A week after this Sir George Warleggan visited his uncle in the counting house behind the Great House in Truro. Cary had changed little in the last decade. Bradypepsia had long since shredded away any flesh to which he had laid claim in middle life, but bone does not deteriorate. Undressed, he looked like a model of a human body used for the demonstration of anatomical structure; but fortunately no one ever saw him in this pristine state. His skullcap hid the shaven white hair; black clothes hung on him so limply that he might just have been dragged from the sea. But the eyes were as alert as ever behind their thickening spectacles, the brain, attuned only to think of figures, continued to function with the emotional instability of an automaton. In the last month he had taken a keen dislike to his distinguished nephew.
George said: ‘Well, have you had your answers?’
‘I’ve had them,’ said Cary, ‘in so far as I put the questions. And they was not favourable.’
‘In so far as you put the questions? What does that mean?’
‘It means that the less people know we need money the safer we are! That’s elementary. A child’s horn book would tell you as much. Writing to other banks, sending to other banks, especially at a time like this when everyone’s short – tis spreading the news. I wrote only in the most general way, and that to three: Carne’s of Falmouth; Robins, Foster and Coode of Liskeard; and Bolitho’s of Penzance. Twas the same sort of answer, the answer you’d expect, all round.’
‘What answer?’
‘Excuses. All round. War with France to continue, ruinous losses to exporters, reduction of private paper, diminution of transactions of credit, policy to narrow one’s commitments. Could you expect any different? What’ve we done over the years to build up goodwill with these fellers? Nothing. Because we reckoned we didn’t need ’em, never should need ’em. Warleggan’s was safe, that’s what we reckoned, what with the smelting works, tin and copper mines, flour mills, schooners, rolling mills! Who was to know that Nicholas Warleggan’s only son – Luke Warleggan’s grandson – would take leave of his senses and spend his fortune buying up bankrupt mills in Manchester!’
‘We’ve been through all that,’ said George tightly.
‘But not through it enough. Not through it enough. When your wife died more ‘n a decade ago you was constrained to make one or two unwise speculations – but they was carelessness, and they was understandable; you was upset, you put much store by that woman, you didn’t know what you were doing. But now! At the height of your powers!…’
‘Everything I have invested is not lost. In due time there must come an improvement.’
‘What’s this firm of calico printers – whatever that may be – Ormrod’s is it? Bankruptcy! That’s not improvement, that’s one hundred per cent loss, George, one hundred per cent loss! And you’re keeping this Fleming firm alive only by throwing good money after bad. And these commodities you own. You’d as well have invested in attle! There’s no one to buy them! What was amiss with you?’
‘The war was certain to end if the Prince Regent remained loyal to his party … Was I to know he’d turn his coat at the last hour!’
Cary flipped over the papers on his desk. They all related to George’s investments in the North – his iniquities, as Cary considered them.
George said: ‘The Prince is nothing more than a vain weathercock. Should the war go badly for us now he might well turn to the Whigs to make peace after all. Then my losses would become the profits they ought to have been. So long, that is, as I am able to hold on to what I have bought.’
Cary’s mouth tightened like a crack in the floorboards. ‘Sometimes people get too big, get too big-headed, go outside the part of the country they understand, the industries they understand, try expanding where they don’t know enough. I’d never have thought it of you, George. Does your mother know?’
‘Naturally not. She’s too unwell to be worried by such matters.’
‘She’ll have to be if things go wrong at this end.’ Cary peered at his nephew over his spectacles. ‘You was never a gambler, George. What caused you to gamble? Was it another woman?’
George took a deep breath. ‘Have a care, Uncle. You can go too far.’
‘I’ve heard rumours. Don’t think I hear nothing because I never go out. Don’t think that. There’s been rumours. And you haven’t answered my question.’
‘Nor will I. You don’t command the world from this office; nor do you command me. Tell me what the situation is now, and then I’ll leave you to your calculations.’
Cary thrust the papers on one side and opened his note-issue book. Since George became a knight bachelor he had been less amenable to correction, and although the two men often saw eye to eye, when there was a difference of opinion it was more often George who got his way. But of course there had never before been anything like this.
