The Twisted Sword (39 page)

He was about to leave the shelter of the mine when his temporarily blurred sight picked out the figure of another young man approaching. As tall as Jeremy, younger by three years, long-nosed and narrow-eyed and thin-shanked, dark of hair and skin, a lock showing over his brow from under his hat. His cloak and features were glistening from the latest shower.

'Well, Cousin Ross or I'll be damned! What nasty weather! Were you in the mine? Good fortune for you. I wasn't, as you observe. These clouds just dip the water out of the sea and empty it like a child with a bucket!'

His glinting, easy, charming smile. But just the wrong moment for Ross, remembering Jeremy.

'I thought you were back in Oxford.'

'Cambridge. No, we leave at the weekend. Ghastly journey, but Selina will not go by sea. A pertinent disadvantage to making one's home in Cornwall is the monstrous distance it is from everywhere else!' He got off his horse, glancing at Ross's gaunt, grim face. 'We wrote, of course, as soon as we heard.'

'Of course,' said Ross. 'Thank you. I'm sure Demelza replied.'

'I believe Clowance did. It is a sad loss for us all.'

'Thank you.'

Valentine had dismounted. Ross noticed the slightly bent leg.

'Are you walking back?'

'Yes. But I have to warn you, Demelza is from home. She is staying with Clowance for a few days.'

'It was about Clowance that I was come to ask. Or if not Clowance, then Stephen. I have heard he has had an accident.'

'Bad news travels fast.' As they began to walk downhill Ross told the young man what he knew. Valentine said: 'That is cursed luck. I have come to know Stephen over the last couple of years and find him an energetic, versatile feller. He will not take kindly to a long spell of invalidism.'

'Dr Enys is going tomorrow, so perhaps we shall have more information then.'

The small angry clouds marching in from the northwest had separated, like a military procession before an obstacle, and between them the sky above Nampara had become sea-green and shot through with sunshine. Valentine took off his hat and flapped it against his cloak, knocking away the moisture. He asked about the progress of Wheal Leisure and Wheal Grace, and spoke of his own new venture, Wheal Elizabeth, which by the beginning of next year was likely to need an engine.

'I had been going to seek Jeremy's advice on this. Alas...'

'When shall you get your degree?'

'Next spring. We hope to be permanently in residence at Place House from then on. May I ask you one or two questions?'

A change of tone.

'Questions? Of course. If I can answer them. Will you come in?'

'Let us walk down to the beach. Maybe the open air will be better for any confidences which may pass.'

They skirted Demelza's garden and came out on the rough ground leading to Nampara Beach, where the mallows and the thistles and the rough grass grew. The tide was out, and the expanse of sand stretched to the Dark Cliffs, smooth, pale brown, uninterrupted by rock or shelf or gully. The sand nearby was well pitted with footprints, but beyond a few hundred yards even they disappeared. In the distance a solitary figure moved along the high-water mark.

'Paul Daniel,' said Ross.

'What?'

'Paul Daniel. He shares this part of the beach with three others who go up and down the high-water mark seeing what's come in. When he finds something on the way out he does not pick it up but makes a double cross beside it in the sand. Woe betide anyone who makes off with it.'

Valentine laughed. 'We are both Cornish to the bone, you and I, Cousin Ross; yet I suspect you understand the villagers far better than I ever shall.'

'My early life was more earthy. Certainly until I left to go overseas in my early twenties I had never been further than Plymouth.'

'... I have been away so much.'

They leaned on the gate.

'What did you wish to ask me?'

The breeze was not interrupted for some time.

'You mentioned Dwight Enys just now. He attended my mother when my sister was born.'

'I believe so.'

'Did he attend her when I was born?'

'No, he was at sea - in the navy.'

'You know I was an eight-month child?'

'I have heard so.'

'Premature in all things. But you say you have heard so. Did you not know so, as you lived so near by?'

'My relationship with the Warleggan family has never been friendly. At that time it was at its worst.'

'Why?'

'Why what?'

'Why was it so bad just then?'

