The Four Swans (44 page)

Demelza laughed and wiped the splashes of sea water from her face and frock.

Hugh said: `You had the worst of that!’

‘Twill help cool me. I don’t think we have scared the greybeards in the cave. But go cautiously and not too far in.’

Around them the sea was an iridescent blue pierced by the black shadows of the rocks, but at the mouth of the cavern where the sun was not falling it turned to a limpid jade green which lit up the roof of the big cave with a dim reflected light. As they went into this world the light faded, and peering after the bright sun, they could just see that the cave went far back into the distant darkness. But not far to their left was a branch cave with a pebbly beach littered with driftwood, seaweed and cattle-fish bones. On this beach great dark shapes lay. Hugh put his oars down to slow their movement as twenty or more grey faces peered at them, older than those they had seen outside, fiercer, more burdened down with the knowledge of good and evil, of the search for life and inevitable death.

One of them set up a terrible low moaning in the dark. It was a cry out of the wind and the waves, yet it seemed to have humanity in it as well as the sea. It was a cry without enmity but without hope. Then suddenly they moved: an avalanche of flapping forms seemed to launch itself in an attack on the boat. The dinghy lurched wildly, was half swamped in foamy water, was bumped and pitched and tossed amid a frenzy of magnified bellows and grunts; and it crashed hard against the rock wall of the cave. Then once again it began to settle and they stared: at the great shiny grey creatures swivelling and turning in the water as they rushed out to sea.

IV

The show was over. Hugh paddled back into the sunshine. There was six inches of water in the dinghy, but he peered over the side where they had struck the: rock and there was no damage except a few dents in the stout planking. They were both wet and they were both laughing. Not a seal was in sight.

`More than ever,’ he said, `I’m relieved we did not bring Mrs Gower. Do you invite all your friends to this delightful experience?’ `I’ve never been in the cave myself before!’ she said.

He laughed again. `Well, I’m glad we ventured. But I suppose if we had lost the boat there was no way back?’ `I b’lieve we could have climbed.’

He frowned as he peered up at the cliffs. `I’m used to climbing to the trees, but I shouldn’t have fancied that. I am sorry you’re so wet.’

`I am sorry you are so wet.’

He peered around: ‘That strip of sand. We can, get the water out of the boat. Otherwise you would have wet feet all the way home.’

`It’s not important. I shall catch no chill.’

But he rowed towards the beach and jumped ashore. As she followed him the ocean breathed again and lifted the dinghy with ironical gentleness so that it was aground with no effort at all. For getting his views on her frailty, he allowed her to help him turn the boat until the water was drained out. Then they, both sat on the sand looking at their clothes and allowing them to dry off in the sun.

He said : `Demelza.’

`Yes:’

`I wish you’d let me make love to you.’

`Jesus God,’ she said.

`Oh, I know it is ill of me to say such a thing. I know it is both unfair and indiscreet of me even to, utter such a thought. I know it looks as if I am trading on this kindness you are doing to me in an unforgivable way. I know it seems - must seem utterly despicable of me to attempt, or even to think of attempting, the virtue of a woman married to the man who saved me from prison. I know all that.’

She said stumbling over the words: `We had better start for home now.’

`Give me five minutes - if only sitting here with you.

`To say what more?’

`Perhaps to explain a little of what I feel so that you shall not think too harshly of me.’

She crumbled the fine sand in her hand. Her head was down and her hair fell forward over most of her face. She had kicked off her shoes, and her feet, were sunk in the sand,

`I cannot think harshly of you, Hugh, even though I cannot understand how you can say it, especially today.’

He brushed the water off his shirt. `Let me explain about one thing first. You think this is a terrible thing. asking you to be disloyal to Ross. And on the narrowest terms it is. But how can I try to make it more clear? By giving love you do not diminish it. By loving me you would not destroy your love for Ross. Love only creates and adds to itself, it never destroys. You do not betray your love for Ross by offering some of your love to me. You add to it. Tenderness is not like money: the more you give to one, the more you have for others. You feel something for me, don’t you?’