Cary said icily: ‘If there came a crisis tomorrow – a run, folk crowding in and banging on the counter and demanding what’s theirs – we could cover twenty per cent of our note issue!’
‘That’s only five per cent more than last week!’
‘It’s not possible to create assets overnight! If we throw things sudden upon the open market we straight off strike down their value.’
George went to a drawer, unlocked it and drew out a file. In it was a summary of all his possessions.
‘Has there been any sign of a run today?’
‘No big depositors have made a move yet. Brewer Michell came in to renew his notes. I had to refuse. That makes a bad impression, for no doubt he can get them discounted across the way. Symons drew more than his custom, more than half his deposit – but he’s small fry.’
‘Well, then…’
‘But there’s nervousness about, I can tell you that. I can smell it. I can see it in people’s eyes. Tis like a field of gorse after a dry summer – just lying there, just needing the first spark.’
‘We have some India stock,’ said George, peering at his file. ‘We could dispose of those quickly enough and bear the loss … But ideally we still need another bank – one of the bigger ones – to re-discount £20,000 worth of sound short bills. That way we should be safe.’
‘What about the Cornish Bank?’
‘What about it?’
‘You were friendly enough with de Dunstanville once. Twould be a neighbourly act.’
‘Out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘We have hardly been on terms for years. And last November I was involved – innocently involved – in a quarrel between him and Sir Christopher Hawkins. It ended in a duel. I was one of Hawkins’s seconds. That would make such an approach now unthinkable.’
‘There’s always something…’
‘In any event,’ said George, ‘to approach the Cornish Bank would do what you were at pains to avoid with the others. Our direct competitors in this town…’
‘What of Hawkins, then? He’s landlord of the great Hallamannin Mine and of the silver-lead mines of the Chiverton valley.’
‘Oh, he’s a warm man, I’ll grant you that. But you would not expect him to respond to a situation like this.’ There was silence.
George said: ‘How far can I rely on you, Cary?’
‘Rely on me?’
‘You’re a rich man. You are as much involved in the solvency of the bank as I am.’
Cary rubbed his forehead under his skullcap. A white powder of dandruff floated down onto the note-issue book.
‘Most of my money is invested. It couldn’t be realized in a hurry.’
‘You keep a thousand pounds in gold upstairs. My father told me.’
‘He had no business to. And it’s not as much now.’ George stared at his uncle. ‘Suppose the worst happens and somebody puts a spark to the gorse. What should we need?’
‘In a real panic? Not less than thirty thousand.’
‘Of which we can find twelve. Two more perhaps with loose assets, such as personal cash. Is that right?’
‘Near enough.’
George closed his file, carefully locked it away, fingered the key. ‘Well, the bank shall not close its doors if I can help it. The smelting works at Bissoe would give us all the capital we need.’
‘Ye wouldn’t sell that! The foundation on which we’ve built all the rest! I’d remind you I’ve a third share.’
‘And I have fifty-five per cent. It could go if the worst came to the worst.’
‘At a knock-down price for a hasty sale – it would be lunacy!’
‘Bankers can’t always be choosers…’
‘There’s always Cardew,’ said Cary.
George looked at Cary with dislike. ‘You’d see your sister-in-law turned out – your nephew – your niece?’ Cary knuckled his hands together, then shrugged his shoulders as if throwing off some nightmare in which family loyalty might become involved in the conservation of his personal fortune.
‘Well, you said yourself, time is of the essence. These assets we have; ye can’t pause to auction a mine or a smelting works – advertised in the newspaper, etcetera – while men are shouting at the counter for their cash! It may not happen, George. The man in the street – spite of the rumours, the whispering, he’ll take a time to believe it: Warleggan’s Bank, he’ll say, but they’re always solid. If we put a bold face on it – show our assets – meet every call willingly. I see now I was wrong not to accommodate Brewer Michell this morning. We got to be expansive, not careful. To liquidate Bissoe or Cardew, to do this would be criminal. My strongest advice to you, George, is to sell your Manchester investments now, at once, for what little ye can get. They must be worth something – a few thousand. Get your money out at once – what ye can – in gold – have it brought down here by post-chaise. If tis an eighty per cent loss, that’s bad, but a few more thousand on hand during the next two weeks – under the counter, ready to use – it might be just enough to save a banking run … and then no cause for all this talk of other sacrifices.’
