The Black Moon (25 page)

'Does all our thought for you displease you, my dear?'

Morwenna choked, and put up the back of her hand to her eyes. The tears did not stop, they fell on her hand, through her fingers, dripped on her frock and thence to the floor. Elizabeth sat on the stool by the harpsichord and idly turned a piece of music, waiting for the initial distress to pass. It did not pass. Morwenna just stood there silently weeping.

`Come, my dear,' Elizabeth said, impatience creeping into her voice, not because she felt impatient but to hide the sympathy that she felt she should not show.

Morwenna said at last: 'I do not care for him; how can he care for me? We have exchanged as much intimate, talk to
gether as would
two whist players of an afternoo
n.. What can he know of me or I
of him?'

`He knows enough to wish to make, you his wife.'

`But I do not wish to be his wife! I do not wish to be anyone's wife as yet. Have I not pleased you? Are you
displeased with my behaviour as
a governess to Geoffrey Charles?'

Far from it. If we had been displeased with you, do you think Mr Warleggan would have made this tremendous gesture on your behalf?'

There was a long silence Morwenna looked round through her tears to find somewhere to sit down. She groped and discovered a chair, her hands trembling as she lowered herself upon the seat.

`You are
-
very generous, Elizabeth. So is he. But I had no idea, no notion.

'I appreciate it must have come as something of a, shock to you. But I hope, after you have reflected on it for a while, that you will not think it too unpleasant a shock. Osborne is, after all, in, holy orders. Your life with him will be all it was in your father's house but greatly improved as to your personal position. We shall still-'

'Does my mother know?' Morwenna asked wildly. 'I could not possibly accept without her permission! If she
..’

`I wrote to her yesterday, my dear. I do not think she can possibly be anything but delighted with such a match. For an elder daughter, of good birth, but without money-'

`I am sure my mother would be quite delighted with the match if she thought Mr Whitworth and I loved each other: Did you tell her that we loved each other?'

`I do not think I used those words, Morwenna, for that is something you must tell her yourself. I told her that an engagement between you and Mr Whitworth would be announced shortly; I told her of Mr Warleggan's great generosity towards you, and I told her
of Mr Whitworth's birth, youth
and good looks, and of his really excellent prospects in the church. No doubt you will be writing to her soon yourself. You do write weekly, don't you?'

`And if I tell her
- if when I write I tell her that I don't know Mr Whitworth, that I certainly don't love him and scarcely even like him; what will she say then? Will she still be delighted, Elizabeth? Will she still wish me to marry him?'

Elizabeth, played two or
three thoughtful notes on the
harpsichord:
It needed tuning.
No one ever
play
ed it. It had been bought by Mr
Nicholas Warleggan, to fur
nish the house, but no one had
ever, played it.

`My dear, pray think this over before you say anything more, certainly before you write to your mother. I think she would be greatly upset if having learned from me of your splendid match, she then he
ard from you that you were not
contented in it. She will wish you to be happy, as we all do; but she would be grievously disappointed if she thought you were finding fault with such a match because of a false and romantic idea of what a marriage ought to be.'

`Is it false to have a romantic idea of marriage, Elizabeth? Is it wrong to feel that there should be love in marriage? Tell me, Elizabeth, tell me about your first marriage? How old were you then-eighteen, nineteen? Did you not love Mr, Poldark? Did you not know him well and exchange loving confidences before ever the match was made? Or was it all arranged, as this has been arranged, without your consultation?'

Elizabeth waited until Morwenna had blown her nose and wiped her eyes. `Perhaps it is unfair to you, my dear, that we should try to put an old head on young shoulders. It is natural to expect romance. But it is not something on which a successful marriage can be based. In this you must accept the guidance of -'

`Did you? Did you not marry for love?'

Elizabeth raised a hand. `Very well. I will tell you, since you demand to know. I married for what I thought was love, and it did not last for a twelvemonth. Nay, not for one whole year. After that we tolerated each other, Perhaps it was no better and no worse than most other marriages. But the fact that we thought ourselves - in love with each other did not contribute one way or the other to the outcome. Now I have married Mr Warleggan, and although this was somewhat more matter-of-fact in origin, it is proving altogether more successful . . Is that what you wanted to know?'

`It is not what I
wanted to hear;' said Morwenna.

Elizabeth got up and put a hand on her young cousin's shoulder. `The French have a saying
-
is it the French? I don't know, I believe so
-
there is a saying that
-
you do not put a boiling kettle upon the fire. You put col
d water in the kettle and allow
it to warm. So with marriage. In marriage you and Osborne Whitworth may come to love each other far more than if you had loved each other at the start. One
expects less; one discovers m
ore, instead of demanding perfection we demand nothing and so often receive much.'

Morwenna wiped her eyes again and
then the backs of her hands. `
I do not know what to say, Elizabeth. It has - come as a great
shock,
a very great shock. Of course I am not unappreciative of your thought. I know you and Mr Warleggan mean it only in kindness. B
ut I - I cannot see myself . .
I can
not feel that this is my . . .
Indeed, the more I think of it-'

Elizabeth kissed her forehead, which was cold and clammy with shock. `Say nothing more now. Sleep on it. It will all look different in the morning. Indeed you may find yourself quite excited at the prospects that axe now open to you. I'm sure your mother will be. Such a match for you is more than in ordinary circumstances she can have hoped for.'

