The Angry Tide (49 page)

Near Trenwith gates a gust of wind almost had pony and rider over, so Drake jumped off and ran beside Judith
up
the gravel drive. It seemed a long way, but his anxiety swamped fears of meeting the gamekeepers. He reached the front door. He hitched Judith to a post and pounded on the door. It was no time now for courtesy or finesse.

A man at length opened it, and held it open a bare three inches as the wind thrust to be in.

'Yes?'

'Is Mor-Is Mrs
...
Is - I came for Mrs Whitworth.'

The light showed
up
Drake's clothes. 'Go round to the back door.'

This door was closing. Drake put his foot in it. 'I've come to
see Mrs Whitworth! Miss Chynowe
th that was! She did say as she were coming here about noon time.' He hesitated. 'Be Mrs
Warleggan
here?

'You get round to the back, my man, where you belong, or else
...'

'Can I see Mrs Warleggan, please.'

A struggle developed in the doorway. A door beyond opened, and more light came out. 'What is it, Morrison?" 'A man, sur -'

The door went back and the wind screamed like mad children and rushed round the hall.

'Begging your pardon, Mr Warleggan,' said Drake, his face tight. 'I've no wish nor want to intrude, but I've heard that Morwenna's come up here and I've come for her.'

'
Carne
,' said George. 'You
are
trespassing on this property. The law of trespass is a severe one, and I am a magistrate. I give you three minutes to
be off my land.' He took out h
is watch. 'Then I'll send my gamekeepers after you.'

Elizabeth came out of the room behind him. Her face was stretched with controlled emotion. 'Oh, Drake is it?' she said. 'You must have -' 'Ma'am, I'm seeking Morwenna. If-' 'She's gone. Not ten minutes since.' A child was shouting upstairs and a door banged violently. 'Gone? Where? Where, ma'am?' 'She left. I thought she was -' 'On her own?' 'Yes, she would not stay -'

Drake said: ‘I
just come from my shop. I've not seen her on the way.'

'You have two minutes,' said George. 'And if you doubt my wife's word I shall rescind that, you insolent puppy. As for that dim-sighted slut you intend to marry, I'll
see
she never enters this house again. Nor will she have any connection with anyone here! D'you
understand!
If she comes on this land I'll have her turned off for a beggar!'

'Drake,' said Elizabeth. 'If you came by the drive
...
She may have taken the short cut.'

'Only ten minutes since?' He hesitated. 'Thank ee, ma'am.
Thank
ee, ma'am.'

Trembling with anger and anxiety, Drake turned again and went out. Before he was through the door it shut behind him, knocking him down the steps. He grabbed Judith and mounted her again, riding now into the teeth of the gale.

Elizabeth must be telling the truth. But even if she'd left, had she gone home? She might have wandered off somewhere. Even towards the cliffs. If George had treated her as he had treated him she would be desperately distraught. And the dark, and the low clouds, and this vile wind
...

Kicking at the ribs of the pony, he reached the gates and began the struggle home.

Now that the tide was ebbing there was less spume to contend with; but still bits of twigs and dust and other light refuse flew intermittently, getting in Judith's eyes and making her ever more nervous. Few people were about even though it was yet early evening. Few would stir in such weather. A cottage here and there in the sheltered declivities of the land showed a gleam of light. Past Trevaunancc the wind slackened.

Judith reared and nearly uns
eated him; it was a badger scuttl
ing

like an evil spirit across their path. Suppose Morwenna had fallen and he had missed her in the dark. He was superstitious about calling her name aloud as he rode. It might drive her away. She might not recognize his voice and cower in a ditch till he was past. Still worse, distressed by whatever had been said at Trenwith, she might have returned to the neurotic mood in which she had rejected him in April, and refuse to answer.

He had to
see
her first, to
see
so
mething moving. He prayed silentl
y, but altogether without words.

The moon was rising, so it was not properly dark. The wind boomed overhead as if in an echoing, hollow tunnel from which all life had long since fled. The few harried trees nodded their heads against
the
breaking clouds. The land crouched in ungainly lumps and shadows, unfamiliar in the half-dark.

Down the last hill, which was the sharpest of all, and he got from the pony again as they went down, slithering and slipping among the mud and the stones. Pally's Shop was still in darkness. A single light gleamed on the opposite hill. And then he saw her.

There was no doubt at all in his mind because she looked exactly as she had done when she first came last Thursday. Tall, mannish in her long cloak, with a shuffling walk. She was at the gate of the smithy.

He dropped the reins and ran on and calle
d her name, but it was too gentle
and the wind snatched at it and bore it away. '
Morwenna
!' he shouted.

She heard him this time and turned, but with the cloak over her hair it was too dark to see her face. 'Drake.'

He said: ‘I
been
searching
for you and
searching
for you everywhere.'

'Drake,' she said, and hesitated, and then went into his arms. He said: 'I just been to Trcnwith. They said you'd just left
...'
‘I
was looking for you. I thought you weren't home.' She was trembling
and out of breath, exhausted. ‘I
must've missed you. Ye must've come throug
h the wood.' ‘I
came through the wood.'