'Is this an examination I have to face?'

'If you please.'

Valentine was tapping on the gate with his long fingers. This young man had been a figure in Ross's thoughts, frequently forgotten and then painfully, poignantly central again, for more than twenty years. Yet in all that time they had never had a personal, intimate discussion. Their contact had been superficial. It seemed peculiarly maladroit that Elizabeth's son should tackle him in this way so soon after Jeremy's death. He had always tended to dislike the young man: his sardonic humour; his mischievous jokes; his great charm; his automatic assumption that all women would succumb to it. He had been particularly disagreeable at Geoffrey Charles's party, had brought Conan Whitworth uninvited and greatly upset Morwenna, had half-drunkenly smiled and sneered through the tense encounter following, when Ross and George had almost come to blows again. Rumour had it that he had married Selina Pope for her money and was already being openly unfaithful to her.

'What are you looking at?' Valentine asked.

'At you, Valentine, since you ask. At the time you were born, the natural antagonism between me and your father was at its height because I had not wished your mother to marry him. He must have known this.'

You were in love with my mother, were you not?'

'At one time.'

'At that time?'

'I held her in high esteem.'

Ross watched a parade of crows which were waddling in judicial procession towards the cliffs of Wheal Leisure as if about to open the assizes. Valentine said: 'Did you know - I suspect you did - that I was a constant bone of contention between my mother and father?'

'Later, yes.'

'So you must have known why.' When Ross did not answer Valentine said: 'Because he suspected I was not his son.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, indeed. All my childhood I lived under this cloud, though of course I did not know what it then was. After my mother died it lifted a lot. It was as if Ursula's birth - at seven months - had allayed his suspicions. After that he made an effort in his own dry dusty way to become an agreeable father. But by then the damage - so far as I was concerned - was done. I feared him and hated him. There was little he could do by then to change himself in my eyes. I ... I have always felt he was in some way responsible for my mother's death.'

'I do not think that could be. Your - George - was very attached to your mother; no doubt, as you say, in his own dry dusty way; but I believe it to have been genuine. Do not forget that it was twelve years before he remarried.'

Paul Daniel had moved out of sight. Ross felt a surge of fruitless anger at the tangle of love and hate and jealousy which had surrounded this young man's birth and distorted his childhood. Whose fault was it? His as much as anyone's. Elizabeth's too. And George's. The one blameless person was surely Valentine. Through the years, and always at a distance, Ross had watched the boy's progress to manhood. Yes, what he had seen and heard had been unfavourable. But too seldom had he faced the facts of his own responsibility, psychological or actual, for the situation as it had come about. This unsought meeting stung him emotionally, made him feel as if the central fact of his whole existence, the hub from which all the spokes of his later experience led away, lay in the few minutes of anger and lust and overpowering frustration from which Valentine could have been born. He put his hand on Valentine's arm, briefly. It was an uncharacteristic gesture.

'Why have you come to see me today?'

'I felt that before I left again I had to meet you, try to straighten out certain events in my own mind.'

'I do not think I can help.'

'That was what Dwight Enys said when I spoke to him a few days ago.'

'On this subject?'

'Related to this subject. . . Do you think my mother was unfaithful to George Warleggan after they were married?'

'Good God, no! You demean her memory.'

'I cannot help but speculate. It would explain his extraordinary changes of mood.'

'I'm sure that is not the explanation.'

'Do you then feel equally certain that my mother went with no man between the time her first husband died and the day of her remarriage?'

Ross had seen this question coming. "Your mother was an upright and honourable woman. I saw little of her, but I should think it highly unlikely.'

Valentine coughed dryly. 'Well, may I ask a final question, then. It is the one I came to ask, difficult as it may be to ask it. Is it possible that you could be my father?'

Ross found he was gripping the top of the gate too tightly. He slackened the grip and then flexed his fingers, looking at them. He knew how much might depend on his reply. And how necessary it was instantly to lie, without the least hesitation. Instantly. And yet how impossible it was to lie whatever the consequences.

