The Black Moon

by Winston Graham

  Ross drew a breath and slowly let it out. ‘Then so be it. You see . . . I do not have, personally, any big stake in this affair—’

  ‘Then drop it and let the law take its course—’

  ‘But Demelza does, and therefore I am reluctantly but deeply committed. I have been to see Drake Carne and I am convinced that he is speaking the truth when he says that Geoffrey Charles gave him the bible as a gift. Therefore, if this case went against him I would see it as a miscarriage of justice, deliberately engineered by you – and therefore an absolute declaration of the war I have been trying to avoid.’

  George turned over a page of the letter he had been writing and flipped the paper, but he did not speak.

  ‘If, therefore, the boy is found guilty and receives sentence you will be forcing me to redeem the promise made to you two years ago – one that I would rather not keep.’ Ross paused, wondering how little he could say to convey what he meant. All his instincts were against the explicit confrontation. He said briefly: ‘There is much unrest among the miners here.’

  ‘There has been unrest everywhere.’

  ‘So far it has been peaceable here. I think, I believe, that my influence in the district has helped to keep them peaceable. Not yours, George. Certainly not yours. Since Leisure closed you have become the most unpopular man in the district.’

  George rose. ‘Oh, get out of my house! This drama will not help anyone!’

  ‘No, wait. I have nearly finished. I intend no drama; but let me point out what I have told you once before: by coming to live here you have offered some hostages to fate. By almost everything you have done – the closing of the old paths, the fencing of the common ground, the destruction of the Meeting House, and the shutting of Wheal Leisure while it was still in profit – you have built up your unpopularity among the miners and the ordinary folk. Not, I know, among the gentry, whom you are most concerned to please. But among the rest. That unpopularity has no focusing point at present, no nucleus on which to build and grow. If this boy goes to prison, it will provide that nucleus.’

  George went to the window and adjusted the hang of the curtain. ‘Do not deceive yourself. That sort of mob violence is at an end in the county.’

  Ross tapped off some more mud on the carpet. ‘It has seldom been that, George, it has seldom been mob violence. The riots, if so you can call them, have so far been remarkably peaceable. When the men get what they came for they usually go home. But a mob is a peculiar thing to control, as you well know. These mobs have been made up of desperate and hungry men, not angry and drunken men. Have you ever seen pay day even at my small mine? It is difficult to prevent men with money in their pockets from flocking to the kiddleys and spending it. Usually they get drunk in an orderly fashion and the rowdiness is only temporary. But they could, if so incited, form easily into a drunken mob. Then the riot, if it came and was directed at a particular objective, could be violent and ugly.’

  ‘Threats?’ said George ‘Do you call these promises? They are plain threats of the ugliest kind, and you would not dare to carry them out. With your reputation, and with the country in so alarmed a state as to the preservation of law and order, you would hang for it!’

  ‘Well . . .’ Ross shrugged. ‘So it is a threat. But you have no witness, George. You sent your attorney away too soon. I should try to keep in the background in any rioting which occurred.’

  ‘And let others hang for you? There speaks the chivalrous leader of the poor!’

  ‘In this I am not a chivalrous leader of the poor. I told you. I am not prepared to be a gentleman. In this I am fighting you for the liberty of a foolish boy who by great misfortune happens to be my brother-in-law. That is all.’

  George turned and hunched his shoulders. ‘You are trying to intimidate me with an idle boast. You would never dare to do it. Never for a moment! Go home to your unlettered wife and occupy yourself with your petty mine and forget these delusions!’

  Ross got up too, but the men kept the distance of the room between them. ‘I cannot tell you, George, whether it is an idle boast until I try. It is six years since last I incited a mob. Then it was successful. Today it might fail. If it failed, then you would accomplish this – this plot to punish young Carne, and nothing worse would come to you than a few fences torn up and a few trees torn down. But if I succeeded then there might be loss of life among the people of this house as well as among the miners. At the end of one night, who knows? Nothing might be left of this splendid home but a few frightened animals and a burned-out shell.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘You cannot mean that seriously.’

