‘Time will help.’
‘Aye. So everyone d’say.’
‘Did she feel as much for you, Drake?’
‘Yes . . . there can be no doubting.’
‘Perhaps that makes it worse – I don’t know. I once went through something similar myself. There’s no hell worse to be in.’
‘And did ee come through it?’
Ross smiled. ‘I fell in love with your sister.’
The fight outside was continuing. The watchers were shouting encouragement.
‘That were a good thing t’appen.’ Drake shifted painfully in his bed. ‘That is, if it has been a good thing for you.’
‘The best. But it took a time – a long time – to realize it was not second best.’
‘I don’t b’lieve there can ever be aught in my life that’s not second best now.’
‘Your life is long – or should be now; now that you have stopped trying to lose it.’
‘I never rightly tried to lose it. But mebbe I didn’t care s’much as I did ought to have done.’
‘I was never so foolhardy as you. I tried drink. But I escaped too little so I abandoned the attempt.’
After a minute Drake said: ‘I wish I felt there were something to do wi’ my life! Even Sam, even thinking of God, don’t seem no longer t’elp.’
‘The more reason we should all talk it over together: your sister and I, and Sam if you wish it. In this case I believe four heads will be better than one.’
‘Thank ee . . . Cap’n Poldark.’
To the disappointment of the onlookers, the fighting couple had at last decided to separate, one nursing a bleeding nose, the other limping and puffing. A horsewoman and a groom clattered over the cobbles through the dispersing crowd and came to a stop at the portico below. It was still raining.
Ross said: ‘I do not think you will ever be quite like Sam – to whom Christ and his religion mean all. To me his way of life is not natural, yet I am compelled to a reluctant admiration of it.’
‘I wish I could be like he. Twould be no problem then to give up thoughts such as I have had—’
‘A moment,’ Ross said. ‘I fear I must leave you.’ He had seen the auburn hair flaunting wetly on the shoulders of the dismounted rider. ‘I believe Miss Caroline Penvenen has come to call . . .’
She came in, shaking herself like a tall wet butterfly. Her face was composed, and this morning quite beautiful.
‘Well, Captain Poldark, so you are back, I see.’ She took his face again and kissed him on the lips the way she had done before he left, to the disapproval of Mrs Stevens ushering her in. ‘As promised. And you have brought me back my erring doctor? Safe? Intact? All of a piece? And willing to fulfil the promises made before he left?’
‘Caroline . . . You were to have greeted him on Wednesday! We were coming over and would have been with you—’
‘And did you think I would be willing to sit in Killewarren stitching a sampler while everyone was living a high life in Falmouth? You misread my temperament. Where is he? Upstairs?’
‘I think in the parlour. But he has only just risen. You must have left early—’
‘At dawn—’
‘But I must warn you. In my letter I gave you some hint that he is as yet very frail—’
‘Verity,’ said Caroline, half up the stairs, as the other woman was half down. ‘How good to see you again! And in happier circumstances than last time—’
‘Caroline! We did not expect you!—’
‘So Ross says. But you should have. I have waited at home like a fading spinster too long already—’
‘Caroline . . . I have hardly warned him! He is only just from bed and I do not think he feels strong enough to—’
‘Not strong enough to see me? Does one need to be strong to confront me? Am I a scaly dragon to be shrunk away from until properly announced?’ She kissed Verity and smiled at her, her long hair leaving drips of water on the stair carpet. ‘So let us go up, shall we?’
There was no stopping her, so they went up. Dwight was standing defensively at the mantelpiece in front of the small fire that had been lighted against the damp. He turned and looked at her, skin and bone, a haggard, discoloured caricature of what he had once been. He was dressed in a snuff brown suit of Andrew Blamey’s which, because it was so much too broad, hung on him as if he were a clothes-rail. He was clean shaven and his hair cut, though it showed its streaks of grey. His face was a little less ghastly than when Ross had first seen it, but it was still paper white, blotchy with sore places and skull-like in its emaciation.
