The Four Swans (17 page)

`Who told you that?’

`In the narrow confines of this county, Ross, it is almost impossible to keep anything private.’

`Well, God’s life, I did not think that would get about! .. Well, I’m sorry; it was an impossible suggestion, as you know, knowing me, you must realize. I’m sorry if it has set you unexpected problems of conscience!’

Pascoe coloured. `It was your choice. I cannot tell you different. But Basset’s nomination of George Warleggan set me problems - and others beside me - problems I never expected to face as a burgess of this town. I have always been on friendly terms with Basset so far, that is, as a mere banking man is on terms with a landed gentleman of such distinction. Basset, Rogers & Co., the bank of which Basset and his brother-in-law are the principals, has always tended to have friendly relations with ours - though, as I think I told you, they have recently drawn much closer to Warleggan’s Bank and undertaken a number of interlocking schemes which will draw them closer still. As for Lord Falmouth, he has, I think, an account with all three banks, but keeps his substantial capital in London. I have nothing against the present Viscount except his high-handed and arbitrary manner when dealing with the city council; but on those grounds I have spoken up against him in the chamber and I have been one of those fully supporting Basset’s growing influence in the borough. But when it came to voting for the man Basset nominated, that was a pill I could not swallow!’

‘D’you mean you.’

`And so on the morning I found myself disavowing all my principles and political professions and casting my vote for this Salter man `Lord Falmouth’s candidate!’

‘Good God … I did not expect you to say that !’

Ross got, up and looked out into the street where the rain was splashing the mud from between the cobblestones. `And yet Salter did not get in even so.’

`No, but that was why the voting was so close. There were others, who voted as I did against the candidate, although they were really Basset men. George is not popular among some sections of this town, you know.’

`I had always thought George a Boscawen crony.’

`He has always sought their friendship, but I think never received it. That was why he changed sides when such a favourable opportunity presented itself. I must say, Falmouth behaved most reprehensibly on the morning.’

`Falmouth did? In what way?’

`He seemed utterly determined to defeat this revolt. And quite unscrupulouss about it. He publicly canvassed among the burgesses immediately before the election and he carried a file of papers - letters, private letters they were, written, to him by one or other of the corporation over the last few years - and threatened to publish them unless they voted for his candidate! I was not able to hear all that was said; but he seemed to be threatening some of the electors with the withdrawal of trade and monetary support!’

‘Then it’s remarkable he didn’t succeed.’

`I think the corporation acted under a quite uncontrollable impulse to prove they were not just puppets of the Recorder. In this I’m glad. I only regret the outcome.’

Ross was thoughtful. ‘A pity that Sir Francis’s second choice should be even more ill-judged than his first … I hope your vote will not affect your good relations with the Bassets.”

`It remains to be seen. I endeavoured to explain my reasons to Sir Francis afterwards, but I don’t think he found them satisfactory.’ My chief fear is that he will think I changed sides because of his bank’s new links with Warleggan’s.’

`You should have voted for George.’

Pascoe shut the ledger in irritation. ‘For you, of all people to tell me that!’

Ross smiled. `I’m sorry, dear friend, I shouldn’t have said so much. But you have always asserted that it is no business of a bank to take sides in any family feud. Your friendship. with me is, alas, too well known to deny; but your dislike of George has always been concealed behind the diplomacy of commerce. I grieve that it should have come out now when it might affect your association with Basset. If it does that, your, loyalty to me may prove expensive.’

Harris Pascoe opened, the ledger again and impatiently turned; the pages. `Look, sign this now, else I shall forget.’

Ross signed at the bottom of his account. It, showed a credit balance of nearly two thousand pounds.

Pascoe said: `For once you esteem yourself too high, Ross.’

`Oh?’

‘My vote was not cast out of loyalty to you but out of loyalty, if that is the w-word, to my own conscience. Happily for yourself, you see a good deal less of the Warleggans, than I do. Over the last few years I have developed an antipathy for them that can be second only to yours. They are not dishonest men - not at all - but they exemplify the new style of commercial adventurer who has emerged in England this last decade or so. To them business and profit is all, and humanity nothing. A man who works for them is of exactly the same value as a figure on their ledger sheet. And there is something extra dangerous about them in that their only contentment is in their lack of contentment with their present size. To be healthy, they must ever expand like a m-multiplying toadstool. They grasp and grow and grow and grasp…’ Pascoe stopped for breath. `Perhaps we who dislike them are old-fashioned. Perhaps this is to be the new way of the world; but I do not wish to change and I could not bring myself to cast my vote for such a one whatever good or harm it might do me!’