'I have no intention of answering your question, Valentine.'

'You mean you can't or won't?'

'Both.'

Wheal Leisure was coaling. Black smoke rose and merged with the cloud drifting above it and began its journey of dispersal inland. Valentine said: 'Then it is a possibility?'

'God damn you, boy!' Ross stopped and swallowed, trying to contain his anger, aware that it was as much directed at himself as at his questioner. There was silence for a few moments. 'Damn you! ... Yes, it is a possibility.'

As Valentine was about to speak Ross went savagely on: 'But only a possibility. No one will ever know for certain. I do not think your mother ever knew for certain. It is a question that I cannot answer for I do not know the answer. Does that satisfy you?'

Valentine said thoughtfully: 'Yes, thank you. I think it does.'

It seemed as if, because of what had happened that moment, the world was moving in a different way, as if a few words uttered into the wind, spoken by a single voice, heard by one person alone, would prevent its ever being the same place again. Ross said: 'But let me warn you. Let me warn you of this, Valentine. If at any time you speak of this - in public or in private, claiming something or denying something on the strength of what I have said, there will be two men wanting to kill you. That is George Warleggan and myself. And I swear to you one of us will.'

Valentine leaned back against the gate in his usual cynical attitude, as if nothing was more important than that he should seem to care about nothing in the world. But his face was deeply flushed. Returning the gesture, he put a hand on Ross's arm.

'Understood,' he said, 'Cousin Ross.'

When Dwight reached Penryn the following morning Clowance opened the door and showed him into the tiny parlour, where a thick-set blond boy was standing hands in pockets.

'This is Jason Carrington, Stephen's nephew. He has just called to see Stephen.'

They shook hands. Clowance was rather untidy, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. After an awkward moment Jason said: 'Well, ma'am. I reckon I'd best be getting back. I'll be here tomorrow for sure.'

When he had gone Dwight said: 'I can see the relationship.'

'Yes ... He is very fond of Stephen.'

'Tell me how it all happened.'

'He was thrown from his horse in the woods below Cardew. Lady Harriet was with him. According to the groom they had not met above fifteen minutes before and were galloping towards Cardew. They came to an awkward fence and Stephen's horse fell. Harriet went for help and he was put in a farm cart so that he could lie flat and be brought home. Even though the distance was much greater than Cardew, they considered it better to bring him straight here.' Dwight thought there was a touch of bitterness in her tone.

'And now? He is conscious?'

'Oh yes. Has been since Thursday. But sometimes confused still.'

'Can he move his legs?'

'He can move his left but not his right. Dr Mather has put him in what he calls a spinal jacket and has bled him constantly. Mama is with him at the moment.'

'And Dr Mather knows I am coming?'

'We told him this morning. Of course he knows your name. He said he would try to be back by eleven, so that you can see Stephen together.'

Dwight took out his watch. It was only 10.15. 'Does Dr Mather live near? Perhaps I could call on him.'

'At Flushing. I suppose it's three or four miles.'

There was a step outside and Demelza came in. She was wearing a white muslin frock with a black sash, and Dwight thought her looks were already a little returning, almost in spite of herself. They kissed. Demelza said: 'He is thirsty, and I came down for more lemonade. 'Tis that good of you to come, Dwight. Caroline did not ride with you?'

'No. She thought it would make a crowd.'

After talking for a few minutes it was Demelza who said:

'Dr Mather is an understanding physician. I do not believe he can be too put about if you go up without him.'

Stephen looked a big man lying in the small trestle bed, much bigger than when Dwight had attended him for the peripneumonia. His face was heavy and flushed. Demelza put the lemonade on a side-table and said: 'I will wait downstairs.'

Stephen's body was bound up in splints, and he grunted as they turned him over on his side. Dwight's fingers travelled lightly over his back, pressing to see where there was pain. The right leg was swollen and useless, the skin dark and braised-looking. The left leg he could bring up to bend his knee. They turned him again on his back, and Clowance propped him up a few inches with a couple of pillows. Dwight took out a glass tube with a small bulb at one end, attached to a thin cane rod for strength. He put this under Stephen's arm. The clinical thermometer had been invented nearly two decades ago but was not in general use. When he withdrew it he saw the mercury well up the scale.

