Warleggan Page 4

  ‘Must I suppose from that that you gave him reason for defence?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. For if you wish to discover a man’s true feelings, it is always best to provoke him.’

  ‘Are those the tactics you’re applying now, Miss Penvenen?’

  She smiled pleasantly. ‘It would be presumptuous of me to imagine that I could.’

  ‘Shall you stay with your uncle for the summer?’

  ‘It depends. In October I shall be twenty-one – and then I shall be my own mistress. It’s a provoking long time coming.’

  ‘Perhaps before then you will be married.’

  ‘Would that not only be exchanging one keeper for another?’

  ‘Always supposing you look on a husband in that light.’

  ‘Never having had one, I cannot tell. But having seen so many of them about, I should not have thought it an unflattering description.’

  ‘At least it’s unflattering to your uncle.’

  Caroline laughed. ‘But why? He has kept me. Isn’t that being a keeper? There have been no bars across the windows – at least only invisible bars of conventionalism and disapproval. But I fancy I should like my freedom for a while.’

  As they were talking Unwin went past them with a thunderous face, and Caroline kept Ross in conversation while the other man was in the room. Good-humouredly aware that he was being used, Ross reflected that his hope of seeing them quickly married did not seem likely to come off.

  It deteriorated further when Unwin disappeared and was seen no more that evening. Cards were played until midnight, but the fact that there had been a tiff between the young couple was underlined by Ray Penvenen’s sour face; and all this put a blight on the last part of the evening.

  Just when the party was going to break up, George Warleggan found himself temporarily isolated with Francis and immediately took the opportunity of speaking to him.

  ‘Good evening to you. May I say I’m glad to see you again after all this time.’

  Francis stared at him. ‘I’m sorry I cannot say the same, George.’

  ‘If it’s true, then I’m sorry. It need not be.’

  ‘That’s where we differ. I made my choice long ago. I prefer to keep my hands clean.’

  George’s face darkened. ‘This empty spite . . . In your cousin I have come to expect no reason—’

  ‘Well, then, if that’s reason, expect none in me.’

  If George had had serious hope of a rapprochement, it did not survive this. He turned away and found himself face to face with Ross.

  There was a moment’s silence. One or two now watching hopefully expected an immediate battle. They edged nearer to catch the words which would provide the spark.

  Ross stared down at the other man. ‘Good evening to you, George.’

  George’s formidable face twitched slightly. ‘Well, Ross, imagine our meeting here!’

  ‘We must have supper together sometime.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it . . . I hope your mine prospers.’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence.’

  Ross said: ‘Must you be envious even of that?’

  George flushed and opened his mouth to say something as Ross moved away. But a word now would undo the restraint of years. Now for the first time he had Ross where he wanted him. Restraint was a virtue. He had only to endure in silence to triumph.

  As Ross and Demelza rode home, accompanied for the first part of the way by Francis and Elizabeth, a half-spent moon rose and tinselled the landscape for them, lighting the dew on the fields and the spider webs in the hedgerows. There was not much talk among any of the four. Elizabeth was keyed up with what she had said and nervous as to the result, because you could never predict what Ross would do. Francis was sleepy. And Ross, lost in his thoughts of the past and his speculations for the future, was curiously detached from the scene though inescapably aware of the figure of Elizabeth, cause of it all, riding on ahead of him.

  Demelza, with her instinctive, animal perceptions, knew that something quite fresh had cropped up in Ross’s life. She felt that Elizabeth must be at the bottom of it, but could not imagine what new thing had suddenly grown out of the old allegiance. ‘I hope to be able to wait on you, ma’am,’ Captain McNeil had said, a very nice admiration in his look. Of all the men she had ever met, Malcolm McNeil was the only one who could begin to hold a candle to Ross. ‘One of these days I’ll give a party, my dear,’ Sir Hugh Bodrugan had said, fingering her arm.

  Just before it came time for them to separate, Francis said:

  ‘Is it true the tub-runners have had another successful run?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ross. ‘I heard so.’