Ross put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. `I beg your pardon again. That’s a line of reasoning I find altogether more respectable … I wonder how well Basset and George know each other.’

`They must know each other well.’

`Oh, in a business way, yes. But that is not all there is to friendship.’

`Don’t go yet,’ Harris said. `You must stay awhile until this rain is over.’

In that event you’d have a lodger. I don’t think it will stop today. No

Rain never hurt no one. But thank you.’

II

When Ross got outside the rain was fairly jumping off the cobbles, and the rivulet down the side of the street was in spate. Yellow puddles among the mud bubbled like boiling water. There were few people about, and in Powder Street the blocks of tin glistened unattended. The coinage was due to begin tomorrow, but no one worried about theft since the blocks, though of a value of ten or twelve guineas each weighed over 300lb. and were not likely to be carried away unnoticed.

More weight of tin left Truro for overseas than from any other port, in the land: Its wharves were big and convenient and the river comfortably took vessels of 100: tons. Just at the moment Powder Street and its neighbour were in greater disorder than usual because the block of houses known as Middle Row was being pulled down, and a large new street was soon to be opened which would give space and air, to the huddled buildings surrounding it.

Tomorrow at, noon the controller and receiver would begin to weigh and assay the blocks of tin as they were brought into the coinage hall, and if their quality was up to standard they would have the Duchy arms stamped on them as a guarantee of their purity and having paid the toll. The coinage might last a week and would-be attended by the tinners, by London and foreign traders, by middlemen and pewterers and all the necessary officials of the occasion. The coinages were held quarterly, which was far too seldom, for it meant that tin could not be sold before it ,was stamped, and the mines, particularly: the small ones, had to run up credit in the intervals to pay their working expenses. So they borrowed money from the tin merchants at high rates of interest; and the larger mines obtained similar expensive credits from the banks, particularly from Warleggan’s, who were prepared to take more risks than the others. Hence when a mine failed, whatever was saleable of land, stores or property fell in to these creditors.

It was a system that needed to be changed. Cromwell had abolished the coinages, to the great benefit of the industry, but when Charles II was restored to his throne the coinage system had been restored with him;. and it had remained ever since. Ross had sometimes been tempted to begin a campaign for its alteration; but he had painful memories of his attempt to break the stranglehold of the copper smelters, a campaign that had resulted in near bankruptcy for himself and disaster for many of his friends; so once bitten twice shy.

The fact that he had such a balance to his credit at Pascoe’s just before a coinage was proof enough of the extraordinary richness of the lodes he had uncovered at Wheal Grace. But he was not staying for the coinage. Zacky Martin, who had been ill for eighteen months but had been brought back to health by Dwight Enys since his return, was staying instead.

Splashing-through the mud and the rain, Ross reached the Red Lion Inn which would benefit considerably from the new light and space that was. going to be given twits back door. He found it crowded. The heavy rain had driven everyone indoors, and a lot of hard drinking was in progress. Almost the first person he saw, in the crowded tap room was the innkeeper, Blight, with his pigtail and his red; waistcoat. The little man bustled anxiously across and Ross, shaking the water from his hat, said:

`I’m looking for my manager, Martin.’

`Oh, sur. I haven’t seen sight nor sound of Mr Martin all day. Maybe he’s over to the King’s Head.’

`But you. have seen him today. We were in together this morning. And he has a room here.’

‘Ah, yes, sur, I misremember. Well, he’s not in just now. I reckon he’s over to the King’s Head. Or maybe the Seven Stars’

There was a note of unwelcome in the innkeeper’s voice that Ross did not quite comprehend. The fracas he had had in this inn with George Warleggan was years ago, and Ross had been in, and out many times since.

`I’ll see if he’s in his room. What is the number?’

`Oh, I’ll send a boy.’

`No, I prefer to go myself.’