Caroline stood there a second, a gentle smile on her face but without visible change of expression.
‘Well, Dwight.’ She took off her hat, shook it once and dropped it on a chair. ‘So they have dragged you away and you have come to redeem your promises!’ She went across and kissed him on the sores on his lips.
‘Caroline!’ He tried to turn his head away.
She said: ‘Good Heaven, so I still have to make all the advancements! D’you know, my dear, I am never allowed to retain any maidenly modesty, for I have to run after you, to seek you out, and even to kiss you without receiving any embrace in return!’
He was looking at her as if unable to believe she was there, as if not crediting that she had not changed, grown older, lost any of her freshness or youth.
‘Caroline!’ he said again.
‘All this time,’ she said, ‘while you were hiding in that prison camp I have been wondering if I would ever be able to bring you to the point of fulfilling your promise. Time and again I have thought, no, he will never do it, I am doomed to be an old maid. Now, when at the last you are in England, I have to ride all morning through the pouring rain to catch you before you slip away again. Look at my habit, it will take a drying and ironing and perhaps will shrink from very saturation. And my hair.’ She twisted some of it in her fingers, and more drops fell on the floor. But now it was not only drops from her hair.
‘Caroline, my love, my own . . .’
‘Ah, hear that, Ross! So he has committed himself at last! I believe we shall have a wedding after all. If we do, it will be the biggest ever in Cornwall. We shall have to hire an Admiralty band and army buglers and the choirs of three churches, all to celebrate that Dr Enys has been caught at last! . . . You see, I am weeping with relief. I am to be saved from the horrors of a spinster’s life! But Dr Enys, you notice, is also weeping, and that, I know, is for his lost freedom.’
‘Caroline, please,’ Ross said, wiping his hand across his own eyes.
‘But I shall not desert you, Dwight,’ Caroline said, patting his arm. ‘I shall stay near by this house until you are fit to travel, and shall take special care to ensure that you do not slip away to sea. And when you are fit to travel, I shall sit beside you in a coach and link your arm so that you are not able to jump out. When shall we be married? Can you name the day to set my heart at rest?’
Dwight said indistinctly: ‘I am not fit – like this. You see, I am a little altered, my love.’
‘Yes, I observe, and so we must alter you back, mustn’t we? We must feed you on mutton broth and calves’ liver and raw eggs and canary wine. Then you will have the courage to take me for your lawful wife, just as we arranged in the good old days . . .’
Verity touched her cousin’s arm. ‘Come, Ross, let us leave them. I do believe they will not fall out . . .’
Dwight again said: ‘Caroline . . .’ but this time as if all the cracks in his heart were widening. ‘If you will still take me. But I shall need time . . .’
As Ross withdrew Caroline was still weakly talking. It was the one solutive. ‘I think it should be an October wedding, don’t you? Having seen old Agatha Poldark’s centenary out of the way, we must give the county time to recover before its next giddy round! Until then you must come home with me, even to the scandal of the neighbourhood. We will feed you up right away with the best things that we can find. You shall be cosseted and fed and allowed
rest and given the best of everything. And if you are not feeling better in a week or two we will send for the doctor . . .’
On the Tuesday Dwight at last took the old bandages from around Drake’s arm. There was some bleeding, especially from the larger back wound, but it was a superficial bleeding, and both wounds were already closing up. But on Wednesday Dwight himself was running a fever, so the ordered coach was delayed by a day.
As it happened, the postponement resulted in their hearing news of the Quiberon expedition. A naval cutter arrived at dawn on the Thursday morning. It was a sombre tale.
Extra supplies, and reinforcements of English soldiers from England, sent out under Lord Moira, had been met by the returning fleet of Admiral Warren. Only the day after the Sarzeau left, d’Hervilly had launched his offensive against the Republicans massed at Sainte Barbe. But the strong Chouan support promised as an assault from the rear, catching Hoche between two fires, had sputtered out in a few half-hearted sorties, and the Royalists had been left to attack an army twice as numerous as themselves, in good defensive positions and with far more cannon. The pick of the advancing troops had been destroyed by crossfire from hidden batteries, with something like half their number killed or wounded, and d’Hervilly himself hit and carried unconscious from the field. He had appointed no deputy, but in default of one de Sombreuil had managed to withdraw the remnants of his army back into Fort Penthièvre.