  ‘I have not come here to joke.’

  ‘Then do it,’ George said whitely. ‘That is all. Just do it.’

  ‘I hope you will not force me to try.’

  Someone knocked at the door.

  ‘Wait,’ said George.

  Ross walked half across the room and leaned with his hands forward on the desk. ‘I do not suppose you will be frightened by these – promises of mine. That was not the object of them. But weigh the alternatives. Is it worth the risk to exact a petty vengeance? We are both, I think, men of some courage – not easily put down. But there is a difference between us. You have the steadier judgment and the more deliberate view of life. I am the gambler. If you think mine is an idle threat, then ignore it. But to ignore it will be the act of a gambler, not of the balanced person I believe you to be. And I, as a gambler, will feel compelled to cover my stake.’

  ‘Have you now done?’

  ‘Yes, I have now done.’

  ‘Then go.’

  ‘I hope for both our sakes that you’ll make the reasoned choice.’

  Tankard was at the door but Ross shouldered past him unheeding, along the corridor and down the stairs. A maidservant dodged back into a doorway; no one else about.

  Tregirls greeted him with his black-toothed smile. ‘Safe and sound, young Cap’n?’

  Ross grunted something unintelligible in reply. As they crunched away down the drive an accumulation of seagulls blew up from a near-by field, littering the sky with their white wings.

  He was wet with sweat as the first tension began to drain away. He wondered if George was the same. He did not know if he had done any good by his intervention, but he saw that he might well have done a great deal of harm. If George accepted the challenge, then he was now committed to take it up, with all its incalculable consequences. He knew that although Demelza badly wanted to save Drake, she would never have taken the risk that he was now taking, and if she knew it she would condemn it, and if he saw Drake sentenced and then attempted to fulfil his threats she would be utterly opposed to him.

  By making his threats, indeed, he might have played into George’s hands. If rioters ran amok and damaged or destroyed the house, George might think this a fair price to pay for having Ross Poldark in the dock once more. For, in fact, how could one lead rioters without betraying one’s own hand in it? A few men like this gaunt scarecrow now riding beside him would willingly run amok at his invitation, but could he, in spite of all disclaimers, really see them accused of riot in his place? And forewarned was forearmed. If Drake were sentenced and George expected reprisal he was not without support within his own estate. Half a dozen gamekeepers and servants, resolute and armed with guns, could do much to deter a mob.

  The thing was a desperate mess, which he, by this intervention, might have made much worse. It really now depended on his reading of George’s character. A cautious, cold man, rich and becoming richer, ambitious to be a real power in the county, ambitious to be popular among people of birth and taste, a man accustomed to use money for his own ends, to make it work for him and indeed to use it to pay off old scores. But not at all a man of violence. To him violence was out of date, something medieval, to be despised. In the modern world one accomplished one’s purposes by quite different means. He was not at all a coward but he had a great deal to lose by becoming embroiled in anything so
crude and dangerous. One hoped too that he was sufficiently sure of himself not to have to resist a threat, for fear of being thought afraid. One hoped.

  But until tomorrow at the earliest one would not know. In the meantime the emergency had to be dealt with in stages. If the charge were not dropped there was just a hope – however remote – of getting it dismissed. That depended on who turned up for the justices’ meeting tomorrow and how far they could be influenced by a good defence.

  It would be almost unprecedented to defend at all on any such grand scale, but after the fiasco of Jim Carter Ross did not intend to entrust anything to his own powers of persuasion. So a lawyer of some sort must be got, and the nearest was in Truro. Old Nat Pearce was too far gone to be of value, but Harris Pascoe would know if there was a good younger man coming on. He would have to be engaged. And he would have to be seen today.

  ‘Tholly,’ Ross said. ‘I must ride on from here. I’ll pay you for your time when next we meet.’

  ‘Sunday?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Twould be Sunday, you said.’

  ‘Oh . . . yes. I had forgot. It is coming so close.’

  Tregirls peered at him. ‘No change o’plans, I s’pose?’

