The Black Moon (24 page)

. 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 anger 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 there off. `It could have happened but it did not! What is insuferable 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 pers
onal 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!'

`I would like to take George down a mine,' said Ross. `I wonder if he has ever been down one. Do you think you
could arrange it?'-

Sunday morning and each succeeding, Sunday from the
parish
sc
hoolroom of St Ann's. The price
for wheat was se
t at 14s a bushel and barley at
7s a bushel, ,this being about half the price they were fetching in Truro market. Distribution and sale were conducted in a most orderly fashion, the queue forming about two hours before the sale began. The sale was conducted by the parish overseers, but Caroline or one or othe
r of the main contributors
was there each week in case of dispute over price or quantity.

Having seen the scheme launched, Caroline at last went off to London; but not before she had held a meeting at her house for the French emigres. She invited both Ross and Demelza, but Demelza could not go, Jeremy having caught the prevailing influenza and being dangerous feverish. Demelza missed Dwight almost as much as Caroline did. The heavy
-
handed, stertorous Dr Choake with his liking for the knife always scared her, especially when directed towards one of her children. Jeremy hated him, ever since he had stripped him naked and lugged him down the bed by his ankles to get a better look at him. It was a long way from Dr Dwight Enys, who came and sat by the bed and quietly talked and sympathetically asked questions and then gently examined, and all
the time, with eyes that were weighing and assessing, was reaching a, conclusion and a diagnosis.

Nor was it only Demelza who missed him. Typhus first showed itself in. the Poor Houses which were situated between Grambler and Sawle, and there it stayed for a month or more; but everyone knew that, once fledged, it would move
and spread in its own ill time.
Smallpox of course was endemic
but on the increase.
Choake was shocked that Jeremy had not yet been inoculated and wanted to do it at once; but Demelza, who knew that the surgeon always cut the patient's arm to the bone, postponed the evil day and said she would consider it and privately prayed for the return of Dwight.

Drake heard twice from Geoffrey Charles, childish letters saying little, and almost, nothing of Morwenna. They told of Geoffrey Charles's doings and of Geoffrey Charles's undying affection for Drake and each promised an early return. The second letter said they had been further delayed because of Valentine's illness, but that he and Morwennaa would definitely be
back at Trenwith by March the 4
th.

On March the 5th it began to snow again.

Valentine's illness was a serious, one. As he approached his
first birthday,
his appetite fell of
f
and he was, troubled with, v
omiting and diarrhoea. Then he
began to sweat heavily in his sleep and kick off his blankets even on the colde
st of nights, and Polly Odgers was
kept awake continually covering him. When Dr Behenna found
the c
hild's bones to be very tender
and the wrists and ankles to be swollen, he recognized the onset of the
common and disabling disease.

Rickets was a frequent ailment of childhood, but one from which the Poldark fa
mily had been singularly free.
Aunt Agatha, when she heard of it in the le
tter from Elizabeth, pronounced that there was `poor blood on
both sides'. It was very worrying for the Warleggans, for to them Valentine was the crown prince, and it would be humiliating. if the child who was to inherit
all they had were to grow up de
formed or handicapped.

Daniel Behenna, riding the cobbled sickly streets of Truro like a demi-god,
pronouncing his judgments with
the confidence and certitude that all men needed, called each day to see his little patien
t, and very, shortly decided on
the best treatment, indeed the only treatment for such a case. At six in the evening
, which was Valentine's normal
bed-time; he called and opened a vein in both of Valentine's ears between the junctures. He mixed the blood thus obtained with twice the amount of aqua-vitae
-
the alchemic name for unrefined alcohol
-
and with this mixture lie bathed the neck, sides and chest of the child. Then he took a green ointment of his own preparation, heated it in a spoon and rubbed it briskly and very hot into the screaming boy's wrists and ankles where the bones, were at their most tender. This went on for ten nights, during which the child was not allowed to leave his bed or to have his night shift changed. At the end of that time he was fitted with spli
nts to both legs and both arms.

It was a remedy to which Valentine did not respond. He developed a high fever and at times seemed on the point of death. Another doctor was called, who endorsed the treatment so far given but t
hought more extensive bleeding
and a purge should now follow. Also a flannel wet with hot spirits should be applied regularly to
the child's feet. A week later
, the anxious parents called in Dr Pryce of Redruth, who being in fact more a mine surgeon than a general physician had had long experience with rachitic illness. He thought the boy should be released from his splints, kept quiet and warm, entertained in bed but restrained from standing and
given as much
warm, milk as he could
be persuaded to drunk; A few
days later recovery was on the way.

Through. all this, although both. parents were equally distracted,, George
, had continued to discharge
business and to further his own ideas for the future.

In one respect George had been quite wrong about Ossie Whitworth, Being of non-genteel birth himself, he had supposed that any conversation between himself and the young clergyman on the matter of a marriage settlement must necessarily be discreetly approached and discursively conducted. Not at all. Not for the first or indeed the last time, George learned that the higher you were born the more you were inclined to call a spade a spade.