Ross had not yet seen Francis Basset, Baron de Dunstanville. He told himself that his home affairs were too pressing; but he had already found time to visit Lord Falmouth.
The truth was that for the last year or so a coolness had grown up between them, dating from the scandal of the Duke of York’s mistress, Mrs Clarke, and her sale of army commissions. This cause célèbre had occupied parliamentary time for far too long when so many greater issues had to be decided; but a member of the Commons called Colonel Gwyllym Wardle had persisted in his accusations and had linked it with an attack on the corruption implicit in the rotten parliamentary boroughs. On this Ross had sided with him, making one of his rare speeches in the House, and, when the issue flared up locally he had taken the part of the reformers who had held meetings up and down the county demanding change and an end to bribery and venality. Basset had passionately resented this, had indeed spoken at meetings and gone to great pains to spike the guns of the protesters. Although the agitation had now subsided, and although superficially everyone was again the best of friends, he had never quite forgiven Ross for his support of these Jacobin elements.
It was therefore not a particularly propitious time to discuss the county’s affairs and more especially Warleggan’s. Nor did Ross know how far Basset would be concerned to vent his resentment on George and his uncle in the way Falmouth had hinted as a possibility. During the last ten years many changes had taken place in the Cornish Bank, the present directors being Mackworth Praed, Stackhouse, Rogers, Tweedy, Poldark and Nankivell. De Dunstanville had chosen to withdraw his name, though everyone knew that his interest, in terms of money, was still the controlling one. There was to be a meeting of the partners next week at Truro. The Warleggan situation would no doubt all be discussed there, since it was difficult to believe that two banks, operating so close to each other in a small town, would not each be sensitive to fluctuations in the other’s health and credit. If such a discussion took place what was his, Ross’s, attitude to be?
On a sudden morning of brilliant sunshine – which presaged rain before dark – Ross walked out to where Demelza was digging in her garden. Ten years ago, inspired by her visit to Strawberry Hill and oppressed by the way the mine and its workings were encroaching on the land before the house, she had persuaded Ross to have a drystone wall built enclosing and extending the area of the garden she had then cultivated. It lay in a large oblong running up and away from the house, the house and the library comprising an L-shaped joint and part of two sides. With this shelter from the wind miracles had been wrought with daffodils, tulips and other spring and early summer flowers. By July the best was over, for the soil was too light to retain moisture. Also most winters, and often in the spring, the garden was ravaged by storm winds from which even the wall could not guard it. Often everything was broken and blackened as if by a forest fire. Yet in between times the flowers handsomely repaid Demelza and one or two casual helpers for their efforts. She had long since given up trying to grow trees. Hollyhocks were difficult enough.
This morning, as if by coincidence, she was forking round Hugh Armitage’s present of more than a decade ago, which had been planted against the wall of the library. She straightened as Ross came up, pushing her hair away from her face with a clean forearm.
He said: ‘The Falmouths’ two magnolias, which I think came from Carolina at the same time as ours, are twenty feet high, and one already in bud.’
‘This poor thing has never been happy here. And it has had a sad winter. I don’t think it is ever going to do any good. The soil is wrong.’
They stood looking at the plant. This was quite a casual discussion between them, with only the faintest shadow of Hugh Armitage left.
‘Perhaps it should go back,’ said Demelza.
‘Where? To Tregothnan?’
‘A plant that neither dies nor prospers … It is out of its element.’
‘No, keep it.’
Demelza looked up at him and smiled. The sun made her eyes glint. ‘Why?’
‘Why keep it? Well … it has become part of our lives.’ A reminder of past error, his as well as hers, but he did not say as much. It was implicit. And without rancour.
Just at that moment Isabella-Rose came screaming into the garden and went galloping over the grass. A stranger might have thought her scalded, but her parents knew this was just an evidence of high spirits, her way of saluting the joy of being alive. Gambolling along beside her was Farquahar, their English setter spaniel, and they both disappeared through the gate that led to the beach.