  ‘I might postpone it until Monday to leave. It depends. In any event we do not expect to sail until the morning tide of Tuesday.’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ Tholly reined in his pony. ‘That’s what you said. The others will walk? Sooner them than me. I was never much of a walker, young Cap’n. Four legs is always better than two. But twill be good to feel a deck under me feet again. Two year is a long time.’

  Chapter Five

  Undisturbed by the events of the past week, untouched by the quarrels within the house and the tensions that existed without, one person at Trenwith sat as at the heart of a cyclonic wind making her own centripetal plans, dictating her needs, muttering over her personal frustrations, preparing her trousseau and planning her day. Aunt Agatha had never been married; now she was making special arrangements to meet her spectral bridegroom who was to come and crown her on August 10th with the laurel wreaths of a hundred years. To meet this occasion in the proper manner she needed just as much attention, just as much personal cosseting as any young bride. And of course she was not getting it.

  Lucy Pipe was useless – she could scarcely read, and her writing was worse; furthermore she had no authority in the house. She was a servant and messages sent by her were ignored. For a while the young Chynoweth girl had been helpful but now for two days nothing had been seen of her.

  The elder Chynoweths had no attention or concern for anyone but themselves, and anyway Agatha and Mrs Chynoweth had never got on even in the palmy days of twenty years ago.

  So – that left Elizabeth; and Elizabeth, though the best of a bad lot, was always busy, always edging away, always promising to come back.

  ‘If the materials be not here soon,’ she said, ‘there’ll be time for naught to be done. When will ye be sending next? That Trelask woman. Thinks she can pick and choose now, I suspicion. All these fashionable folk. No time for us old ones. Why, I mind when she was a little sempstress – would come out and mend your stockings for a penny or two. It won’t do. Nothing will come of it.’

  ‘I sent last week,’ Elizabeth shouted. ‘Last week! They have promised material by Monday. Mistress Trelask’s daughter will come with it!’

  ‘Eh? Why not?’

  ‘She will come with it! And she will stay until you have chosen and she will make it up here for the first fitting.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Agatha. ‘Ah, yes. But when?’

  ‘Afterwards she will return to Truro and the frock will be completed there. There is still plenty of time!’

  ‘Time. That’s what’s wrong. There be no time. August’ll be here and naught done. Where’s your – what’s her name – Wenna?’

  ‘Morwenna – is – not – well,’ Elizabeth shouted.

  ‘What’s amiss with her? And where be my topaz ring?’

  ‘Here. In this drawer! Where you put it!’

  ‘Oh? Yes, well. It won’t go on. I telled ye. My knuckles is swelled. It’s got to be stretched.’

  ‘That will be done. George will see to that.’

  ‘George will see to naught if he can help it,’ said Agatha, with sudden energy. She coughed and wiped the saliva from her mouth with the lace of her nightgown. ‘You ask Francis to see to it, me girl. He’ll see to it. I’ll leave ye this ring when I’m gone.’

  ‘I don’t want your ring,’ Elizabeth said, but she said it in a voice that would not carry. She was feeling very unwell today. The trouble with Morwenna, and more especially with Geoffrey Charles, had physically upset her, and she had seen her son go off to Cardew yesterday with a white angry face that for the first time had vividly reminded her of Francis. Geoffrey Charles and George had always agreed so well – George in the early days had been specially careful to make a friend of the boy – but this quarrel over the miner had caused a first deep rift between them. Of course at not quite eleven years old Geoffrey Charles was still very much under their influence and subject to their orders, but she hated to see the anger and rebellion in his eyes. It boded ill for the future. One had the unpleasant fear that the relationship between George and Francis, which had begun in close friendship and ended in the bitterest enmity, might be repeated in Francis’s son. It was deeply upsetting for Elizabeth, who saw any alienation between her son and her husband as leading to the eventual loss of her son’s company and perhaps even his love.

  She hated this man who had somehow ingratiated himself with Geoffrey Charles, and she hated Morwenna for having connived at it.

  ‘. . . and I want a new jet choker,’ Aunt Agatha was saying. ‘Th’old one’s all broke to jowds, and I want a real new one. You must send Truro for it . . . Here, where are ye going?’

