The Four Swans (37 page)

`But supposing this not to be the case, and that the accomplice of your crime was in every way a partner of your Guilt, was it for you to take advantage of a thoughtless inconsiderate girl? Had it not better become you to have used your utmost endeavour to preserve her from the misery and infamy she might have been afterwards wise enough to have avoided? Do not a thousand considerations suggest to you how much it was your duty to have tried by every argument to reclaim her to a sense of Religion and Honour? Where, then, was the friend, the father, the brother? such might you to have been to her: where was the disciple, the minister, the missionary of the Holy Jesus?

`With what face can you recommend and enjoin to the flock of Christ committed to your charge virtues which your practice and example declare to be unnecessary? How can you propose to awaken the hopes or alarm the fears of others by considerations by which you, thus openly and palpably avow yourself, to be uninfluenced? … But I despair of saying anything on this dreadful subject which you have not already heard or which your own heart has not already suggested to you…

‘

Mr Whitworth stared at the sheet of paper much as he had a moment before stared at Rowella, as if the serpent were before him. Just after Easter the Archdeacon would be in Truro on his annual visitation, and Ossie had invited him to stay here ..

He got up and tore the sheet of paper furiously into little pieces and flung it into the fire.

V

He said: `I have called you in here to tell you of my decision. I am paying you the courtesy of acquainting you with my decision before I inform your sister. You will be returned to your mother. You have proved unsuitable to teach my daughters or to companion my wife. Ever since you arrived, but more particularly since Christmas, you have been over-presumptuous and malapert, given to brazenness of conversation and insolence of manner. ‘In your behaviour you have become uncontrollable, have flouted my advice, and have made yourself free and wanton in the neighbourhood. I can do no more with you and leave it to your poor mother to try to effect a change. I shall make arrangements for you to be sent home early next week.’

She stood therein her brown frock. It was a garment which was slimmer fitting than usual, and it just hinted at some of the curves which had enticed him. He hated her now - unto death.

She said: `And the baby?’

`What baby? I know nothing of any baby. What unfortunate brat you may have conceived as a result of your flaunting yourself about the town is entirely your own affair.’

She thought about it.

`I shall accuse you, Vicar.’

`No one will believe you. It is my word against yours.‘_

`Five hundred and fifty pounds is the lowest I could get Mr Solway to accept.’

“You shall have nothing now l’

‘I am a dean’s daughter. People’ will listen to me. I will even write to the Bishop.’

`The wild accusations of a hysterical child.’

`You have a scar on your belly, Vicar. It was made by a boy you were tormenting at school. He took a knife to you. You were lucky not to be more serious hurt.’

Ossie licked his lips. `I spoke of it once to you in jest. Anyone could know.’

`And a mole on your left buttock. Of a peculiar shape. I will draw it. for the Bishops

Mr Whitworth did not reply.

Rowella said: ‘ `If you will give me a pen I will draw it for you. It must be difficult for you to see. It is black and slightly raised from the skin. If you will give me a pen…’

`I will see you dead first,’ Osborne whispered. `I will see you dead before I pay a penny; to you or to that snivelling yard of pump-water you hoped to marry! That I should have been brought to the pass where an insolent slut of fifteen presumes - presumes to dictate to me what I shall and shall not do! Where you came from, how your father bred you, it is beyond my capacity to imagine. Get out of my life! Once and for all, get out of my life!

‘They settled for five hundred pounds.

I.

A week after these events a French raiding force of four vessels, manned by the riff-raff of their armies and under American command, landed by surprise at Ilfracombe and Fishguard and made a brief nuisance of itself before retiring and sailing hurriedly back to France. But the rumour spread that Bristol and the west had been invaded and that large areas of territory were in enemy hands. Many country people had already withdrawn their money from banks and hoarded their gold where they felt it safer against invasion. Now a run, began throughout’ the country, and every bank was besieged with customers trying to get their money out before it was too late. The country, they thought, was going bankrupt, and to justify all these fears .the Bank of, England suspended payments.