'I'm steering a fair course,' Stephen said. 'Full canvas soon. Rest for a day or two more. That's all. Gi' me the lemonade, Clowance.'

He could hold the glass but his hands were shaky. Dwight lifted his eyelids.

'You should mend,' he said, 'but it will be a slow process. You will need to possess patience. Dr Mather is following the right treatment.' He said to Clowance: 'I think the bruising on the right leg would be reduced with a liniment of camphor dissolved in oil of cloves. But do not cover with a flannel cloth, allow the air to reach it. And I will write a prescription for Peruvian bark. Then I must see Dr Mather.'

'They sent up from the Royal Standard last night,'

Stephen said, 'wishing me well. Eh? And Christopher Saverland, the Packet agent, sent his wishes. And others've called. It just shows.'

There were adverse signs here and Dwight wondered whether Mather had been alert to them - and if he had whether he had kept them to himself.

'There's some spinal damage,' he said as they went down the stairs, 'but the recovery of movement in the left leg is a good sign. The oedematous condition of the right leg will have to be watched. I believe bleeding will serve a useful purpose, though at the base of the spine, not on the leg itself.'

'How long will he be bedridden?' Clowance asked.

'It is impossible to know, my dear. Three months, if he is fortunate.'

'Three months!'

'It may be less. He is a very determined man. But first...'

'First?' said Demelza, studying the face of her old friend.

'Can he eat? He should be kept on an antiphlogistic regime. Lemonade is the ideal drink.'

'First?' said Demelza.

'There has been some internal bleeding. It may have already stopped.'

'And if it has not?'

'Let us hope it has. When are you returning home?'

The?' said Demelza. 'I don't know for certain sure. But I have to go Monday.'

'I think Mama should return home soon in any case,'

said Clowance. 'She has enough troubles of her own without bearing mine. And Jeremy's widow is coming to Nampara to stay.'

'Can you manage him on your own?'

'Jason will be here Monday to stay as long as I need him. He can help me with any of the heavy work of nursing.'

'After I have seen Dr Mather,' Dwight said, 'perhaps I might come back and take a bite to eat with you before setting off home?'

II

Aristide Mather said: 'There is a definite fracture of the vertebrae. Palsy was total when I saw him first. I made an incision yesterday in the right thigh and drew a quantity of blood.'

'Yes, I saw that.'

'The swelling was reduced and he seemed eased by it. I also raised the sacrum by means of a levator. That too you will have observed.'

'Did it cause him great pain?'

'He grunted a deal. He is not one, I think, oversensitive to pain.'

'The right thigh is the greatest concern,' Dwight said.

'Internal haemorrhaging?'

'Yes.'

'I thought of the femoral artery.'

'So did I. But if it had been ruptured he would have been dead by now

'Well, there's little we can do for that. There is no way of applying a tourniquet.'

Mather was about forty, short, brisk, red haired, with that capable confident air Dwight had always lacked.

'I should like to see him again, perhaps in a couple of days, if that would be agreeable to you.'

'Perfectly. Pray come when you wish.'

'Lady Poldark will, I think, be riding home on Monday. If you would send word by her - in a letter, I mean - that would keep me informed.'

'Certainly. If he is still alive by then.'

Dwight raised his eyebrows.

'Well every day is a day gained,' he said drily. As they reached the door Mather said: 'I read your article on malign and benign growths and the tubercles of phthisis in the Edinburgh Medical & Surgical Journal. I am honoured to meet the author.'

'Ah,' said Dwight, almost apologetically. 'That was last year. I have recently come upon one or two new points, which might slightly amend the argument. But thank you.'

'In the meantime rest assured I shall do all I can to bring this young friend of yours to a recovery. I have always found it as well to fear the worst - in my own mind - so that I am fully prepared to fight it.'