But shortly after, aided by turncoats within the walls who had told them the passwords, the Republicans had stormed the fort and put the remnants of the Royalist regiments to the sword. Retreating down the peninsula with such forces as he could muster, de Sombreuil had fought a rear-guard action all the way, while his men melted before the enemy, some changing sides, some surrendering, many taking to the small boats and paddling themselves out to the safety of the English fleet. D’Hervilly was already aboard the Anson, seriously wounded. The Comte de Puisaye had left for the Pomone the day before, on the pretext that he wished to confer with Admiral Warren, and had not returned. De Maresi had taken a chaloupe and with ten others had reached the Energetic. Almost all the other officers were captured or dead. De Sombreuil alone had held out with eleven hundred men in a mill called St Julien at the extreme end of the peninsula. With the sea on three sides – now too rough for rescue – and the enemy shelling them from the fourth, they had resisted until the last of their ammunition was spent. Then de Sombreuil had parleyed for the lives of his men; this had been granted with honour and he had surrendered.
But since then, news had reached the English that Hoche’s undertaking to spare the lives of those who surrendered had been overruled by the Convention under Tallien, and in a holocaust in a field outside Auray over seven hundred men, the flower of the French aristocracy, had been shot to death. Others – the more important – had been summarily executed on the promenade of the Garenne at Vannes – among them the handsome and brave Charles-Eugene-Gabriel, Vicomte de Sombreuil, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. Another of the executed men, the Bishop of Vol, standing beside de Sombreuil, had asked that his mitre should be removed so that he might say a prayer for them all before death. A guard had been about to do this, but de Sombreuil, his hands bound, had taken the mitre off with his teeth, and had declared in a loud voice that his assassins were not worthy to touch a man of God.
So, with a characteristically grand gesture, had died the one man among the French for whom Ross had come to have a deep and abiding affection. And in his purse was a ring. And sometime it must be delivered to Mlle de la Blache, who would now never live in the great château and help to recreate the family that the Revolution had destroyed.
This complete and utter disaster which had befallen the expedition seemed to Ross a shameful thing – he could not get it out of his mind. The road to hell was so often paved with good intentions; but these intentions should have been at least co-ordinated and given into the control of a true leader. All the heady talk throughout the preceding months, all the high courage and the preparations and the hopes; they had never really stood a chance. The British government was as much to blame as the French Royalists. Half measures, and again half measures. And four thousand British troops sailing off to support the landing when the landing had already failed.
His own small success was overshadowed by the greater tragedy, the greater failure. He could have done nothing to meet it if he had stayed behind; but somehow he felt personally culpable for having left. And he knew now, everyone must know now that the war would be bitter and long. With the failure at Quiberon had perished the last hope of a restoration of the monarchy and a reasonable and negotiated settlement. Against the Republicans there was no hope of an honourable peace. For England it was conquer or die.
Yet his own success was real. Overcoming odds whose length he was perhaps only realizing now it was over, he had fulfilled his main purpose in going with de Maresi and de Sombreuil. For the loss of Joe Nanfan, who had never married and who in a sense owed his life to Dwight, he had brought back his friend. It was an achievement that all his sombre regrets could not quite dissipate.
He left Dwight and Caroline at the gates of Killewarren and refused to go in. He felt they should go to their happiness, go to their future home, absolutely alone. It was the beginning of life for them. They needed no third person. Caroline, who had participated so closely in the preparatory stages, might regret just as much as he the failure of the Quiberon invasion, but for her all else was at present overwhelmed by personal happiness. They had several times tried again to thank him and always he had cut them short.
