth, now gratefully accepted the excuse and sent soaking messengers to present their apologies.
It was a disastrous evening. The band arrived in the forenoon, but one of the musicians slipped at the front door and so badly sprained his ankle that he could only take to a bed. Enormous quantities of food were being prepared by the resident servants, but the extra helpers who had been engaged did not turn up until after the guests, and some food and drink, which had been coming from outside, did not arrive at all. The house, normally in Elizabeth’s opinion so warm and draught-proof after Cusgarne and Trenwith, tonight seemed enormous and cold and echoing, partly because it was vulnerable to a southeast wind, partly because so much furniture had been moved and cleared away to make room for the hundred and twenty guests, partly because by midnight only thirty-two had turned up and were quite dwarfed by the preparations made to receive them. To George’s quiet fury, those thirty-two were the youngest and halest but least influential of his friends or sons of his friends, and the noise they made, though necessary in all that emptiness, jarred on him unbearably.
Nevertheless, having long guarded his looks and his tongue in public, he showed only an agreeable face; and for his own pride he would not vent his chagrin on Elizabeth or the servants. Instead he decided to turn the evening to whatever profit he could.
Among the younger people who had come tonight, three had been named by him in his talk of Morwenna’s future. The older ones anyway had been ruled out by Elizabeth’s clear opposition. On Ephraim Hick and Hugh Bodrugan he had accepted her veto; her objection to John Trevaunance, except on a score of age, was less easy to understand. But it eventually began to dawn on George that, whatever other pros and cons there could be for such a marriage, Elizabeth would not be happy to see her young cousin become Lady Trevaunance and living as Lady Trevaunance as a near neighbour. It was an objection which had not at first occurred to him but once made, in however oblique a form, was one of which he immediately saw the point.
In any event Sir John was not here tonight, and had not even sent an apology. Robert Bodrugan was here, and Frederick Treneglos, and Osborne Whitworth. Having less than he expected to occupy his time, George was more able to observe their behaviour to Morwenna and Morwenna’s to them. And the behaviour of one or two other young dogs who came sniffing around.
At his suggestion Elizabeth had had a new white frock made for Morwenna, and he found himself pleased with the result. Her dark brown hair and rather dark skin and large startled short-sighted brown eyes were well set off by the white satin. So was her figure. A man singularly untroubled in the ordinary way by sexual fancies, he could not prevent his eyes from dwelling upon the slim statuesqueness of her body and considering what it would look like unclothed.
It was a thought possibly not entirely absent from the eyes of the younger men in the room, and while the girl was too quiet and too shy ever to become the focus of attention, she did not lack for partners or interest. It seemed to George that she had bloomed overnight, and he wondered if possibly he had set his sights high enough in considering her matrimonial prospects, if perhaps with further grooming and careful training she might not catch the eye of someone still more elevated – a younger Boscawen, for example, or even a Mount Edgcumbe. It was a dizzy thought.
But probably a vain one. She had no money and, even if all else went well, there would be opposition from the families. The Boscawens in particular, though so wealthy themselves, were noted for their marriages to more money. George, though ready to further a favourable alliance, could not produce the sort of dowry that would turn Morwenna into an heiress.
So of the possible suitors there? Robert Bodrugan showed no interest at all and was lavishing attentions on the notorious Betty Devoran, Lord Devoran’s stocky-legged niece, who was meeting him more than halfway. Frederick Treneglos, after an initial sortie, had joined a noisy group of young men at the door who were agitating for group dances and round dances instead of the more formal dances on the programme. Only the Rev. William Osborne Whitworth was among the constant visitors to Morwenna’s corner. Not that personal preference was all, as George well knew. The proposition could be put to any of them as a practical deal, and it would be the subject of sober study as a suitable or unsuitable bargain. But a marked preference helped. And on the whole, of the available choices George somewhat favoured young Whitworth. First, he was a clergyman, and who better to marry a dean’s daughter? Second, he was a widower with two young children, whose need of a new wife must be urgent. (George noted that his recent bereavement had not prevented his appearance in a brilliant green cut-away coat and lemon yellow gloves.) Third, he was short of money. And fourth, his mother – who had not braved the weather tonight – was a Godolphin.
As for Morwenna, she saw this tall, loud-voiced, affected young clergyman as only a partner to step with on the floor and listen to afterward. She was enjoying the dance and the unexpected attentions of a number of young men. But it was a superficial enjoyment, as her whole existence in Truro had been superficial this Christmas time. It was as if her life was split horizontally, the upper surface part being concerned with the pleasant enough day-to-day routine of rising and eating and companioning Geoffrey Charles and ploughing through the snow to St Mary’s Church and drinking tea and working on a sampler and helping Elizabeth at a whist party and climbing the circling top stairs to bed in a tiny cold room on the top floor. Below that life, in the lower half of her life, were sick-sweet memories – of a boy’s dark eyes and too pale skin, of his rough-gentle hands on her shou
lders, of his lips, as unpractised and as full of promise as her own. Day by day, hour by hour, she lived the times again when they had met and what they had done and what they had said to each other.