`Yes.’

`Then tell me - could you, have felt as much for me, as much warmth and understanding, if you had not loved Ross?’

‘Maybe not. I don’t know.’

`Love is not a possession to hoard. You give it away. It’s a blessing and a balm. You know the parable of the loaves and the fishes?

It is always misunderstood. Christ was distributing spiritual bread. That was why there was enough for five thousand. It’s the miracle that is occurring all the time.’

`Five loaves of love,’ Demelza said; `what were the two small fishes?’

`You’re very hard, Demelza.:

‘No, I am not very hard.’

One of the greater black-backed .gulls swept quite low overhead, his wings temporarily flicking across the sun. Two more screamed high in the cliffs above. The heat of the day had drained the sky of colour. There seemed to be no air at all in the cove.

Hugh said: `You, said that you could not understand me asking this, especially today. I ask it today only because there is no other day, and never will be another day. Not because of any frailties I am likely to succumb to but because of plain circumstances. There will never be another such day. You may think I am unfairly asking you to do this out of pity. You are right. But not - not at all out of pity for a man who may be losing his sight. Out of pity for someone who loves you as he loves Heaven and thinks to be kept for ever outside the gates of paradise.’

Demelza stirred almost irritably. ‘That’s not true, Hugh! There’s no paradise in love! It’s you’re thinking in the wrong way. Love the sort you’re asking me for is of the earth, earthy. Beautiful, maybe sometimes it be like a gold mine that one digs into. But of the earth - earthy. Tis all wrong to speak of paradise. Love may be the nearest human, beings can get but it is still outside the gates for it is human - easily lost - animal in the way it work, though more, much more than animal. Oftentimes it uplifts, transports… but - but it should not be mistaken. It is a - a terrible mistake to pretend it is something quite different’

There was silence. He looked at her with his dark sensitive eyes.

`So you think I have been using the wrong arguments. You think my reasoning is specious?’

She looked back at him through her hair and smiled. `I don’t know what that means. But I think so.’

`How then - if you wished to be persuaded; how would you advise me to set about it?’

`But I don’t wish to be persuaded. `Is there any risk?’

`Not risk. Risk is the wrong: word’

`Hope, then.’

`Not hope, neither. But, Hugh, you must know that I am troubled by you, moved and it is not pity. I wish. I only wish it was.’

`I am glad it is not.’

`All those pretty words you spoke about love being - what is the word - divisible. Can I ask you if you think other things are divisible too - such as loyalty - such as trust?’

He knelt up, sat back on his heels. The great damp splashes on his cambric shirt were drying.

`No,’ he said humbly. `There you have me beat.’ He shook his head. `There you have me beat.’

She began to trace figures in the sand. Her heart was beating as if there was a drum inside her. Her mouth was so dry she could not swallow. The nakedness of her body inside her frock seemed to have suddenly become more apparent to her, seemed to flower. She gave a slight groan which she tried to suppress altogether but could not quite.

He sat back looking at her, a foot away from touching her. `What is it?’

`Please let us go.’

`May I just then kiss you?’

She raised her head and pushed her hair back. `It would be quite wrong.’

‘But you will permit it?’

`Perhaps I cannot stop you.’

He moved towards her, and knew the moment he touched her that something had won his battle for him. He took her face in his hands, held it like a cup to be drunk from, and then kissed her. With a serious unsmiling mouth he touched her eyelids, her cheeks, her hair, and sighed, as if for the moment her acceptance were all and there was no further desire in him.

‘Hugh–-‘

`Don’t speak, my love, don’t speak.’

He put his left hand to the nape of her neck, supporting it, until slowly she leaned against it and so lay back in the sand. Then, fumbling, with his right hand, he began to undo the buttons of her frock.