Demelza peered after her, but they were not visible, presumably rolling together in the sand below the level of the garden wall.
‘She’s more like you than either of the other two,’ said Ross.
‘I swear I never screamed like that!’
‘I didn’t know you when you were eight. But even at eighteen you had your crazy moments.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘And later. And later. You were twenty-one or thereabouts when you went out fishing on your own the day before Jeremy was born.’
‘There’s Jeremy now. Perhaps it was that expedition of mine which has made him so fond of sailing! … Where did he come from, Ross? He’s not like either of us.’
‘I would agree on that!’
‘There has been a change in him recently,’ Demelza said defensively. ‘He seems so high-spirited these last few weeks.’
‘Not just flippant?’
‘Not just that.’
‘Anyway,’ Ross said after a moment, ‘before he reaches us, let me tell you something about George Warleggan that I heard from Lord Falmouth last Friday…’
Jeremy, coming down from the mine and seeing his mother and father in serious conversation, steered away from them and jumped over the stile to the beach where Isabella-Rose was now throwing a stick for Farquahar to retrieve. Approaching her was a hazardous business, for she took the stick, whirled her body around and let go, so that although its objective was the sea the stick was as likely to fly off in any direction.
Demelza said: ‘It is hard to believe. I never thought George would grow to be a speculator … But if it’s true, it’s true. So what are you besting to do?’
‘I cannot think that de Dunstanville will have heard nothing at all. No doubt he will have a point of view.’
‘But you will have to express a point of view too, Ross. Won’t you?’
He rubbed his foot over a worm-cast in the grass. ‘Revenge is a sour bed-fellow. Yet it’s hard to forget the deliberate way Warleggan’s Bank broke Harris Pascoe – not merely by semi-legitimate means but by printing broadsheets and spreading lying rumours. And the number of times before that George has tried to ruin us.’
‘Not only in money ways neither.’
‘… One thinks of the power he has come to wield in Cornwall, the numbers of small men who have gone to the wall because of him. One thinks of his influence for ill. One wonders if in this case it is not so much a matter of paying off old scores as a public duty to bring him down…’
‘Could you if you tried?’
‘I doubt if it would be necessary to do anything so despicable as start a whispering campaign. A rival bank can do so much by making certain moves, and the panic begins of its own accord.’
‘So it will much depend on Lord de Dunstanville?’
‘And my fellow partners. Mr Rogers has no reason to love the Warleggans. Nor Stackhouse, I believe.’
Demelza tilted her face to the sun. ‘Caroline tells me George has been courting some titled lady, Lady Harriet Something. I wonder how this will turn out now.’
He said: ‘You don’t advise me.’
‘On what?’
‘On what I should do.’
‘It won’t be in your hands, surely.’
‘Not entirely, of course. But partly it might. Now Harris Pascoe has died, they look on me as – well, in a manner as his successor.’
‘And you ask for my advice? Is it right for me to give it?’
‘Very right. You have suffered almost as much at George’s hands as I have.’
‘But is this not a man’s decision?’
‘Don’t hedge, my dear.’
She looked at him. ‘Then I will not hedge, my dear. I should have no part in it.’
‘No part in any attempt to bring him down? No part in any pressure applied to Warleggan’s Bank?’
‘You ask me, and I think not.’
On the beach Isabella-Rose was giggling at the top of her voice. The thin high infectious sound was not quite human; it was like some bibulous nightingale bubbling away.
Ross said: ‘When I came to stand trial for my life the Warleggans did all they could to secure a conviction. Without their money, their contrivings…’
‘What George and his kinsfolk have done they have to live with. What we do we have to live with. I look back on my life, Ross; oftentimes when you are away and I have no one to talk to I look back on my life, and I do not remember many shameful things. Perhaps I forget some! But the less of such I have to remember the better it pleases. So in saying have no part in it, it is not of George I think but of ourselves.’
‘And you would say that if Mackworth Praed or Rogers or Basset himself suggests any such move I should oppose it?’