George had been thinking of a dowry of £2000. When the figure at last came to be dropped into the conversation Ossie spurned it. He
had, he said, debts of over £10
00. To live at St Margaret's, Truro, in any style at all, meant looking for a sum which would enable him when it was invested to enjoy
an added
income of around £300 a year. If with Morwenna he received only what would amount to £1000 clear of debt he could do virtually nothing at all. Carefully put about, it might bring him £70 a year,
but that would scarcely double
his income from the living.

Plain speaking now clearly being the order of the day, George politely asked him what figure he had in mind. Osborne said not less than £6000. George was now beginning rather to dislike this conceited young man. Only the thought of his mother's connections kept George's tongue in check, however, this did not restrain him from pointing out the facts of the case as he saw them. In the first place, Morwenna was eighteen, the daughter of a dean, and
came of one of the very oldest
families in the country. Further, she was devout, healthy, of a good temper, particularly fond of motherless children - of whom Mr Whitworth would no doubt remember he had two - a good manager in the house and very comely to look at. In the second place he, Mr Warleggan, only acted towards her in loco parentis and had nothing to gain in promoting her welfare except a desire to please his wife and a genuine affection for a very good girl. There was no reason why he should lay ou
t any money at all, but he was
prepared to, give the girl a dowry of £2000. For that sum; which was no mean sum these days, there would be plenty of young men available. If Mr Whitworth felt that elsewhere, somewhere near at hand, he would find a pretty
young, lady with £6000 of her own who was prepared to link her destinies with a debt-ridden and almost penniless clergyman, then of course he was entirely free to seek her out.

But of, course,
George said, there was no hurry at all. Perhaps Mr Whitworth would care to go home and think it over.

This was in late January. Osborne went home and discussed it all, with his mother, as George knew he would. He left it ten days, as a matter of tactics, and then called again. He said he had given their talk the fullest consideration and he had returned only because his devotion to Morwenna
was unchanged. He felt that to obtain such a lovely
and loving wife he would accept £4000. This, after all was discharged, would only bring him in an income of about £200 a year, and could Mr Warleggan, or still more Mrs Warleggan, be, happy at the thought of their cousin, however happily married, subsisting on less? George said he too had had time to think the matter over and had of course discussed it with his wife. But, conditions being what they were, business bad, war problems rife, mining in the depths of depression and no settled future to be seen, he felt he could not increase his offer beyond £2500. To that he said he would add as a s
pecial concession £250 to cover
the repairs that he learned would be desirable at the vicarage.

The Reverend Osborne Whitworth went away again and returned towards the end of February. The bargaining was hard and bitter and eventually agreement was reached. Morwenna was to take with her £3000. Neither of the contestants was entirely unsatisfied. Ossie had an income of £100 a year from his mother, unmentioned in these negotiations. With this and his stipend and the new increment, his total income would now be upwards of £300, and with this he would become a man who could hold up his head in any company. And as for George, he had, brought another useful blood link into the pattern he was weaving.

The other party involved in all these discussions was so far entirely ignorant of their existence. To her it was not specially significant that the Rev. Mr Whitworth had called four times at the house since Christmas and that he had twice taken tea with her and Elizabeth. To Elizabeth was given the task of enlightening her.

It was not a privilege she welcomed. She felt that as George had made all the running, indeed, all the arrangements, he might just as well complete the operation. George thought
otherwise:
This part was a woman's task. All the difficult negot
iation was past; this had been his problem and
his responsibility. Now the pleasant outcome could be left to his wife. No woman, certainly no penniless girl, could be anything but overjoyed at the news that she was to be made an heiress and was to become the wife of the town's most eligible young clergyman.

Elizabeth put it off for two days, pleading Valentine's illness as an excuse; but a note from Ossie saying he hoped to attend upon them on the morrow, forced her hand. He could hardly be expected to come into a company where his bride-to-be did not yet know of his 'intentions.

It was evening before she could find the right opportunity, and even then she had to follow Morwenna into the tiny music room on the first floor and to shut the door behind her as if about to impart some dreadful secret.

It was clear from Morwenna's face in the flickering candlelight that the news was
indeed a shock to her, and not
as George predicted, a pleasant shock.

Taller than Elizabeth, she stood absolutely still in her dove grey velvet frock listening as if frozen, not a finger moving, only a muscle in her cheek beginning to twitch as Elizabeth went on with the story. She heard it all out and did not speak. Because of the silence which fell at the end of each sentence, Elizabeth found herself saying more than she had any real need
-
emphasizing the good looks of her future husband, the excellence of the match, the sudden change which would come over Morwenna's situation, how
- she was to be transformed from a governess into a prominent lady of the town, of George's excessive goodness and generosity in making such a match possible. So she went on until she saw Morwenna's tears begin to fall. Then she stopped. .