'It is a principle I follow myself,' said Dwight. 'So I am not likely to quarrel with it. I shall await your letter, Dr Mather.'

Ill

When he got home it was after six and Music had been waiting for him three hours. Dwight had eaten well at Clowance's, so, having satisfied Caroline's inquiries about Stephen, he was able to delay her thoughts on food until he had seen the young man.

Music said: "Tedn right fur me to bother ee, Surgeon, but her said yes, Surgeon, her promised me. Her promised.'

He had been crying, but that was a time ago. His light eyes, in which intelligence had only its intermittent leasehold, were dry enough now, prominent, but for him quite hard. He kept swallowing his Adam's apple as if he were trying to get rid of it.

'I'm sorry for you, Music. There is little I can do to help.'

'I d'know that. Thur be nothink nobody can do. But what can I do, Surgeon? It d'leave me out of the cold. Worked every hour on that thur cottage. She've been over him wi' me time an' time. 'Tedn as if I'd changed. Bain't no change in me. I 'aven't gone moonstruck nor mops an'

brooms, nor nothink. She've just broke 'er promise, that be the whole truth of it!'

Dwight said: 'You realize, I'm sure, that she believed herself to be pregnant and was going to marry you partly for the sake of the child. When it turned out all to be a mistake, the main reason for the marriage had been removed.'

'Please?'

'She is a virgin, Music, if you know what that means. She has never had proper intercourse with a man. She finds herself a girl again. Life for her is beginning afresh. She has total freedom of choice and at present prefers to choose no one - to be what she was before all this began, Katie Carter, a parlourmaid at Place House.'

'Please?'

Dwight's mouth turned in a grim smile. 'Come, my friend, do not step back so quickly. But do not think I don't sympathize with you. She agreed to marry you and--'

"Twas a promise!'

"Yes, it was, and she has broken it, and she should not have done. But she thinks everything has changed and that that releases her from her undertaking. I suppose she explained this to you?'

'She said this an' that. This an' that.'

'And did she not say she was sorry?'

'Oh aye. She said she was some sorry and tried to pertend we'd be friends. But that bain't the same thing

'tall.'

'I know. I know how disappointed you must be. And since I encouraged the match I must bear some responsibility. I am very sorry and disappointed this has happened. It is a lesson to me not to interfere in other people's lives.'

'Please?'

'But, Music, you must not allow this to be an excuse for back-sliding. You came to me for advice and help long before your involvement with Katie - or at least long before it became serious. And I have helped and advised you, haven't I?'

Music scratched his head.'... Ais.'

'So there is no excuse to allow all that to slip away again. You must not let your disappointment get the better of you and so return to become the young man you were three years ago. You are so much better. You are normal in nearly every way. You must remain so - even if it means leaving Place House and never seeing Katie again. You must be your own man. Understand?'

'Ais.'

'Now go home and tell yourself you are going to make the best of it. Will you promise me?'

With a large slack hand Music pushed the lank hair out of his eyes.

'Cann't promise to leave Place House.'

'I don't ask that. I only suggest it as a last resort. Promise you will keep up your present efforts to be a whole man.'

Music blinked. 'I be a whole man, Surgeon. That d'bring me no comfort.'

IV

When she rode home on Monday there was a conflict in Demelza's mind. The black gaping hole of Jeremy's death was still there in the very depths of her body, like a canker that ate away any sign of a return of her natural high spirited interest in life as soon as it stirred in her. She was much concerned about Stephen who, if no worse, was certainly no better, and she carried Dr Mather's letter for Dr Enys and was tempted to open it and see what his real opinion was. But aside from these troubles was an altogether less worthy worry, which she knew Ross would despise her for. Her daughter-in-law was coming to stay. And bringing her sister, whom she had scarcely met. The two weeks in Brussels, where Cuby and Jeremy had made her and the other three so very welcome, had passed off beautifully, and if it had not been for her worry about Ross - when in the last six months had she ever been free from worry? - she would have enjoyed herself. The very first time she had met Cuby - only last year - she had felt a certain affinity with and liking for the girl. This had been much enhanced in Brussels, and she had looked forward to seeing more of her whenever she could. After the loss of Jeremy she had fully endorsed Ross's suggestion that Cuby should come to live at Nampara at least until the baby was born.