'Never fear, my love. Tis all past now. There's no need to worry no more.'

He carefully did not kiss her or hold her against her will. But he noted that at this moment she was clinging to him.

George found Elizabeth in her bedroom, whence she had gone after quieting Valentine and talking to him and admiring his painting. George moved around the bedroom for a few moments, picking up one or two things and looking at them and then setting them down.

He said casually: 'It is good to be in this house again. Having been absent so long one forgets its virtues.'

Elizabeth did not reply, but examined a tiny blemish on her face.

George said: 'A disagreeable ride and a disagreeable welcome. I fear I lost my temper downstairs.'

'There was nothing disagreeable until you made it so.'

He turned his head slowly, viewing her
with quiet hostility. 'You feel perfectl
y content that your cousin should be marrying
that
insolent, down-at-he
el Methodist?'

'Not happy, no,' said Elizabeth. 'But before this we attempted to guide her, and perhaps we guided her wrong. Now there is nothing to be done. She is a woman - no longer a girl - and a widow, without ties, except those that her mother-in-law has accepted. We cannot control her, and it is stupid not to admit the fact.'

'Stupid,' he said. 'I see. And is it not stupid of you to have invited her here?'

'I hardly expected you to arrive today.'

'And that excuses it?'

'I don't consider any excuse is necessary,' she said quietly. 'Ah, so that is it.' 'Yes
...
that is it.'

George recognized the steely sound in Elizabeth's voice which meant that she was willing for once to do battle. He realized that at this moment her anger was greater than his own. His had reached its peak downstairs when he had turned Morwenna out of the house, and was evaporating now into a sardonic ill-humour.

'You think it right that she should answer me in the way she did -that girl, that woman?

'Do you think it right to say what you did t
o her? Implying that Drake Carne
might have had some complicity in Osborne's death!'

'I said nothing of the sort. If she chose to take it that way
...'

'You know it was investigated and proved he was far away at the time.'

'Oh, proved
...
One can
prove anything. After all, Carne
, it seems, stands most to gain by the event.'

'Sometimes I cannot understand you, George. You seem
...
driven on by something.'

'Oh, yes, driven on. Sometimes I am driven on.'

She took up her brush and began to touch the sides of her hair with it, arranging and adjusting the fine strands.

He made an effort ‘I
hope you've been well.' But the words were cold.

'Quite well. Though scenes such as those downstairs make me feel no better.' 'I'm sorry.'
'Are
you?'

He analysed his thoughts. 'I am sorry that you upset yourself over what I said. I am not sorry to have turned that impudent creature out of the house, even if she is your cousin. Nor am I sorry to have sent her dishonest dandy-boy packing.'

'On the contrary,' Elizabeth said. 'I felt - degraded.'

George flushed. He was struck in his most vulnerable point. No Achilles could more obviously have possessed a heel through which his pride and confidence would escape.

'You have no
right
to say that!'

'You think not?'

'I
say
not.'

He hacked the curtain aside and looked out. The moon was making the night light, and in Elizabeth's room, which overlooked the small courtyard, the wind was not strong enough to create a draught through the leaded panes. One more effort at some sort of conciliation.

He said with a dry laugh: 'I have ridden here especially to see you, and we quarrel over two trivial p
eople who concern us very little
at all.'

'There is one who does concern us both.'

'Who is that?'

'Valentine.'

He let
the
curtain fall. Elizabeth was sitting at her dressing-table in a long flowing robe which hid the child she was bearing, and her slim shoulders and straight back seemed almost as girlish as when he had first seen them twenty years ago. The usual mixed emotions struggled within him when he looked at her. She was the only human being who could disturb him in this way.

'I have been - busy - scarce time to cat. I came here to
rest.
Valentine's prattle - annoys me
.'

'It is only the prattle of a normal boy. He was vastly upset tonight at being so dismissed.' George did not speak.

'Have you been in to see him since?' Elizabeth asked. 'No.'

'Then you should.'

George's neck stiffened all over again. Another reprimand. Ever since he came in this room everything she said had been a reprimand. As if
she
were the master. As if
hers
were the money, the mines, the bank, the properties, the membership of the House, the business connections! It was
insufferable
’
.
He could have struck her. He could have squeezed her neck between his fingers and silenced her in half a minute.

She turned and half smiled at him. 'You should, George.'

His feelings broke then, like a wave against the immutable rocks. And the immutability lay in his concern for this woman and what she thought of him.

'Elizabeth,' he said harshly. 'You know at times I am in torment.'

'Because of the thoughdess words of
another
child?' She was bringing the issue into the open.

'Possibly. Partly. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
...'

'So you think Geoffrey Charles in idleness points the truth, while all I have sworn to you before is false?'

He lowered his head like a goaded bull. 'One docs not
always
see these things in such precise terms. Let us say that at times I have been in torment; and then - then I speak my mind without concern for the courtesies of polite conversation. Then, no doubt, you reflect on the hazards of having married a blacksmith's son.'