It was an uneasy dream, for she knew it had no validity for her. Though better spoken than some, his thick Cornish accent and primitive sense of grammar belonged to the lower classes. His rough clothes, his rough mode of life, his lack of education, even his Methodism, marked him off as someone not to be considered as a suitable companion for her. She knew that her mother and sisters would be just as shocked as Elizabeth if they ever got to know that she was even meeting him, and that they would all feel she had betrayed her trust by permitting a friendship between him and Geoffrey Charles. That anything more could develop from it would be unthinkable. She often went cold at the fear of discovery. But deep under that, like some strong slow-moving current of the blood carrying all obstacles before it, was a heart-lurching knowledge that only what had happened between her and Drake was real. As real as illness, as real as health, as real as life and as real as death. All else was vanity.
So she slept and woke and slept and woke and performed her duties and lived her life; and when a good-looking young man led her out on the floor for a gavotte – whose steps she hardly knew – she accepted his attentions and his hand with a dazed, half-blind innocence. And when a big young man with a clerical collar but no other evidences of holy intent stood beside her chair for twenty minutes and boomed away about the war and the weather and the education of children she nodded and murmured, ‘indeed, yes,’ at suitable moments and looked at him with a mental as well as a physical myopia.
The New Year was duly celebrated, and dancing went on until two. Because of the weather conditions George offered open house to all who cared to stay the night, and all accepted. The idea of going out into a wet howling easterly gale with inches of mud and slush underfoot and crusty snowdrifts in ditches four feet deep was enough to deter the bravest. And the idea of sharing beds and bedrooms was exciting and had hopeful implications, most of which, mainly because of the excessive number of people about, were not realized. But no one ever quite knew what happened to Robert Bodrugan and Betty Devoran; and the youngest unmarried Teague girl, Joan, out without her mother for the first time, somehow escaped the surveillance of her sister, Ruth Treneglos, and had some very formative experiences with Nicholas, the eldest Cardew.
George went some way to be pleasant to Ossie Whitworth, and before he left invited him to call on them in the new year in Truro. Somehow in the course of the casual conversation the name of Miss Chynoweth happened to occur, and the Reverend Osborne, whose sensibilities were not entirely dulled by his conceit, raised an eyebrow. He knew better than to pursue the subject at this juncture, but the seed had been planted. In a few days’ time he decided he would call on the ladies and take tea. Then before matters proceeded any further, there would have to be an interview with Mr Warleggan. It would be a delicate interview in which the two men had to hint at subjects not fitted to the tenderer ears of women.
Chapter Four
Weekly Ross ploughed through the snow and ice to see Aunt Agatha. With no Caroline to offer him the protection of her presence – she had gone home on the 29th – he yet continued to go and come away without offering or receiving violence. Lacking George’s presence, the servants were intimidated by his; and in the main Tom Harry avoided him. (Harry, the nastier of the two, had followed his master to Truro.) So each week he climbed to the over crowded, noisome room and sat a half-hour with the old lady, listening to her complaints and trying to sift the real from the imaginary, stroking Smollett, feeding crumbs to her blackbird, joining her in anathemas on the weather and keeping Lucy Pipe on her mettle for fear of being discharged. So whenever he went, and he kept his visits to irregular times, the fire was roaring in the chimney, the bedlinen was clean, and Agatha and the room moderately tidy. Even the smell had become tolerable.
Usually he found the old lady pretty alert, but her moods greatly varied. Sometimes she was pathetic and on one occasion said tearfully to him: ‘Ross, ye know, I cann’t understand why I be still alive. I b’lieve God’s forgot all about me!’ But the very next visit she was furious at some neglect she had suffered and exclaimed, ‘Damn the woman! I tell ye, she did it deliberate. It might’ve killed me!’
Sickness began to sweep the district. There were many deaths, mainly among the children, and mainly from bronchial influenza and malnutrition. Jud Paynter, who had recently taken over the duties of gravedigger, complained the ground was so hard that he ‘had to teel ’em like taties’. One day at the end of January when Ross was up at the mine, Henshawe followed him in to the draughty little office which had been built near the engine house to accommodate what had originally been located in the library.
‘I think I should tell you, sur. Since you complained last time you was not told.’
‘About what?’
