The Black Moon (27 page)

The decision to let her return to, Trenwith with Mr and Mrs Jonathan Chynoweth and G
eoffrey Charles was taken late
one evening. Elizabeth said to George: Why not let her go? Perhaps she has been too close-confined here since Christmas. It cannot surely affect the match for a few weeks. After all Osborne has only been a widower si
nce the beginning of December.
And George had agreed. He did not want to drive the girl into some act of outright despair; absence from William Osborne, mi
ght make the heart grow fonder.
But in fact he was thinking more of Osborne's heart than the girl's.
He perceived that the bait of £3
000 was becoming no
less important because it could not yet be swallowed; and
he also saw that. Mr Whitworth's eyes followed the girl
about wherever she went. For his own part, Conan Godolphin,
Ossie's uncle, had been in the news at court, so George was
more than ever attached to the match. On neither side was
it likely to cool, or be allowed to cool by the other.

Back in Trenwith, away from the now oppressive presence
of George-and Elizabeth, Morwenna felt as if she were
starting a new life-or at least re-entering an old one.

Freedom to breathe, freedom to think again without thinking
of her
suitor, freedom to ride and walk and read and talk
for the moment she was able to banish the threat of a loveless
marriage, to banish the threat even of making a decision. Here
she wrote a long letter to her mother explaining everything
or nearly everything - and asking that she might come home for a week befor
e anything was finally decided.
She kept carefully to the grounds of Trenwith, avoiding any contact or thought of contact with a young man whom she knew she should not see again. Any decision about Osborne Whitworth must be made without regard to a chance friendship which had grown up here in the autumn months of last year-for she knew that, whatever else, that held no future for her. Geoffrey Charles, of course, as soon as he returned was clamant to go and seek out Drake; but she made one excuse after another to put him off, and then on the third day fate came to her aid, for the boy jumped off his pony and cut his ankle badly on a stone.

Thereafter she walked and rode alone for a space. She went about her ordinary business, teaching Geoffrey Charles, sitting reading to him, visiting Aunt Agatha
-
a little more often as a result of her meeting with Ross
-
seeing to her aunt and uncle, sitting alone after they had gone to bed wondering what she should do with her life and fearing a tap at the window, a low whistle in the dark.

It came on Sunday about the usual time. She saw him first walking up the drive-in broad daylight-without any kind of concealment, walking up in his Sunday clothes, his dark barragan trousers, his green. velvet jacket, his pink striped neckcloth. He came on, tall, shabby, lithe, walking straight up to the front door as if he had been invited..

Heart thumping, mouth dry, she met him at the door. She was anxious lest he should pull at the bell and draw a servant, now far more concerned that this visit should be a secret
than she had ever been before. He,
had come to the side door most of those
dark afternoons of November and December he had come at Geoffrey Charles's invitation; he was of :a low class but re
spectable; if Geoffrey Charles
chose to invite him there was really
no reason why he should not do so
his relationship with Demelza Poldark made him at once both more and less persona grata.
Any blame attaching
to her, Morwenna, in the friendship could charitably be put down to inexperience on her part.

Now it was no longer so. Osborne Whitworth's proposal had jolted her out of her young girl's day-dreams, her excuse for irresponsibility. In three months she had grown up.

Drake!'
she said, and cleared her throat. `We did not expect you tonight!'

He looked at her face eagerly, attentively, his own face alight with pleasure, but curious, searching, wanting to renew his recollection of her, only half taking in her unwelcoming expression. -

`Miss Morwenna
...'

`Have you come to see Geoffrey Charles?' she asked. `Unfortunately he has cut his ankle bad. I do not think-'

`I know,' he said. `They telled me. That's why I come.'

She knew that she should shut the doo
r on him but lacked the courage
to do it without a few words of excuse. Then a noise from the direction of the stables made her, aware again of how visible they were here, and she drew back and let him in, shut the big door, stood with her back against the door.

`Miss Morwenna, tis a brave sight to see ye. Is the boy abed? Can I go up?'

'I do not think . . .'

He stopped. `What do you not think?'

She stumbled over the words, not meeting his, gaze. `Of, course he would like to see you, but I know his mother would not approve . . . Since we went away . . .'

His own face had fallen. He was still watching her closely. `But she an't back yet.'

`No . . . no . . . Go on up.'

She followed him up the stairs, along the narrow dark passage to the turret room. When he saw who came in, Geoffrey Charles let out a whoop of delight and put his arms round Drake and gave him a great hug. So they sat for half an hour, talking, chattering,
laughing and forgetting the un
forgetta
ble, ignoring what could not be
ignored. In this corn
party Morwenna's studied calm; her controlled detachment did not, survive long. Soon she was laughing. and talking with the other two. The release, the relief, was the breath of life to her.

Geoffrey Charles showed Drake his new drawings, and Drake told them about how they were beginning to clear the land at Wheal Maiden to put up a new meeting house there. 'Ye know, by that chimney on the hill afore ye go down to Nampara proper.' Most of the time he appeared to be talking to Geoffrey Charles, but most of the time his eyes strayed to Morwenna's face, searching and searching. And
most of the time she kept her
eyes averted; but just once and again she glanced up, and then they looked at each other. And they looked at each other.