  ‘Vercoe and his gaugers will be in an ill-humour.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘There was a whisper about – I’ve forgot where I heard it – but there was a whisper about that you were concerning yourself in the Trade.’

  Silence fell. Demelza pulled a little more tightly at her horse’s reins, and the horse shook his head with a jingle of distaste.

  Ross said: ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Does it matter so much? It was some time ago and I think concerned that run in March.’

  ‘There has never been a time when some foolish rumour has not been flying round regarding one of us, Francis.’

  Another pause. ‘Well, I’m glad there’s no truth in it anyway.’

  ‘Glad? I did not know you had any special feeling for the Customs men.’

  ‘Nor have I, Ross. But I have some feeling for you nowadays. And I do not like this informer, this sneak, this telltale who is about. Everyone knows of his existence; no one knows who he is. If he was identified, he would soon come to a bad end. But while he is about there is a double danger. Of course if I were Mr Trencrom, with big stakes in the business, connections, and a sizable cutter to maintain, I should I suppose go on and trust in the Lord. I’d have to. But if I were an ordinary threadbare country gentleman, looking to turn an extra penny, or a miner or a blacksmith, thinking of smuggling as a side line, this is the last time of day I should want to have any hand in the work.’

  It was a long speech for Francis, and as he spoke they had come to the fork in the track. The four riders halted.

  Ross said: ‘I suppose you’ll do your best to quash this story if you should run against it again.’

  ‘I will. Oh, I will. Well, good night to you both.’

  Ross said: ‘So far as the Trade goes, there are of course degrees of help one may render. Not all kinds entail running the boats ashore or bearing off the goods.’

  ‘All kinds can be dangerous if there is an informer about.’

  ‘If I were a threadbare country gentleman looking to turn an extra penny, I might agree with you. But in some circumstances risk must be weighed against reward.’

  ‘I think I should prefer not to know any more. My wish was to convey a friendly warning, not to pry into your secrets.’

  ‘It seems you already know the secret. It will be a good thing if you have the details too. Some time ago Mr Trencrom came to see me, he being in some straits because the informer had made it impossible for him to run in a cargo at any of the usual places. He asked if he might use Nampara Cove. At the time the Warleggans were making themselves obnoxious by getting a foothold in my other mine, Wheal Leisure. I agreed to Trencrom’s proposition, and he uses my cove and land – but twice only a year and for each landing he pays me £200.’

  Francis whistled. ‘It’s a tidy sum. Enough to tempt any man. If there were not this danger, I should have jumped at it myself.’

  ‘If there were not this danger, I should not have been offered it.’

  ‘No . . . No, I see. But this money – is it to keep Wheal Grace in operation for longer than we’d planned? If so—’

  ‘I have debts,’ said Ross briefly. ‘One of them carries an excessive rate of interest. With this money from Trencrom I am able to survive. Without it our
mine would never have been started.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of these debts. The money we’ve invested in Wheal Grace might have been better employed.’

  ‘If Wheal Grace fails, it might have been better employed in some other venture. It has never been enough in itself to pay what I owe.’

  Francis stared at his cousin’s face, which was half lit by the climbing moon. He would have liked to clear up this point between them, but there were too many pitfalls. Their present friendship, their present partnership, meant too much to him to be jeopardized by an ill-considered question now.

  As Ross and Demelza rode on alone, Demelza said: ‘I wonder who told him.’

  ‘About the Trade? It was bound to get abroad. When twenty or thirty men know . . .’ As if reading her thoughts, he added: ‘Oh, I know that’s what you’ve always said. But it’s a risk to be fairly taken. So long as no one learns the date of a run, all’s well. Gaugers will not spend every night out.’

  ‘I would rather go barefoot.’

  ‘There is no risk of that.’

  ‘There are worse risks.’

  ‘I differ.’

  ‘Don’t jest, Ross. It’s no jesting matter. You have been in too much trouble these last years.’