She left the girl' sitting alone with a single candle flickering in the small draughty
music room. She had tried all
along to keep her own voice detached, the conversation on a cool unemotional level. She felt she had succeeded, but it was not without cost to herself. she
would have liked to have talked
to the girl on her own terms, asked her what her feelings really were about her future husband, tried to console her and encourage her in quite a different way, not as an older relative but as another woman and a friend. But all along Elizabeth knew herself to be George's wife. She had had a task to carry out, and she had dutifully performed it. It would have been disloyal to George to have talked to the girl in any way that might have encouraged her to thoughts of disobedience.

Besides, if confidences had once begun, she knew she might sooner or later have found herself ranged against him.

The early snow of March melted and was succeeded by a cold thaw. Gales and sleet followed, with floods such as had Dot been equalled in the memory of man. The Severn burst its banks at Shrewsbury and carried away bridges, the Lee overflowed the Essex Flat, all the Fens were under water and many of the inland banks swept away, the Thames rushed through. London and submerged so much of it that inhabitants at Stratford and Bow lived in their upper rooms and used rowing boats in the streets. Vessels were wrecked all round the coasts, but this time unfortunately none cast itself upon the hospitable-shores of Grambler and Sawle.

In Holland the French were triumphant, and the British
government sent transports to the Weser to
evacuate the remnants of their
army,
an
army which,
let down
by
its
allies, its commissariat,
its medical supplies a
nd its own officers, had lost 6,000 dead in a
w
eek, mainly from typhus and the
cold. Frederick
William
of Prussia had already made peace with his adversaries, and there would be barely time to get the remnants of the Expeditionary Force home. The remaining countries of, northern and central Europe were preparing to make the best peace they could with the new dynamic that the French brought. Virtually the war was over. But Pitt said: `It matters little whether the disasters which have arisen are to be ascribed to the weakness of Generals, the intrigues of camps or the jealousies of Cabinets; the fact is that they exist, and that we must anew commence the salvation of Europe.'

One person who was happy amid these disasters, who came back from London by stages, the coach slithering and sliding and lurching among the thaws of early March, was Caroline. A first prisoner-o
f-war list had been received by
the Admiralty on which the name of Surgeon-Lieutenant Dwight Enys was officially recorded. What, however, was more to the point was a three-page letter in the same mail bag from Dwight Himself. Demelza was in her garden on the 11th of March, staring with particular pleasure at a crocus which had 'decided to rear its canary yellow head before the last frost was out of the ground, when Caroline arrived, and she knew at once by the look of her that she brought good news. Ross happened to be near by, and they went in out of the wind and read the letter together in the parlour.

`1st February, 1794/5

`Caroline, My Love,.

`I am writing this altogether unsure whether it will reach you and confident only that, now I have paper and pen, I must do so in the hope and prayer that our gaolers will be as good as their Word and let this letter pass.

`Where am I to begin? All these months I have so often composed letters to you in my heart, but, now the opportunity comes at last, I am tongue-tied. Let me say then first, that I am safe and not unwell, though our treatment has be
en far from what one would have
expected from a
civilized Nation. I
do
not even know how long you have
to wait before you were appraised of the fact that I was a prisoner. If you have written to me, I have received nothing.

All communication with the central government has, broken down, and internment: camps and prisons, it seems to me, are administered locally according to the whims of the Commandant.

`Well, that is, I suppose, one of the fortunes of war - or of this war. At least we have been kept alive, after a fashion. It seems like ten ti
mes ten months since our battle
with the French all through the afternoon and on all through that night with a great gale blowing and the sea roaring. You will, I am sure, have heard Enough of this Engagement; and my part in it you will be able to picture without the Necessity of lurid description. For more than three quarters of the time I was working, in a cleared space, between decks with my apprentice, Jackland, and by the light of a sharply swinging lantern. Such help as I could give to the wounded was so rough and ready as to be a nightmare of slap-dash surgery. Oftentimes I was thrown upon the patient or he upon me, so that the d
ripping knife I used as much en
dangered one as the other. But by two in the morning the water had rendered my makeshift hospital untenable, and all came on deck to await the end.

Yet it was another two hours before we struck. I do not remember if I told you that of our total complement of near 320 less than 50 were volunteers. About a half of the total were Pressed men, some with no previous sea experience at all; there were another 50 who were Debtors and minor Felons who had been given the choice between a prison sentence and serving at sea; about 25 foreigners, Dutch, Spanish, Scandinavian, who had been swept up by the gangs of Plymouth; and the same number of boys: urchins, orphans and the like. This crew for ten hours had fought a continuous battle with an enemy and with mountainous seas, and you would have th
ought that the prospect of Ship
wreck would have turned them into a panic-stricken rabble. Yet after we had struck the utmost calm and discipline reigned among the men. For nearly four more hours they worked at the construction of Rafts and life lines, and only six attempted to desert and were drowned. In those four hours, under the confident and firm hand of Lieutenant Williams, they ferried ashore first the wounded, then in gradual order and by a
strict rotation all the crew, and so at last t
he officers. I was fortunate to be sent
first with the wounded,
of whom two died on the beach,
but of the entire crew only three, aside from the
six, deserters; were lost to the sea:.