  ‘I have to go! I have to see George! And I have to see how Morwenna is! I will come back!’ It was awful, shouting. It gave false emphasis to everything.

  ‘Give her polychrest and rhubarb. That’s what I was always give. Sets you right in no time. These girls – no stomach in ’em these days.’

  She was still talking as Elizabeth slid out and gratefully took a breath of the fresher air of the passage. And now for the other visit. Again a duty. No pleasure at all. But however foolishly Morwenna had misbehaved, Elizabeth had some continuing responsibility for her welfare too.

  She knocked but there was no answer, so she went in. Morwenna started up from the chair in which she had been sitting and dozing. She had not slept in the night and now the warm day had overcome her.

  ‘Please sit down,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Are you at all better?’

  ‘Thank you, Elizabeth. I – don’t really know. I think the – the fever has gone.’ Morwenna groped for her spectacles. Her cheeks still showed the evidences of dried tears.

  Elizabeth sat down and fingered the keys hanging from her waist. ‘I shall be writing today to your mother, asking her to come.’

  ‘I have written to her myself. But it is a pity that she has to come so far. You could have sent me home by coach.’

  ‘We thought it better that we should see her – and explain. After all, perhaps we also are in some measure to blame for all this. If Geoffrey Charles was placed in your charge, your mother similarly placed you in ours. We have to try to explain how we failed – how both failed.’

  ‘It cannot,’ said Morwenna, ‘explain why someone is to be accused of something he did not do!’

  It was rare to hear such passion in her voice. Elizabeth wondered at this young man who could awaken such loyalty, and of such different kind. (Perhaps in a sense the loyalty and the love were not so different: both Geoffrey Charles and Morwenna were in the throes of calf-love.)

  Elizabeth said: ‘You should try not to upset yourself. Nobody has been punished yet.’

  ‘But he has been arrested! Is that not punishment? And accused of theft! He is in jail awaiting sentence!’


  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘It—’ Morwenna stopped. ‘I heard it from someone in this house. Tell me it is not true!’

  Elizabeth put a hand to her aching head. ‘It will all be decided in a day or two. You must admit that the young man was grossly at fault coming here. He was deliberately trespassing—’

  ‘Geoffrey Charles invited him! He wrote asking him. What else could he do?’

  ‘Oh, do? He could have refused, knowing well that he had been forbidden the house. And as for taking the bible—’

  ‘He did not take it, cousin. Geoffrey Charles pressed it on him!’

  ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘No. I had gone out for a moment, but I had just given him a scarf to – to remember me by. When I came back he was holding both together. He did not say anything – he did not explain about the bible – we could not speak. We could not say anything to each other! My throat ached so that I could not swallow. I – I nodded to tell him the way was clear, and he – he just kissed me and left.’

  The house martins, sweeping up and down from the eaves, made smears of shadow across the window, twittering and shrilling in the afternoon sunshine.

  Elizabeth said: ‘My dear, I’m sorry. It has been a great misfortune for you.’

  ‘But why,’ Morwenna said, her voice almost gone again, ‘why, Elizabeth, do you not accept your son’s word? Is that not enough?’

  ‘Of course it will be taken into account when the time comes. Geoffrey Charles has been greatly at fault in all this.’

  ‘But he is not to appear! You have sent him away!’

  ‘He was carefully questioned before he left. Everything he said has been taken careful note of. Have no fear. Everything will be very fully gone into.’

  Shortly afterwards Elizabeth escaped and spent a half hour playing with Valentine who, apart from a slight curvature of one leg, had now quite recovered his health.

  The maternal instinct was strong in Elizabeth – but for various reasons her new son had taken longer to engage her deepest affections than her old. Geoffrey Charles had always been so close to her that to part with him at all had been agony at first and was scarcely better after two years of enduring it. Valentine had usurped his place without seizing on her love. But as he grew and he began to croon and talk and his dark eyes sparkled with mischief and he pulled at her frock and her hair and her face she began to feel some happiness and contentment at handling his little body and knowing he was hers.