‘The situation was very tense in Truro, where all three banks were under pressure, the question being whether they could all weather the storm or whether one, or even two, must close their doors. In the end it became clear that the two larger and newer banks were coming through best, chiefly because of the known wealth and industrial strength of the Warleggans and because of the great wealth and prestige of Lord de Dunstanville. The third and oldest and smallest, still known as Pascoe’s Bank in spite of its enlarged name, teetered on the brink of disaster. It seemed, Harris Pascoe said, as if, far from aiding him, or even standing neutral, the other two banks were using their strength to assail his credit in order to ensure their own salvation. But after several days of mounting tension Lord de Dunstanville arrived post from London, there was a switch of policy, and new credits became available to Pascoe’s Bank which just saved the day.

Ross was in Truro the day after the worst was over. He found Harris Pascoe looking thinner and greyer, as if two years rather than two months had passed since their last meeting.

For a time Pascoe seemed to want to talk not about his personal peril but about the more general one, as if it eased his mind to see it all in perspective, helped him to defuse his own emotions.

`Pitt has been walking a tightrope for years. The strain of the war upon the whole economy … A crisis was bound to come.’

`Which has been set off by a handful of Frenchmen who landed and burned a farm house and ran away or surrendered at the first sign of resistance! It wouldn’t have happened in Elizabeth’s time!’

‘That was the spark. Another might have done as well. It’s a crisis of nerves, Ross. Except for the last one, a succession of bad harvests … we’ve had to buy overseas. Two and a half million pounds spent on foreign grain last year alone. Then the cost of maintaining our forces and bolstering up our allies - six million pounds lent to Austria in one year - and of supporting Ireland too. All this has been financed by borrowing; and rising prices and falling output have gone hand in hand. Everything is more expensive to buy and there are fewer people with the money to buy it. Even relief to the poor has become vastly more expensive because there are more poor to be cared for. Also - and this is a wry reflection - while French currency ran riot foreign investment in England rose. Now, with the new type of government there and with the success of their arms, the franc is at last beginning to look more stable and the flow of gold into England is drying up.’

`So what is to happen?’

`Now? We shall struggle along as we are for a while. The Bank of England has been empowered to issue Łl and Ł2 paper notes as legal tender. They have also stated that they have more than enough assets to meet all claims on them. It will steady the country. But will people in general be c-content with paper when they have been used to gold? Certainly not in the provinces. Certainly not here

`The worst is over in Truro?’

`So far as one can reasonably s-see. It was fortunate that we had been so cautious in our extension of credit and in our discounting of bills, for, as you know, no bank can hope to meet its liabilities if called upon to do so at short notice. It will, of course, mean a heavy loss for us, for we have been compelled to sell valuable stock at much below its true worth in order to remain solvent.’

`A year or two ago everyone was expanding, money was easy, interest rates low…’

`Conditions change, the grey-heads weigh up the situation and reach quiet conclusions of their own. And then who is it, who, among them first begins to narrow his commitments, to shorten the credit he gives, to draw in his resources, to call in money already owing and finally to turn his paper wealth back into gold? No one knows, but it happens, and one affects another, and another another; and then the slide begins. And once it has begun no one knows where it will stop.’

`George Warleggan is in Truro?’

`He arrived back a week or so before the panic began. He returned to London by this morning’s coach.’

‘And Elizabeth?’

`I believe she remained in London’

`Basset’s bank was helpful to you?’

`Right at the end. Else we might have gone, for a mere five thousand pound.’

`So he clearly owes you no ill-will for your voting defection.’ Pascoe met Ross’s look.

`I had thought the opposite until near the very end.’