'I did not say that.'

'You said as good as that!'

'No, I did
not.
And if you
are
in torment, George, how do you dunk I feel when you come into this house and ride roughshod over everyone and are violent to my cousin and cruel to our son?
Our
son, George!
Our
son! No, I do not think I have
married a blacksmith's son, I th
ink I have married a man who still carries a terrible weight upon his shoulders, a terrible evil weight of jealousy and suspicion that
nothing
and
nobody
can remove! Not anything I say! Not anything I have sworn! Not anything I may
do!
You will carry this black load for evermore and ruin the rest of our married life with it!
...
If there
is
to be more to our married life
...?'

George looked into the darkness of his own soul and knew that she spoke the truth. He collected his temper, struggled with it, strove to put it aside. 'Yes, well; we have had all this out before.' 'So I had thought!'

'It is not a pretty subject. Old Agatha laid a curse upon our marriage, I believe, and -'

'Agatha?' She turned swiftly.
'Aunt
Agatha? What has she to do with this?'

He brooded a moment. T had not intended ever to tell you
...'
'I think it is time you told mc, whatever there is to tell!' He still hesitated, plucking at his lip. 'No matter now.' 'Tell mc!'

'Well, the night she died she - when I went up to tell her she was only ninety-eight and not a centenarian as
she pretended - she turned on me
- I believe it was out of spite, out of revenge
...'

'What
did she say?'

'She said that Valentine was not my child.' Elizabeth stared
at
him, her face bitter. 'So
that
was where it all came from
...'
'Yes. Most of it. All of it, I suppose.'

'And you believed
her!
You believed a half-demented old woman?" 'She said you had not been married long enough to mc to bear
the
child to its full term.' 'Valentine was
premature.
I fell on the stairs!' 'So you said
...'

'So I
said!
You still think, then, in spite of
everything
I've told you, that I have been living a deliberate lie ever since Valentine was born? That I never
fell
down the stairs, that I made it all up, to pass off Valentine as your child when he was
not!
Did Aunt Agatha tell you all that too?'

'No. But that was clearly what she meant. Any why should she say anything of the sort? -'

'Because she
hated
you, George, that is why! She hated you just as much as you hated her! And how
could
she hate anyone more than you, when you had just ruined her precious birthday celebrations! She would say anything, anything that came into her head to damage you before she died.'

'I thought you were fond of her.'

'Of course I was!'

'Then why should she say something that might spoil your life just as much as mine?' 'Because hurting you was more important to her than anything else at that moment. It
must
have been! It was a
vile
trick of yours to ruin everything for her -'No trick! It was the truth!'

'Which no one need have known but for you! If you had come to
see
me first I would have besought you to say nothing about it. The celebration would have gone off, and everyone would have been happy, and in a few months Aunt Agatha would have passed peaceably away, content with her great triumph. But no! You had to go
up
and
see
her and tell her - you had to exact your cheap and petty revenge on her! So she tried to fight back, to hit you back with any weapon she had. And she could see that you were happy in your child; this was your great pride, that you had a
son,
a son to follow you and succeed to all your possessions. So she had to try and destroy
that.
I don't suppose it ever entered her head to consider me - or Valentine. Her one
aim was to revenge herself on you
!
...
And she did, didn't she? She succeeded!' Elizabeth laughed harshly. 'She succeeded more than she could ever have imagined! Ever since then the venom has been working in your veins, and it will go on working till the day you
the
! What a revenge, George, what a revenge she scored on you, all because of your mean little triumph! Every day you've lived since then has been destroyed for you by Aunt Agatha!'

The sweat was standing out on his face. 'God damn you, how dare you say anything like that to
me! Mean and petty, you call me
. Cheap and petty. I'll not suffer such insults!' He turned as if to walk out of the room. 'I sought to set things to rights about her age, that was all. Trust a Poldark to be cheating -'

'She didn't know it!'

'I suspect she did.' At the door he turned again, came back to the dressing-table. 'And what you said to mc tonight, Elizabeth - apart from such unforgivable insults - is totally untrue! It is not true that Agatha has poisoned my life ever since she died. Elizabeth, stop laughing!'

Elizabeth had her knuckles to her mouth, trying to control her laughter, the hysteria. She hiccuped, and coughed and laughed again, then retched.

'Are you ill?'

'I think,' she said, 'I'm going to faint.'

He came quickly behind her as she swayed, caught her shoulders, then round the waist. As she slipped out of the chair he gathered her, picked her
up
with a grunt, looked down at her clouded eyes, carried her to the bed. She lay back, colour returning slowly, her fine fair hair, a little brazen from its recent timings, coiled about her as it had fallen down, gleaming in the candlelight like a tarnished lake.

'What is it? What's the
matter?'
His anger was different now, deriving from alarm and not
ill-temper. But it sounded littl
e changed.

'It's nothing.'

'It must be something! What can I get you? I'll ring for Ellen.'

'No
...
The smelling-salts. The drawer
...'