Demelza rubbed some of the damp soil off her hands. ‘I do not think you have to work for the Warleggans, Ross. But I think, being once so involved, you should stand aside and take no part.’
‘Pilate did that.’
‘I know. I’ve always felt sorry for Pilate … But not for Caiaphas … Nor Judas.’
‘Though you often call on him.’
‘Do I?’ Demelza looked up. ‘Now you’re teasing.’
‘Only because you’re my better self. And I have to keep my better self in its place.’
‘Seriously … do you not agree?’
‘I know I ought to. But I regret the temptation has ever arisen. For it is not only George we’d be settling with; it is that odious uncle.’
‘He’s old,’ said Demelza. ‘He’ll soon be dead. Like so many other people and things. George is older too, Ross. People mellow, don’t they? Perhaps he has mellowed. Clowance, I think, did not find him so hateful.’
‘Clowance? When did she meet him?’
‘By accident,’ said Demelza, aware she had let it out. ‘Near Trenwith. A while ago.’
‘I didn’t know he ever came.’
‘Nor I. You were right to warn Geoffrey Charles that the house was neglected. I do wish he would come home for a while – take some leave. There’s been bad news from Portugal, hasn’t there?’
Ross refused to be side-tracked. ‘Did they speak to each other? Did George know who she was?’
‘I believe she informed him. But this was months ago, last summer, before ever you went away.’
‘And I was not told?’
‘I thought you might worry, and there was no need to worry.’
‘Another time allow me to choose.’
‘Your mind was already occupied with your coming journey to Portugal. I thought to save you a distraction.’
‘You mean you thought to save Clowance a talking-to. Judas, what a deceitful woman you are!’
‘Now you’ve stolen my word again!’
Jeremy had appeared off the beach and was coming through the gate.
Ross took his wife’s arm and gave it an admonitory squeeze. ‘All the same, it shows how tenderly my good intentions walk the tightrope. You say forgive and forget, and on the whole I agree … but, mention of him coming to Trenwith, no doubt gloating over the decay of the house, inciting the Harry brothers to new enormities, and – and talking with Clowance – this raises all my hackles over again, and I am ready to – ready to –’
‘What is raising your hackles, Father?’ Jeremy asked, coming up. ‘Who is the one to tremble now?’
Demelza said: ‘If there was a little more trembling done among my children, there would be better discipline at Nampara.’
‘Oh, pooh, Mama,’ said Jeremy. ‘You know you love your children far too much not to give them all their own way.’
‘Never rely on it,’ said Ross, doubling his fist. ‘If you –’
‘But I do!’ said Jeremy. ‘Am doing at this very moment. Seriously. Can we be serious for a little while?’
‘We were perfectly serious,’ Ross said, ‘until you turned up.’
Jeremy glanced from one to the other, uncertain whether he had made a tactical error in speaking to them both at the same time. Often in the past he had found it easier for his purpose if he approached one and let that one put his point of view to the other. They would confer, and usually the one he had approached would act as his advocate. At least, that was how he supposed it happened.
But this was probably too important to be treated that way.
‘Yesterday morning, Father,’ he said, ‘I did not go down Grace, as usual. I went the other way – for a walk along the cliffs. Fine views you get from there. Sands are very clean at the moment – no driftwood, no wreckage. But unfortunately it came on to drizzle. You remember? About ten. And I thought to myself, drot it, this is not good enough. I thought, I’m getting wet, and to no purpose; I must shelter somewhere. So I decided to shelter by going down Wheal Leisure. It just happened to be handy, there on the cliffs. So down I went.’
The brilliant morning was nearly over. Wisps of cloud, like white smoke from a fire, were drifting up from the south-west, unobtrusive as yet; they would darken and thicken by midday.
‘I thought I told you not to go down Leisure!’
‘I don’t remember that, sir. I remember you were a mite discouraging.’
There was a glint of irony in Ross’s eye. ‘And what did you find there? Gold?’
‘It is all in a poor way. Some of the shafts have fallen in, and it was necessary twice to come back and start again. The thirty fathom level is very wet; much of it is in two feet of water, running fast towards the lowest adit.’