  By now they were riding down into their own valley. On the other side the new engine of Wheal Grace slithered and sighed as it pumped the water up from the depths of the earth.

  To divert her Ross said: ‘And did you enjoy the evening? Did it come up to your expectation?’

  ‘Yes, it was all very agreeable. Only we were separated, as you might say, at the very beginning and were almost strangers by the end of it.’

  ‘It is the fashion of modern society. But I noticed Captain McNeil looked after you very well.’

  ‘Yes, he did indeed. He’s a very polite, genteel sort of man, Ross, and is going to call on us one day next week.’

  ‘Hm. It is not an uncommon pattern. You only have to crook your little finger and they all come.’

  ‘You have an awful wicked tongue for exaggeration, Ross. I wonder sometimes it does not drop off. And Caroline Penvenen?’

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘Yes, you saw very much of her. What do you think of her? She kept you in a corner, did she not, and wouldn’t let you come forth.’

  Ross pondered a minute. ‘She kept me in no corner that I did not wish to be kept in,’ he said, ‘but I certainly think she is the wrong wife for Dwight. She would wipe her feet on him.’

  Chapter Four

  Ellery’s death made a big difference to Dwight. Surgical and physical skill could be exercised in a poor and primitive community only on a foundation of confidence and trust. Without that foundation you were lucky if you exercised anything at all. In two weeks more than half Dwight’s patients disappeared from his doorstep or made excuses when he called.

  His visits to St Ann’s were at no time frequent, but he had one or two faithful patients there and among them, a paying one too, was Mrs Vercoe, the wife of the Customs Officer, whose youngest child he had pulled through an illness during the winter. On the day following the party, to which he’d not been invited, he paid them a visit and was just in time to see Vercoe himself separating at the front door of his white-washed cottage from a tall fair-haired man with a fine cavalry moustache. Although plainly a gentleman, the stranger had not come by horse, because he strode away across the fields towards the cliff path.

  Inside the cottage Clara Vercoe greeted Dwight. Hubert was not so well, she said, had vomited after his latest bottle of physic and she’d given him no more. Hubert, looking papery and wasted, was brought forward into the sunlight falling through the open doorway, and Dwight cast a professional eye over him while pretending to admire his story book. It was a new kind, cheaply printed in Plymouth on sheets of stiff paper with line pictures illustrating The History of Primrose Prettyface and bound between covers of thin horn with a wooden handle. The first picture was of an angel, and Hubert had coloured the wings red.

  Dwight wondered if this was another echo of the Ellery affair and if his draught was being blamed for some digestive upset. He said he would change the stuff, and poured some of it into a cup to examine and taste.

  While he was there Jim Vercoe came back into the cottage for a telescope, and Dwight followed the direction in which it was pointed, towards a sail on the horizon.

  You could not but admire a man who persisted in his task in the face of bribes offered, occasional threats, and the social ostracism that came his way. Something of the unpleasantness Vercoe often had to meet showed in his bearded face. Dwight would have admired him the more if there had not been also a trace of that grim satisfaction about him which some men find in getting disliked in the course of their duty.

  ‘The sky’s very clear this morning,’ Dwight remarked as the Customs Officer lowered his glass.

  ‘Sharp’s a knife, surgeon. There’ll be more rain afore nightfall.’

  ‘We been watching for the revenue ship all week,’ said Mrs Vercoe with a nod. ‘Jim’s been asking for ’er for long enough.’

  ‘’Twill be all over the village soon,’ Vercoe said irritably. ‘Women’s tongues is too slipper in what don’t concern ’em.’

  ‘Eh, Dr Enys wouldn’t say anything, would you, sir?’

  ‘No more than I should if I saw a man with a cask of brandy.’

  Vercoe stared at him resentfully for a moment. A man with the standing of a physician had no right to be that impartial.

