The Four Swans Read Free

time gossiping and dreaming and observing the traffic. The parlour is not fit to receive a distinguished patient ! See, have that frock taken away! And the shoes. Have a care for your position here!’
    He went on rebuking in his strong, resonant voice for three or four minutes. She stood observing him patiently from under her hearth rug of brown hair, waiting for the storm to pass, sensing that he needed to restore his authority after having; it briefly encroached on. It was rare for him ever to have it encroached on, for even when he visited his richest patients they were in distress and seeking his help. So he pronounced, and they waited on his words. He had never attended on George Warleggan himself, - since the man enjoyed abnormally good health. But today, as always when meeting him, he had had to defer. It. did not please him - it had made him sweat; and he took it out on Nellie Childs.
    ‘Ais, sur,’ she said,. and ‘no, sur,’ and `I’ll see to’n tomorrow, sur.’ She never failed to call him sir, even when he followed her into her bedroom; and this was the basis of their relationship. There was an unspoken; quid pro quo between them. So she took his reprimands seriously but not too seriously; and when he had done she began quietly to tidy up the parlour while he stood by the window, hands under his coat tails, thinking of what had passed.
    ‘Miss May’ll be wanting for to see ee, sur.’
    ‘Presently.’
    She tried to gather up all the slippers, and dropped two. Her hair ballooned over her face. `Reckon tis rare for the gentry to call on ee,’ like that, sur. Was he wanting for something medical?’
    `Something medical.’
    `Reckon he could’ve sent one of ‘is men for to fetch something medical, don’t ee reckon, sur?’
    Behenna did not answer.- She went out with the slippers and returned for the frock.
    `Reckon I never seen Mr Warleggan come here, afore like that. Praps twas private like, not wanting his household to know?’
    Behenna turned from the window. ‘I think it was Cato who said : ‘Nam nulli tacuisse nocet, nocet esse locutum.’ Always bear that in mind, Mrs Childs. It` should be a guiding principle of yours. As of many others.’
    ‘Mebbe so, but I don’t know what it d’mean, so I cann’t say, can I?’
    `For your benefit I will translate. “It is, harmful to no one to have been silent, but it is often harmful to have spoken.”’
     
    II
     
    George Tabb was sixty-eight and worked at the Fighting Cocks Inn as a horse keeper and porter. He earned 9s. a week, and sometimes received an extra shilling for helping with the cocking. He lived in a lean-to beside the inn, and there his wife, still an industrious woman in spite of ill-health, made about an extra Ł2, a year taking in washing. With the occasional pickings that come to a porter he therefore earned just enough to live on; but in the nine years since his friend and employer Charles William Poldark had died he had become too fond of the bottle, and now often drank himself below subsistence level. Emily Tabb tried to keep a tight hold on the purse strings, but with 5s. a week for bread, 6d. a week for meat, 9d. for half a pound each of butter and cheese, a shilling for two pecks of potatoes, and a weekly rental of 2s. there was no room for manoeuvre. Mrs Tabb endlessly regretted - as indeed did her husband in his soberer moments - the circumstances in which they had left Trenwith two and a half years ago. The widowed and impoverished Elizabeth Poldark had had to let her servants go gone by one; until only, the faithful Tabbs were left; but Tabb in his cups had presumed too much on his indispensability and when Mrs Poldark suddenly remarried - they had had to leave:
    One afternoon in early October George Tabb was brushing out the cockpit behind the inn to make ready for, a match that was, to take place the following day, when the innkeeper whistled to him and told him there was someone to see him. Tabb went out and found an