Jeremy Poldark (4 page)

He
had learned a great deal: that humanity was infinitely variable and infinitely
contradictory, so that all treatment consisted of patient experiment and trial
and error; that the surgeon and the physician were often mete onlookers at
battles fought under their eyes; that no outward aid was one quarter as
powerful as the ordinary recuperative power of the body, and that drugs and
potions were sometimes as likely to hinder as to help.

If
he had been a self-satisfied man he might have found some comfort in having
come this far, for many of the surgeons and apothecaries he met had learned
nothing like this in a lifetime and were never likely to. He avoided members of
his own profession, for he found himself constantly at loggerheads with them.
His only comfort was that they were often as much at variance among themselves,
having only one element in common, an absolute and unquestioning confidence
that their own method was infallible, a confidence that seemed in no way shaken
when one of their patients died. If a sick man collapsed under treatment that
was the fault of the sick man, not of the method.

What
Dr. Thomas Choake believed Dwight was not sure. Since their early quarrel they
had seen little of each other; but as they practised over much the same
territory they were bound to have occasional contacts. Choake always had an
instant remedy to hand - sometimes he seemed even to have decided on a remedy
before he saw the patient. But whether these remedies sprang from a fixed
theory of medicine - or merely from the impulses of his own brain Dwight was
never able to tell. '

This
noon Dwight had several patients to visit, the first: a call on Charlie
Kempthorne. Two years ago Kempthorne had had a consumption of both lungs, the
top, only of each affected, but enough to spell a death sentence. Now he was
apparently well, and had been all this year; was free of cough, had put on
weight and was working again, not as a miner but as a sailmaker. He was at
home, as Dwight had expected, and sitting at the door of his cottage busy with
a coarse needle and thread. He grinned all over his lean over-brown face when
he saw the physician, and got up to greet him.

Come
inside, sur. Tis a pleasure to see you. I bin saving some eggs till you passed
by.

I'm
not here to stay," said Enys pleasantly. "Just a visit, to see you're
following instructions. Thank you all the same."

"
Tis no 'ardship to go on with the treatment. Here I sit in the dryth, day in
day out, stitching away and makin' more money than I did as a sumpman"

"And
Lottie and May?" Kempthorne had two scrawny little daughters, of five and
seven. He had lost his wife in a drowning accident three years; ago.

"
They'm down to Mrs. Load's. Though what they d'learn I'm vexed to think."
Kempthorne wet the thread in his mouth and paused with it between finger and
thumb to look at the other man slyly. I suppose you d'know there's more fever
abroad. Aunt Sarah Tregeagle asked for me to tell you."

Dwight
did not comment, having a distaste for discussing diseases in general terms
with his patients.

"The
Curnows have it, and Betty Coad and the Ishbels, she asked for me to tell you.
Of course, tis no more'n you've reason to expect in August month."

"A
fine big sail, that."

Charlie
grinned. "Aye, sur. For the One and All of St. Ann's. She need all her
canvas."

Would
you make sails for the revenue boats as well?"

Only
if so be as I could stitch in a flaw so that they ripped when giving
chase."

From
here to the open square at the foot, of the hill it was not safe to ride a
horse, and Dwight walked thoughtfully down the steep rutted track of
Stippy-Stappy Lane. These cottages, the better ones of the village, occupied
one side of the lane; on the other, beyond the overgrown Cornish wall, the
valley fell steeply; into a gully where a part of the Mellingey River ran away
to the sea and worked the tin stamps. Each house was about six feet below its
neighbour, and at the last of them Dwight tethered his horse. As he knocked at
the door a shaft of brassy sunlight fell through the clouds on the clustered
cottages below, giving their roofs a wet gleam, anticipating the rain.