But his excuse that he wanted to be home was only an excuse in part. The five weeks he had been away seemed a year. Well, he did not know so much about seeking adventure the better to appreciate domestic life. He had had adventure enough at Quimper to last him a long time.
In the warmth of his present feelings – fluctuating though they might be between a sense of achievement and a sense of failure – he had thought a good deal about Drake, and wished he could do more for him. During a number of idle hours in Falmouth his mind had not been at all idle. Drake must be given some status, or some way of attaining status. The trouble was he was still so young. At nineteen, what could one do for a boy? Well, he, Ross, had money now. There ought to be something one could do. And George had said Morwenna’s marriage to that clerical fop Whitworth was off. So the girl would be returned to her mother in Bodmin. Would any other suitor come hurrying round for a while? It seemed improbable.
Well, if Morwenna was as much in love with Drake as he with her, the chances were she would be faithful to thoughts of him for a year or so.
So might not something in the end be arranged? Drake might only be a wheelwright, but he was brother-in-law to a Poldark. That counted for something. And class, birth, money were not such rigid structures in England as they once had been. The present Archbishop of Canterbury was the son of a glazier. It was this ability to allow a traffic between the classes which had so far saved England from the fate of France. Every man who rose from nothing to be a person of importance in his community was an additional safety valve in the body of society, allowing some of the compressed steam to escape.
And marriages were not always between equals. Thomas Coutts had married his brother’s serving maid, and she was now received by Prince Henry of Prussia; one of their daughters was married to Sir Francis Burdett, another affianced to the Earl of Guildford. The barriers in certain circumstances could fall. Why was the impoverished daughter of the late Dean of Bodmin so impossible of attainment by a talented tradesman with wealthy and wellborn relatives? The only real bar had been Morwenna’s relationship with the house of Warleggan. Let her only remove herself from Trenwith, and Drake from Nampara, and there seemed no real reason why they should not come together again in a year or two.
On this happy thought Ross came through Grambler village, past the last shack, where Jud and Prudie Paynter lived, and had just forded the Mellingey when he beheld a sma
ll boy racing towards him from the direction of the old Wheal Maiden mine. For a moment he did not recognize his four-year-old son until he saw a woman also running, coming out of the wind-battered fir trees, and also coming towards him.
He jumped off his horse and Jeremy leapt breathlessly into his arms, squealing his ravished delight. Then Demelza, smiling her most radiant smile; and he knew he was home.
They laughed and talked and chattered up the hill to where the new meeting house had now got the timbers of its roof on, and down the valley to their home, where the library almost had its second storey complete, and they were met at the door by the Gimletts and the Cobbledicks and Betsy Maria Martin and Ena Daniell, and all were waiting to welcome him like a conquering hero. (Another reward for danger, he thought? There you went again. Life was contrast: light made brighter by the shade. But he was content, and would be content for a long time now if the light would but shine.)
Jeremy, Demelza said, had been up by Wheal Maiden nearly all of yesterday, and she or Jane with him, so that nothing was done in the house all day, and at the end of it no father either. Ross apologized and explained the reasons. Over a late dinner he was hardly able to eat for talking, nor talk for eating; and Demelza, incessant in her questions, was also telling him that he had lost pounds in weight and looked as if he had been in a prison camp himself, and when could they go over and see Dwight and Caroline and when was the wedding to be? (God, thought Ross, it does work, and how unfairly; but I want her, not any other, not the most beautiful eighteen-year-old damsel born out of a sea-shell, not the most seductive houri of any sultan’s harem; I want her with her familiar gestures and her shining smile and her scarred knees, and I know she wants me in just that same way, and if there’s any happiness more complete than this I don’t know it and am not sure I even want it. So you’ve been away and risked your life, you damned fool, and this is your undeserved reward.)
And did he see, Demelza was asking, knowing his looks and returning them but wanting to keep the conversation casual for at least another hour, did he see that they all had an invitation to Trenwith House for next week for Aunt Agatha’s hundredth birthday – all four of them, and would he make an exception and go?
The Black Moon Page 43