‘’Bout Wheel Leisure. You said last time as you’d heard rumour that the main lode was failing when you was in to Truro; and I didn’t tell you because—’
‘Yes, yes. I don’t complain. I see your difficulty and respect you for it.’
‘Well, yes, sur, that’s as maybe. But news gets out, and I don’t like for you to get news second hand and think, what didn’t Will Henshawe tell me ’bout that?’
‘So? What are you trying to tell me now? Has the lode been rediscovered?’
‘It was our quarterly meeting yesterday, held at Mingoose, for Mr Horace Treneglos is not hale enough to go out this weather.’ Henshawe bit nervously at his thumbnail. ‘Twas a poorly attended meeting, for Mr Pearce’s clerk represented Mrs Trenwith, and the Warleggans sent their lawyer Mr Tankard to speak for them.’
‘Well, I hope you still showed a profit.’
‘Yes, sur, we did, though twas only just the right side the ledger. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. Twas decided to close the mine down.’
Ross stood up. ‘What?’
Henshawe nodded, his eyes as cold as the day. ‘Warleggan’s man had come with his instructions, and that’s what he says and that’s what is decided.’
‘But what a monstrous thing! At this juncture, with such – But you say you are still in profit?’
‘Just. Tankard says that is the time to close. With the red copper exhausted we’d be hard set to show a profit through this year, and he says close before the loss begins. And he carried the day.’
‘But how? The Warleggans control only a half of the shares. You told me so yourself a few months back. Has there been some—’
‘Renfrew voted with them.’
‘Renfrew? But he . . .’
‘Is a mine chandler, sur. He depend at St Ann’s for all his trade with the Warleggan mines there. You could hardly blame him if he went along with them if they let him know twas expected of him. Mind, I’m not saying they did – but usually the mine chandlers be the last for voting to see a mine closed, seeing as they profit from the supply.’
‘Merciful God,’ Ross said. ‘I could wring their necks! This will mean throwing upon the parish sixty or seventy folk: thirty-five to forty families will be affected, among them some of my own friends. When we started Wheal Leisure most of my neighbours went to it, and I was glad to offer them that employment; so that, as you know, for Wheal Grace we took on mainly Sawle and Grambler men. Now I cannot turn them out to make room for those laid off at Leisure! Nor can I – nor can I suddenly double the work-force and the output at Grace just to accommodate them! One day I believe I will kill George!’
‘Do not say it, sur, even in idle anger,’ said Henshawe. ‘It is, we all know, the worst time possible for such a closure. But . . . it is the way of the world. Folk will be in greater distress – but they will bear it – as they always do. After all, no one’s a miner who don’t expect this may happen. Mines are always opening and closing. See how near we were at Grace last year. It could have happened the other way.’
Ross’s ang
er seemed too great to be contained within the small low office. His head, though twelve inches from the beams, looked as if it might push them off. ‘It could have happened but it did not! What is insufferable here is that Leisure was still solvent! Not a penny of anyone’s money was being lost. It is like an attempt to hit at me through these miners and village folk! It is as if the Warleggans had said: He’s prosperous now – so let him have starvation on his own doorstep – let pestilence and privation kill the women and children off all around him! We can’t destroy his own mine but we can destroy his neighbours!’
Henshawe was biting again at his thumbnail. ‘I had to tell you, sur, but I knew twould be a blow. I hoped you’d not take it so personal, for it may not be personal. After all, Mr Warleggan is living in this district now and I think he seek to be popular. So it cann’t be to his advantage to be thought to be cutting off the livelihood of all those folk. I don’t b’lieve tis personal to you. I think it is just – business.’
‘May such business rot in his throat.’
‘Aye and amen. But it is the new kind of business, sur. I seen it before, and no doubt we’ll see it again. We’ll all lose the blown-up value of our shares – the Warleggans just so much as any. Indeed, Mr Cary Warleggan, who but recent bought out Mr Pearce’s share, will stand to lose most, for all the rest of us have done handsome-handsome out of the money we put in. Mr Treneglos, myself, Mrs Trenwith, Mr Renfrew: all told it cost us less than £100 each, and we’ve got that back twenty-fold and more. Mr Pearce must be laughing to have made the same and to have sold his shares so recent . . . No, sur.’ Henshawe laid a hesitant hand – small and white for so large a man – on Ross’s sleeve. ‘No, sur, it be all justified in the name of business. I talked to Tankard after, and I believe he is telling truth. So long as Leisure produced red copper and showed a real profit, the Warleggans would have kept it going. So soon as the red copper ran away, and it became just a mine showing little profit and adding copper to the market, it was bad in their books. By just producing copper it was competing with their other three mines and forcing down the price they could go for the copper raised from them!’
The Black Moon Page 22