Here
lived Jacka Hoblyn, who had his own tin stamp, Polly his wife, their daughter
Rosina, a semi-cripple, and their younger daughter Parthesia, a lively little
creature of eleven, who, opened the door. There were two small rooms downstairs,
with lime-ash floors, in one of which Rosina carried on her work as a
sempstress and patten maker. Parthesia said her mother was in bed-and hopped
ahead of him up the outside stone staircase to the raftered loft where they
all slept. Having seen him in, she skipped off again in search of Father, who
she said was sick too.

Polly
Hoblyn, who was forty and looked fifty-eight, greeted him brightly; and Dwight
smiled back, taking in all the usual symptoms of an attack of the tertian ague:
the muscle tremors, the pinched pale face, the dead white fingers. It was an
unusually bad attack. The encouraging circumstance, was that he had been called
in-however tentatively and apologetically to deal with it. Two years ago
people with the ordinary complaints bought stuff, if they could afford it, from
Irby, the druggist at St. Ann's, or from one of the old women of the
neighbourhood; certainly they never dared call in Dr. Choake unless they had
broken a limb or were in extremis. That Dr. Enys did not mind administering to
folk who could pay only in kind, or not, even that way, they were slowly coming
to appreciate. Of course there were those who said he experimented on the poor
people; but there are always uncharitable tongues.

He
mixed the woman a dose of Peruvian bark; then, having watched it go down
between the clenching teeth, he put out two fever powders to be taken later and
a dose of sal polychrest and rhubarb for tonight. At this point the light in
the doorway darkened as Jacka Hoblyn appeared in the doorway.

"Good,
day to ee, Surgeon. Thesia, bring us a nackan from down b'low. I'm sweaten like
a bull. Well, what's amiss with Polly?"

"
The intermittent fever. She should
stay in
bed two days at
least. And you? I think you have the same. Come over here to the light, will
you.."

As
he got near, Dwight caught the strong whiff of gin. So it was one of Jacka's
times. Parthesia came dancing up with a square of red cloth, and the man-mopped
his heavy brow with it. His pulse was small, hard and quick. The fever was at a
later stage, and would cause an overmastering thirst.

"I
got a touch. But moving around is best for it, not loustering tween the
blankets. Fasterer you move, fasterer he go."

"
Now look, Hoblyn, I'd like you to take this now, and this powder in water
before you go to bed tonight. Understand?"'

Jacka
ran a hand through. his upstanding hair and glowered at him. "I don't ‘old
with doctor's trade.".

"Nevertheless,
you should take this. You'll be far better for it."

They
stared, at each other, but Dwight's prestige was just too much for the
streamer, and with some satisfaction he watched' the strong dose of soluble
tartar disappear. The night powder, if Hoblyn was sufficiently alert to drink
it, contained ten grains of jalap, but that didn't so much matter. Dwight felt
a greater concern, for the health of the three women than for the man.

As
he was leaving he saw Rosina limping up the hill with a jug of milk. She was
seventeen, and her fine eyes had not yet been spoiled by endless hours of close
sewing in a bad light. She smiled and curtsied as they met.

"
Your family should be improved tomorrow. See your mother takes her
powder."

"
I will surely. Thank you, sur.'

Your
father gets troublesome when he is in liquor?"

She
blushed. "It make him ill-tempered, sur; hard to get along with, as you
might say."

“And-violent?"

"-
Oh, no, sur - or but seldom. And then; he d'make it up to we afterwards."

Dwight
slid past the little bow window of Aunt Mary Rogers's shop and reached the,
huddle of broken-down cottages at the foot of the hill known as the Guernseys.
Here the worst squalor began. Windows stuffed with board and rags, doors
propped beside the openings they had been designed to fill, open cesspools,
with rat runs from one to another, broken roofs and lean-to shacks where
half-naked children crawled and played. Coming here, Dwight always felt
conscious of his own decent clothes: they were phenomena from, another world.
He knocked at the first cottage, surprised to see both halves of the door
closed, for the room within depended for its light on what came through the
door. A week ago he had delivered Betty Carkeek of her first-born son when two
fishwife-midwives had done their worst and failed.