II

The rest of the spring slid by against a background of crisis and counter-crisis. The gloom of a nation bankrupt of money and ideas was lit briefly by news of a great sea victory won against the Spanish by Admiral Jervis, who destroyed an enemy fleet twice his own size and ended, for a sensible time, the awful danger of a union between the Spanish and French navies. Aside from Jervis and the other admirals a new name was being talked of. It seemed that Commodore Nelson’s actions had been conspicuous for the most brilliant and unorthodox sea tactics and the most daredevil personal bravery. His name was emerging from among a group of brilliant naval officers, just as Buonaparte’s had from among the French generals.

But relief at news of this battle was soon tempered by terrible tidings of some sort of a mutiny in the British fleet at Portsmouth. True it was a rather respectful rebellion against unbearable conditions; and some of the demands were met and the meeting collapsed without much hurt; but there were mutterings in other ports, and the confidence of the nation took another knock.

Ross grew more and more restless, as if he felt that living a comfortable squireen’s life in a west-country backwater was no place for a man who could bear arms. Training with the Volunteers was no

real substitute, for this force seemed more and more to him a, refuge for the inefficient and the halfhearted. Demelza would have been glad to keep the weekly newspaper away from him had she known how. He spent ever more time meeting with his fellow landowners to concert means of area defence. Yet they seemed often to be more concerned with taking measures to guard against subversion from within.

In late February Miss Rowella Chynoweth was wed to Mr Arthur Solway at the Church of St Margaret, Truro., The vicar of St Mary’s performed’ the ceremony. The vicar of St Margaret’s, gave the bride away. He had never in his life been so glad to give anything away as his sister-in-law. The ceremony was a nightmare to him, especially that question put by his colleague, to the small congregation: `Therefore if any man can show any just cause why they may not, be lawfully joined together in Matrimony ye are to confess it…’ It deeply angered him to go through this farce in his own church when the girl should by rights have been hounded out of the town in disgrace as a fallen woman.

Mrs Chynoweth did not attend. She had been profoundly shocked by the letter Rowella had sent her, and almost more offended by the social, status of the man named as father, of the coming child. She had never been able to understand her youngest daughter. Rowella was the nearest in character to Amelia Chynoweth’s own father, the notorious Trelawny Tregellas who had spent all his life floating companies which never survived the first wave. Yet little Rowella, one suspected, had survival qualities unknown to her grandfather.

Garlanda travelled down and partnered Morwenna who, after her own interview with Rowella, had been taken ill again with shock. It was a drab little wedding. The carpenter came with his eldest daughter, the one who had fits but fortunately she avoided one for the duration of the ceremony. His wife did not accompany him as she was expecting her tenth child any day. The carpenter was not as obsequious as Ossie thought he ought to be. He was quiet and polite but he did not touch his forelock, and he had a certain rough dignity which amply explained his saucy refusal to go into the Poor House and accept the right and proper charity that the guardians offered. It equally explained his impudent refusal to vacate the council cottage just because he was behind with the rent. Arthur Solway, the thin, reedy, narrow-shouldered, presumptuous, greedy Arthur, was a chip off the old block.

Arthur Solway appeared, in fact, much less at ease than his young bride, who contrived to look dowdy in her best frock but not at all downcast. Osborne had refused to offer them any hospitality in his house after the wedding; but two of his servants brought tea and cakes into the church, and people stayed talking for the best part of an hour before the party broke up. The young couple had found lodgings in River Street, and there they would stay until they could buy a suitable cottage.

They were modestly comfortable now. Arthur Solway had been in to see Mr Harris Pascoe at the bank and explained that he had a legacy to invest, and Mr Pascoe had advised him to take a risk on the continued solvency of the country and buy Consols which, at their present depressed price, would yield him an income of about Ł30 per annum. This, with his wage at the library and. the little bits of work he could pick up elsewhere, would enable them to make do. All the same, between the date of the agreement and the, wedding, Rowella had often wondered if she might not have stuck out for more. Sometimes she thought she might have squeezed another hundred; sometimes; she thought from the look in Ossie’s eye at that last bitter round of bargaining that he might have killed her first.