But now that it came to the point, old feelings related to her humble birth stirred in her. Cuby had never been to Nampara, which, to face the truth, was only a large farmhouse with a fair range of outbuildings common to a farm, and only one room really, the library, to give it the claim to be called something better. Nampara Manor? It wouldn't do. It wouldn't be true. You don't elevate a thing by giving it a better name. She had never been to Caerhays, not even to see it from the outside; but Jeremy had spoken of it quite often - a great castle (even if an imitation one which they had not yet been able to afford to finish), set in a superb park, with footmen and grooms and all the panoply of aristocratic living. Demelza knew such houses. She knew them well. Tehidy, Tregothnan, Trelissick. She loved them and enjoyed the company of the people living in them. Bowood, where she had taken Clowance, was the greatest of them all. And she had stayed in Lansdowne House only a few weeks ago. She had mixed with the best. And she was now Lady Poldark. So why this worry?

Well, Cuby had never seen Nampara. It was an earthy place, with a down-to-earth master and an up-from-the-mines mistress. Cuby had been over last year to the party at Trenwith. Now that was a suitable house, belonging to Geoffrey Charles. Perhaps Cuby expected Nampara to be another Trenwith. If so, it would be a horrid come-down for her. It seemed that she had become reconciled with her family. Probably after a couple of weeks she would gratefully return to Caerhays and stay there. Even though her mother-in-law was Lady Poldark. And there was a sister coming. Demelza had seen her at the Trenwith party, along with a rather bumptious brother (with whom Cuby had recently been staying in London). Demelza seemed to remember that Jeremy had spoken well of the sister, though whether this was the same one remained to be seen.

With Jeremy none of this would have mattered. He would have jollied everything along, filled up the awkward pauses, adorned the house, in Cuby's eyes, with his presence. Now there was only Ross, who in his existing mood was more than ever inclined to disregard the niceties. So she left Penryn very early on Monday, accompanied by the same young sailor who had brought the last message, and was home by eleven. In her reply to Cuby she had invited them to dinner at three, and now wished she had not. There was little enough time to prepare, first, two bedrooms, and then a meal which, while not pretentious, must be pleasantly elegant and well chosen. All this, as she had instructed before she left, was in train, but much needed still to be done.

The parlour was untidy, the dining-room cheerless, the washing had to be taken in; and the whole house lacked flowers. To make matters worse a strong southeasterly wind was blowing always the most difficult to cope with - making windows rattle and doors bang. The tallest sandhills beyond Wheal Leisure were smoking as if they had volcanic properties. She flew about the house, even making a heart-hurting tidy up of Jeremy's bedroom, so that if Cuby wanted to see it it should look its best. She had given Clemency Clowance's room and Cuby the better of the two new rooms built above the library when that part of the house was altered in '96. This, if she eventually chose to stay, would be where she would bear her baby. It was the least used room in the house and quite the most genteel. Only five years ago they had bought new rosewood furniture, the bed had pink quilted satin hangings and furnishings, with window curtains to match, and there was a maroon turkey carpet.Into the garden to gather flowers; but they were sparse and looked tired. Cornish gardens were at their best in the spring: the light warm soil favoured all kinds of bulbs, roses, broom, lupins, wallflowers and flowering shrubs like lilac and veronica. But there was not enough humus to sustain the summer and autumn flowers at their best. (This year, of course, the hollyhocks had quite failed.) Dahlias were becoming all the rage and might have done well in this sandy soil, but Demelza could never grow them because of memories of Monk Adderley. She had gathered what to her looked a tattered bunch, had thrust them into a jug in the parlour, and hastened out to see if she could find something more, when Ross came into the garden by the gate leading to the sea.