He
heard the baby crying inside and after another minute. Betty came to the door,
opening the top half a suspicious inch.

"
Oh, tis you, sur. Do you come in." Betty Carkeek, nee Coad, was not the
sort who faded away, given half a chance, but he had been relieved when the
fourth and fifth days were past without any sign of childbed fever. She should
do well enough now. He followed her into the stone but it was hardly more stooping
his head on the threshold, and saw Ted Carkeek sitting over a small fire
stirring some sort of an herb brew. Ted and Betty had only been married a
month, but staying home when there was work to do, and work so hard to get,
seemed a poor way of showing your devotion.

He
nodded to the young man and went to look at the baby. Ted got up and moved to
go out, but Betty stopped him, and he grunted and went back to watching his
brew. The child was snuffly with a cold and its breathing rapid Dwight wondered
what the inexperienced girl had done; one was always struggling against
ignorance and neglect.

"
Your mother not here, Betty?"

"No,
sur. Mother's some slight."

Of
course. Kempthorne had mentioned the Coads. The ague?"

"Yes,
I reckon."

The
stuff on the stove begin to bubble and the fire spat as beads of moisture fell
on it. Smoke curled away from the open chimney and wove itself about the
blackened rafters.

"And
yourself?"

"Proper,
you. But Ted's not so smart”

Hold
your clack," said Ted from the fireplace.

Dwight
took no notice. "You're up too soon," he said to the girl. "If
Ted is home he can look after you."

“Tis
I been tending on he, more like.”

Ted
made another impatient movement, but she went on: " Let Surgeon see ee,
Ted. There's nought to be gained by sceedling there by the fire. He's no
telltale, we did ought to know that."

Ted
grumpily rose and came into the light of the door. "I sprit open my
shoulder, that's all. Physic won't do him no good."

Dwight
pulled back the sack the boy had over his shoulder. A musket ball had glanced
off the bone and come out, leaving in the first place; a clean enough wound.
But there was a good deal of inflammation now, not improved by the poultice of
boiled yarrow leaves.

"
Have you clean water here? What's that you're brewing on the fire?" Dwight
went about dressing the wound, making no comment on the circumstances.

And
because he didn't ask, the explanation came, though not until the dressing was
done and he had bled the man and was ready to leave - Ted Carkeek was partner
with four others in a cockleshell of a boat with which in quiet weather they
would venture the long and hazardous voyage to France to pick up spirits and
bring them back for sale. Theirs was no large-scale business like Mr.
Trencrom's; but by means of four or five runs a year they were able to make
enough to help things along. They had left last Saturday and returned
Wednesday, putting in to Vaughan's Cove, a strip of beach connecting at times
with Sawle, Cove, to find Vercoe and two other excisemen waiting ready to lay
hands on them. There had been a scuffle, their boat had sunk, drifting on the
rocks in the confusion, and Ted Carkeek had been shot in the shoulder. A
disagreeable affair, and one which might have repercussions.

"
Twasn't as if we was doin' wrong," Ted said indignantly.

“Tis
only turning a penny like other folk-and now we've, to start again from naught,
if so be as we're let be.” “Like as not we'll have soldiers in searching the
houses, like what they did in St. Ann's!"

Betty
said: "What we all d'want to know is, how the gaugers knowed where they
was going to land. Tisn't natural. Someone's been talking."

Dwight
fastened the clasps of his leather bag, giving a last uneasy glance in the direction
of the child. There was little he could do for so young a baby; in any case
Mrs. Coad would certainly make her daughter disobey him and give it some
witch's brew of her own. The child would survive or not according to its constitution.
He said: "The excise men have long ears. You'll need to rest that
shoulder, Ted."

"It
edn the first time that's: happened," said Ted. ; "Old man Pendarves
and Foster Pendarves was caught in April. Red-handed. It's not natural, I'll say."