‘It was dangerous to go on your own,’ Demelza said, memories stabbing at her.
‘I didn’t, Mama. Ben Carter went with me.’
‘Who also happened to be just strolling along the cliffs?’
‘Exactly … Well, in fact we were strolling together.’
‘I’m sure. So you went down – getting wetter than you ever could by staying out in the drizzle. What was your feeling about it all?’
‘Well, Ben is cleverer than I – ten times more experienced anyhow. He thinks it would pay to sink a couple of shafts deeper – say twenty fathoms deeper.’
‘Pay whom?’
‘We were working it out together: in this district the lodes usually run in an east–west direction – which means we could strike a continuation of the tin floors we’ve been working at Wheal Grace – or even pick up some of the old Trevorgie lodes. In any case the copper has only been exhausted so far as the present levels are concerned.’
After a moment Ross said: ‘There is no way of going deeper without installing pumping gear.’
‘In a few months if the spring is dry it should be possible to sink a shaft or two and temporarily drain them with hand pumps until we see if there are any signs of good quality working ground.’
‘And if there are?’
‘Then we could build an engine.’
‘But surely,’ Demelza said, ‘Wheal Leisure belongs to the Warleggans.’
‘After we’d been down we went to see Horrie Treneglos. Horrie’s grandfather was alive, of course, when the mine closed. Horrie asked his father about it; we thought the Warleggan interest might have fallen in altogether. But it seems it did not. The Warleggans by then had bought out most of the other venturers; so they sold off the few things that would fetch anything at all and declared the mine in abeyance, and that’s how it has stayed. So far as Mr John Treneglos knows, he owns an eighth share and the Warleggans about seven-eighths, though he thinks there was some relative of Captain Henshawe’s who refused to sell a sixty-fourth part … It’s really all worth nothing at the moment; a few stone buildings and a hole in the ground.’
Ross said: ‘Trust the Warleggans to preserve an interest in a hole in the ground.’
‘So it still isn’t feasible,’ said Demelza.
‘Well…’ Jeremy cleared his throat and looked from one to the other. ‘I suggested to Horrie that he could perhaps persuade his father to do something – such as call in at Warleggan’s Bank when he is next in Truro and say he would like to reopen Leisure with them. They’re sure to say conditions aren’t favourable – and he could then offer to buy their interest and go ahead on his own. They might very well sell to him where they’d not be willing to sell to us.’
Ross said to Demelza: ‘The boy is developing an instinct for commerce. And this deviousness is in the best traditions … Are you suggesting that John Treneglos should act as a sort of nominee?’
‘Not altogether, Father. We think – if the price isn’t too high – he might put up a third.’
‘It doesn’t sound like the John Treneglos I know.’
‘It could be profitable. His father did well out of it. And as it’s Treneglos land, he’s mineral lord and would get his dish if the mine opened; just as we have done all these years from Wheal Grace.’
‘In the old days Mr Horace Treneglos only put up oneeighth – and that reluctantly.’
‘Well … it’s like this. Since Vincent went down in his sloop Horrie says his father and mother are passing anxious to keep him home. They would, he thinks, welcome the idea of giving him a mining interest.’
‘And the other two-thirds?’
‘I thought you might take up a third, Father, and the other third we could advertise. With your name and Mr Treneglos’s heading the list I don’t think we should be hard set to find a few investors.’
Ross said after a few moments: ‘You are of a sudden very practical and enterprising. It is somewhat of a change.’
Jeremy flushed. ‘I simply thought it a good thing, with Wheal Grace nearing exhaustion…’ His voice ended in a mumble. Demelza eyed him.
Ross said: ‘Twenty years ago when Cousin Francis and I opened Wheal Grace it cost us about twelve hundred pounds. Today that would no doubt be fifteen hundred without the cost of having to buy the mine back. I know the expense would not come all at once; but the engine itself – if it came to that, as it surely would – would cost in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds.’
The first real smudge of cloud moved across the sun. All the lights of the day were lowered; then they came on again.