  ‘’Tis hard to do a proper job when all the gentry are against ee, surgeon, and when there’s scarcely a place for an honest boat to find safe harbourage anywhere along this coast. They just won’t venture in when the weather’s heavy. Even Padstow’s no safe refuge if a gale blow up. But ye can’t keep a watch from Mount’s Bay!’

  ‘I should have thought the disadvantage works both ways. The seas that keep away your revenue cutter will stop men from landing a cargo.’

  ‘Ah, ’tis not so simple as that. The runners will take more risks, and they d’know every rock and eddy like the back of their hands. What I need ’bove all is more men ashore. ’Tis fighting uphill all the way. And the worst thing of all mebbe is knowing that after all if you catch your men, as like as not they’ll be brought before the local magistrates and acquitted and set free.’

  Dwight said: ‘I know it is hard, but I should not say that all the gentry are against you. Or even all the people. I understand you have your informers, and they should be worth their weight in – well, gold.’

  Vercoe’s face coloured with a dark, angry flush. ‘That’s what you come down to, surgeon, when you’re hard set. You’re not helped by the honest men, so then you’ve to use the rats.’

  A few minutes later Dwight rode into the main street of the village and dismounted at the little shop where his medicines were made up. He stooped in and waited among the multicoloured bottles and the bundles of coloured straw for making bonnets and the green canisters of mixed tea until Irby, the druggist, squeezed himself out of the dungeon where he mixed his prescriptions. Irby was a little fat man with a stub of a nose and steel spectacles with lenses no bigger than the acquisitive eyes behind them.

  Dwight began by asking pleasantly to see the order he had made out and asking Mr Irby to taste the draught and to note the amount of sediment in the bottom of the bottle. Mr Irby was effusive, co-operative, but astonished; there would of course be sediment: the drugs Dwight had ordered would refuse to mix and a precipitate would form. Dwight with deference corrected him. If the drugs were pure, it was quite impossible, etc., etc. At this point the conversation, while still polite, began to carry a sediment of its own. Dwight said he wished he might examine the drugs from which the physic was made up. Mr Irby squinted round the sides of his spectacles and said that he had been practising in St Ann’s for twenty years and no surgeon had ever cast a reflection on his competence before. Dwight said that in this
respect he did not doubt his competence; it was a plain question of whether the drugs were adulterated. Mr Irby said he had never bought cheap drugs and he did not propose to be accused of that now. Dwight said he was sorry to have to insist, but he had a right by law as a physician to enter and examine the drugs in any druggist’s establishment, and this he intended to exercise. Followed by Mr Irby, he went down the steps into the dungeon and peered about him in the uncertain light, at the Glauber’s salts, the Dover’s powders, the gamboge, the nux vomica, the paregorics, and the vermifuges.

  The noise of Mr Irby’s annoyance brought Mrs Irby from a deeper dungeon behind the first, but Dwight went carefully on with his examination. He found what he had suspected; that cheap substitutes had been bought and labelled for more expensive drugs, and in two cases the powders had been adulterated with something, ground bone or chalk. All these he tipped into a wooden pail. When it was full, he walked out through the shop with it, followed by the druggist angrily demanding recompense and justice. As he went he saw a tall woman standing in the shop, but it was so dark that he did not take much note of her. He carried the pail round the backs of the houses, found the nearest open cesspool, and tipped the contents in. When he came back he saw that the woman was Caroline Penvenen.

  Five minutes later he left the shop, trying to dust the powder from his breeches and boots. Mr Irby followed him to the door calling down the wrath of God, but abruptly disappeared – being lugged in by his wife, who was a powerful woman as well as an astute one and did not wish their neighbours to know more than could be helped.

  Dwight glanced at the splendid chestnut held by a mounted groom, but he didn’t stop. As he got to his own horse, Caroline came out of the shop.

  He took off his hat and the breeze fanned his face.

  She said: ‘Dr Enys, as I’m alive! How diverting. And with such an expression as if the Last Trump’d blown. I almost mistook you for a vision of Judgment.’