I

Ross was away three nights, not one. He stayed the first with Verity, as arranged; the second defence meetings with various gentlemen having left many matters unresolved, he spent at Pendennis Castle on the rocky promontory overlooking Falmouth Harbour as the guest of its governor, John Melville. Governor Melville came barely to the top button of Ross’s waistcoat and’dressed in a scarlet uniform and a square cocked hat, which-he wore even at meals The stump of his left arm hung in a black silk sling, so that an orderly had to cut up his food, and the socket of his right eye was covered with a black silk patch and satin ribbon. He strutted as if he were on parade and barked his, orders like a little terrier. Not quite Ross’s, type, but it made a pleasant change from the lackadaisical attitude, of most of the amateur officers whose-business it was to organize the defence of the country.. The, following day he took Ross to see the ever-growing French prisoner-of-war camp at Kergillack, near Penryn. This now held upwards of a thousand men, a great many of them sailors; and, Ross was interested to see how ;it compared with the horrors of Quimper. Many of the men were under canvas, and in this fine hot weather were looking sunburnt and healthy enough, and the food was just adequate; but it would be a bleak spot on the top of the hill in the winter; when the gales were roaring.

They rode on then to see Mr Rogers at Penrose and supped there. With the long evening fading and a four-hour ride as the alternative, Ross was about to accept the invitation to sleep, there, when a messenger came on a lathery horse with a request from Lord de Dunstanville that they should all proceed at once to Tehidy; on a matter, of vital national emergency. It was in the minds. of all sitting at. the: table that the French had landed somewhere and they must raise the countryside, but the messenger explained it concerned grievous riots which were taking place in Camborne, and Lord de Dunstanville needed all aid to contain them.

Of the male diners all. but three were elderly, and Governor Melville was of the opinion that it would be improper of him as a military man to take any part in suppressing a civil disturbance unless civilian authority failed; so Ross and Rogers himself and two others accompanied the groom to Tehidy.

There, though the countryside through which they passed was peaceful enough, they found great activity. The rioting had in fact taken place the day before. A crowd of angry miners, estimated at five or six thousand, many accompanied by their wives, had assembled and descended on the village of Camborne, in the neighbourhood of which a number of millers had their mills, and had demanded corn at a price decided on by themselves. The millers had appealed for help to the local gentry, but such as there were had been afraid to stir. So to the accompaniment of rebellious songs, the corn had been seized and distributed and the millers paid the arbitrarily low price. What was worse, some houses and barns were broken into and the goods in them stolen and various persons who tried to impede the rioters were roughly dealt with.

About thirty men were assembled in the big hall of Tehidy and were being sworn in as constables. This number was ever growing as de Dunstanville’s messengers brought in fresh recruits from outlying districts: farmers, factors, farriers, clerks, anyone who could be relied upon to do his civic duty in an emergency. Ross went into the drawing-room where the depositions of the millers were still being taken, and was greeted in a most friendly but grim manner by Basset, who clearly took the gravest view of the disturbance. Possibly, Ross thought, it was not so much the gravity of the acts committed, for it seemed, listening to the depositions, that the violence had been small and the thefts petty; it was the failure of his fellow magistrates to act which caught Basset on the raw. Let it be once seen, and widely known that magistrates were afraid or powerless before a rioting crowd and all authority would be at an end. Basset himself had only arrived from London that day - last night he had been at Ashburton and he was resolved that lawlessness and anarchy must not be tolerated in the district in which he was the principal landowner and held the king’s authority to maintain the peace.

Once apprised of the facts, Mr Rogers was of the same mind, and an air of general resolve and determination ran through the assembled men, some of whom were the men who had not stirred yesterday. They had lacked a leader of sufficient energy and courage now they had one.

Ross, with his usual split sympathies, would have been glad to have excused himself and ridden off home. The millers and merchants were a well fed lot and not people for whom he had any tender feeling. But to have gone off now would have been to take sides against his own class in a situation where the issues were no longer clear cut. It was not in fact so very long since he had led a riot himself; but the mutinies in the navy particularly the later ones where men such as Parker had set themselves up as little dictators hardly distinguishable in manner from their French counterparts - had hardened his feeling against mass lawlessness and to refuse to help now that he was here would have aligned him with ideas that he had come to detest.