Jeremy said: ‘I have been studying pumping engines. While you have been away. I believe I could design a suitable engine – with Aaron Nanfan and one of the Curnows to advise. Of course that would not reduce the cost of manufacture, but it would be a considerable saving over all.’
Ross stared at his son, then at his wife.
‘Has he?’
‘If he says he has, Ross, he has.’
Ross said at length: ‘But, Jeremy, it cannot all be learned in a few months, however much you have been studying; nor all by diagrams.’
‘It has not all been diagrams.’
‘I shall need to be convinced of that. In any case it would not reduce the cost by more than – fifteen per cent?’
‘I thought twenty, Father.’
‘Even so, it would not do to build an engine which by some perhaps small flaw in design would put the other eighty per cent at risk. However,’ he went on as Jeremy was about to speak, ‘we can consider that later. Supposing we should come to look on this reopening as a practical idea – and clearly there’d have to be a deal of consideration before we came to that point – two hurdles must be cleared first. Thoughts of an engine must wait on those. First, is the prospect of the mine as good as Ben seems to think? Though I dislike the thought of trespassing on Warleggan property, I’d want to go down myself. And if Zacky Martin be well enough I’d wish him to go with me. Second, if we are convinced of a fair prospect, will the Warleggans sell?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Jeremy, satisfied with progress so far. ‘That’s the order of things.’
Ross frowned at the rising wind and perhaps a little also at his son’s tone of voice. ‘We’ve stopped your gardening, my dear.’
‘Oh, I shall go on for a little bit yet.’
‘I’ll help you,’ said Jeremy.
‘Well, you can try to pull that stroil out from among the fuchsia,’ said Demelza. ‘It’s a horrid job and it hurts my fingers…’ She looked up, pushing away her hair again. ‘D’you think George really would sell his interest, Ross?’
They stared at each other. ‘It’s possible now,’ he said. ‘We might even get it at a bargain price.’
‘And that,’ Demelza said, ‘would not be playing Caiaphas.’
‘Well, I shall be seeing John Treneglos on Friday. We’ll talk it over then.’
When Ross had gone in Jeremy said: ‘You two have a secret language which defeats me even yet. Damn it, what was this supposed to mean – this biblical thing? It was Caiaphas you said?’
‘Never mind,’ said his mother. ‘Sometimes it is more proper to be obscure…’
‘Especially in front of your children … Mother.’
‘Yes?’
‘I would like to be away next Saturday night.’
‘Not for the Scillies again?’
‘No. Though it springs from that. The Trevanions – who were so kind when I landed near their house – are giving a small party on Saturday evening and have invited me to spend the night there.’
‘How nice … They did not invite Clowance?’
‘No … I’m not sure if they know I have a sister.’
‘Inform them sometime. She needs taking out of herself.’
‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. But – well – perhaps I could ask one of them – Miss Cuby Trevanion – to spend a night here sometime towards the end of the month? As we had no party at Christmas, with Father being away, it wouldn’t come amiss to have one now. I don’t mean a big one. Perhaps a dozen or fifteen?’
‘Easter is early this year. We might do something as soon as Lent is over. Have you met Miss Trevanion’s parents?’
‘Her father’s been dead a long time. I’ve met her mother. Her brother – her elder brother, Major John Trevanion, that is – was away when I was there last. He is head of the family; but he has lost his wife recently, very young. Another brother, Captain George Bettesworth, was killed in Holland. There’s a third brother, Augustus, whom I also haven’t yet met, and another sister, Clemency.’
Demelza sat back on her heels and watched him tugging absent-mindedly at the couch grass. ‘I would not have expected them to be party-spirited at such a time.’
‘Oh, it is a music party. Clemency plays the harpsichord, and I believe some neighbours are coming in.’
‘Does Cuby play?’
He looked up, flushing again. ‘No. She sings a little.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Demelza. ‘Please tell her I would much like to meet her.’
She knew now what had been wrong – or what had been right – with Jeremy these last few weeks. He had been striding about, acting as if galvanized by one of those electric charges one read about in the newspaper. Also – wasn’t it true? – she fancied she had heard him shouting out at the top of his voice just now with Isabella-Rose on the beach. Did not Miss Cuby Trevanion explain everything?