Talking of what had gone was good, but shadows crept on to the edges of their sentences as Geoffrey Charles made plans for the coming summer. Drake was to show him where the toads lived over at Marasanvose, so that he could bring some back with him and keep them in the stables. Drake must take them both again to the Abbey caves. Drake must show them his own cottage and the plans for the new library at Nampara. And he, Geoffrey Charles, would show Drake where the choughs nested on the cliff edge, also the rocks where samphire grew and was gathered by the village children, and where two had fallen to their deaths.

At length Drake rose to go. Geoffrey Charles's wound had been well bound by Dr Choake and he was not supposed to leave his room for another week so they could make no plans to meet out of doors, but rake promised he would come again on Sunday next at the same time. If Mr and Mrs Warleggan returned before then word would be sent to him not to come. Geoffrey Charles kept him another ten minutes and still called repeatedly after him as lie left the room,
'I'll
see you out,' Morwenna said.

So they went downstairs together and in silence. There had b
een flecks of snow in the wind
again today, and the sky was as grey as their thoughts. For all laughter had gone from them when they left the room. As they reached the hall Drake sai
d: `Can ee spare me a minute?'

She nodded and le
d the way through the
big parlour to the little sitting room beyond. It was the shabby little room where they
had met all through the winter,
and it had become almost a private sitting room for the girl and the boy since she came to the house. It was one on which George had not
yet turned his renovating attention: The dusty
curtains were of a
heavy blue velvet and pulled together on, rings gone rusty with the salt air. The old turkey carpet showed its threads by the door and in front of the fireplace. The furniture was the jetsam of other rooms, a table or a chair put here when it was replaced elsewhere. Yet it was comfort
able; a bright fire burned; a
newspaper lay open on the table beside ink and quill; pairs of stockings of Geoffrey Charles's hung over a chair back waiting to be darned; miniatures of Morwenna's father and mother stood on the mantelshelf.

He said: `You don't want for me to come here no longer?'

He was standing with his back to the door as if guarding it. She went across and crouched by the fire.

`That would be better for us both,' she said.

`Why? What's changed? What's changed ee, Morwenna?'

She stirred the fire with an iron poker too big for the grate. `Nothing has changed. It is just better that we should no longer meet.'

'And
-
and Geoffrey Charles? Am I to see naught of he?'

'I will ... explain to him that it is better this way. I think soon, perhaps, he will be going away to school, and then it will be easy to forget.'

`Twil
l not be easy fur me to forget!’

'No.' She nodded, still crouching, her back curved like a bow and as taut. `It will not be easy for you.,

`And you? For you, Morwenna. What 'bout that?'

'Oh,'
she said. `It will be easy for
me. I shall go away too.'

He came slowly over and stood by the mantelshelf, awkward, clumsy, his carefree, independent, boy's face constricted into new lines. `That edn true. Tell me it edn true.'

She stood up and moved away. Once before they had stood too close by a fire. `Of course it is true. This casual . . acquaintance should never have begun. I am afraid I allowed Geoffrey Charles to get out of hand.'

'Mebbe you allowed me to
-
to get out of hand.'

`Yes,' she said indistinctly, `Yes, I did. It was not at all proper. Please forgive me for having allowed it to happen, and now, go.'

There was a long silence between them. She thought, if he doesn'
t go, if he doesn't go soon ..’

He said: `Morwenna, I'll go if you'll look at me when you tell me.' He had come
up
behind her again.

She looked out on the courtyard of the house. The grass
was now cut, the edges tidy, the old, pump removed and a
modern-marble statue put in
its place, but she saw none of this. Another impediment was at present added, to her shortness of sight.

These months,' said D
rake. `These months I've thought of naught else. Working, eating,
praying, sleeping, ye've never been absent. You're everything in the world. Day and night. Sun and moon. Wi'out you tis nothing, nothing.'

`I think,' she said, `that you should go.'

`Tell me, then. Look at me and tell me to go.'

`I have told you.'

`But not lookin
g at me, so that I can see the
truth in your
eyes.

'The truth ... Oh, what is that? I am just saying that you should leave me.'

`And I cann't believe the words till I know what's in your heart.'

She half choked. `The heart,
Drake? Do you suppose that this has anything to do with the heart? That is not the way the world works. But because we are in the world of it -
we have to keep t
o its
its rules and laws. If you don't know that already, you must learn.'

`That's not what I'm waiting t'learn.'

`It is all I can tell you.'

`No ... That's not all, Morwenna. Just
-
just look at me.

Just show me your heart and tell me to go.'

She hesitated and then turned, her eyes blind with tears. `Don't g
o, Drake ... At least, not just
yet. Oh, Drake
please don't go.'

By the spring most of the larger houses were distributing cor
n, but, their own supplies were
scarcely more than enough for their own needs. Nor was it available to buy, even to people with the money to pay for it, for with the European ports closed against them, the ships could not import the
grain. In London the death rate
was higher than in any year since the Great Plague of 130 years ago. Many were ill in Sawle and Grambler of a strange digestive complaint that could have derived from an exclusive diet of underbaked
barley bread and,
weak tea. Typhus still spread:
A little but something seemed to hold its hand, as if waiting for the better weather.

Undeterred by all the distress and by other calls on their time, Sam and Drake Carne and a dozen other men,, in such little spare daylight as they had, had begun to clear
a site
at