‘Er - it’s number nine, then. But I assure you he’s not in.’

Ross pushed through the crowd; exchanging a word of greeting here and there. In the lobby of the hotel it, was very dark and still very crowded. On the way to the stairs were two private rooms used for personal meetings, and the door of one of these was ajar and he saw several men in the room drinking and talking. He passed on to the stairs, but after he had mounted the first half-dozen a voice said:

`Captain Poldark.’

A small grey man wearing a clerk’s bob-wig. Thomas Kevill, Basset’s steward.

`Pardon me, sir, Sir Francis is in the private room and would esteem it a favour if you joined him.’

Ross turned and came down. He was not sure that he wanted conversation with Sir Francis just at this time, but it would be churlish to refuse. Maybe, he thought, as he went into the room, it would be an opportunity to try to straighten out any resentment Basset might feel towards Harris Pascoe. Then as he got in he stopped. Basset had three companions, Lord Devoran; a middleaged well-dressed man whom he did not know and George Warleggan. It was small wonder that Innkeeper Blight had been nervous.

`Captain Poldark,’ Basset said. `I caught sight of you as you passed the door, and thought you might drink with us.’ It was half a pleasant invitation, half a command.

`Thank you, I must return home this evening,’ Ross said. `But gladly for a brief space.’

`You know Lord Devoran, I imagine. Perhaps not Sir William Molesworth of Pencarrow. And Mr George Warleggan.’

`Lord Devoran, yes.’ Ross bowed slightly. `Sir William I do not, I think. ‘ Sir.’ Another bow.’ `And Mr Warleggan, yes. We went to school together.’

`Indeed, I didn’t know you were such old friends.’ Had nobody ever bothered to tell Basset, or did he feel himself important enough to sweep aside such petty quarrels between underlings? `We are drinking Geneva, but’ if you have a different taste…’

`Thank you, no. That’s what I’d choose to keep the rain out.’

Ross seated himself between George and Sir William Molesworth - there was no other chair - and accepted the glass that Kevill passed him.

`We were talking of the projected hospital, the infirmary that we hope to site near Truro, and I have been attempting to convert both Lord Devoran and Sir William Molesworth to my views.’ So that was it. Sir Francis was not a man to let an idea rest once it had taken hold of him. Sir William, whose estate was near Wadebridge, thought a hospital so far west would be useless to the eastern half of the county; Lord Devoran took the view that centralization was wrong and what they needed were a half dozen small dispensaries in different parts of the county.

George’s face had set into rigid lines when he saw Ross enter, but now he was behaving as if there were nothing unusual in the encounter. Ross thought he had lost a good deal of weight - it had been noticeable at Dwight’s wedding - but it did not look a particularly healthy loss. George did not so much look leaner, as older. Lord Devoran was a fussy little man who had been associated with Ross in the copper smelting venture and has lost money over it. At the time, he had seemed to resent this, but later he had been sufficiently generous to stand bail for Ross when he was too be tried for his life at Bodmin. He had a notorious daughter called Betty. Sir William Molesworth, a plump man with a grey moustache and a healthy outdoor complexion, was a person of altogether, more importance than Devoran, and his, opposition to Basset’s proposal would count for a good deal in the county.

`What is your opinion, Poldark?’ Basset said, `I know you favour the scheme in a general way but you have not expressed yourself, as to detail.’

Ross had no particular views of his own on this, but he knew Dwight’s.

`The ideal would be to have the central hospital and the dispensaries. That being unlikely of achievement, I would say the hospital must come first and must be sited somewhere in this area. We are equidistant from Bodmin, Wadebridge and Penzance.’

Basset nodded approval for the opinion he had expected, and general discussion broke out. Ross noticed some difference in George, in the way he spoke. Never in his life had he lacked confidence; and he had always been careful in his actual speech to exclude the accents of his childhood, to avoid the long R’s, the vowels becoming diphthongs, the lifted cadences; but equally he had been careful not to assume an accent which might, seem that he was trying with only partial success to ape his betters. He had kept his speech as carefully neutral as he knew how. Now it had moved on. Now it came distinctly nearer to the accent of Basset or Molesworth, and. was more refined than Devoran’s. Already. It had happened in only a few weeks. He had become a member of Parliament.