Ross Poldark (14 page)

They reached Nampara at sunset—a good half hour ahead of Jud, he reckoned—and Jim Carter came running out to take Darkie. The boy's health and physique had improved a lot during the winter. His dark Spanish eyes widened at
the sight of the cargo his master brought. But in a manner refreshingly different from the Paynters, he said no word and prepared to lead the horse away. The girl stared at him with eyes already wide with interest, then turned again and gazed at the house, at the valley and the apple trees and the stream, at the sunset, which was a single vermilion scar above the dark of the sea.

“Where's Prudie?” said Ross. “Tell her I want her.”

“She's not here, sur,” said Jim Carter. “She left so soon as you left. She did say she was walking over to Marasanvose to see ’er cousin.”

Ross swore under his breath. The Paynters had a unique gift for not being there when wanted.

“Leave Darkie,” he said. “I’ll attend to her. Jud is two miles away with some oxen I’ve bought. Go now and help him with them. If you hurry, you will meet him before he reaches the Mellingeyford.”

The boy dropped the reins, glanced again at the girl, then went off at a rapid walk up the valley.

Ross stared a moment at the piece of flotsam he had brought home and hoped to salvage. She was standing there in her ragged shirt and three-quarter-length breeches, her matted hair over her face and the dirty half-starved puppy at her feet. She stood with one toe turned in and both hands loosely behind her back, staring across at the library. He hardened his heart. Tomorrow would not do.

“Come this way,” he said.

She followed him, and the dog followed her, to the back of the house where between the still-room and the first barn the pump was set.

“Now,” he said, “if you are to work for me, you must first be clean. D’you understand that?”

“Yes… sur.”

“I cannot allow anyone dirty into the house. No one works for me if they are not clean and don’t wash. So take off your clothing and stand under the pump. I will work the pump for you.”

“Yes… sur.” She obediently began to untie the string at the neck of her shirt. This done, she stopped and looked slowly up at him.

“And don’t put those things on again,” he said. “I’ll find you something clean.”

“P’r’aps,” she said, “I could work the ’andle meself.”

“And stand under at the same time?” he said brusquely. “Nonsense. And hurry. I have not all evening to waste over you.” He went to the pump handle and gave it a preliminary jerk.

She looked at him earnestly for a moment, then began to wriggle out of her shirt. This done, a faint pink tinge was visible under the dirt on her face. Then she slipped out of her breeches and jumped beneath the pump.

He worked the handle with vigour. The first rinsing would not get rid of everything but would at least be a beginning. It would leave his position uncompromised. She had an emaciated little body, on which womanhood had only just begun to fashion its design. As well as the marks of her thrashings he could see blue bruises on her back and ribs where the boys had kicked her this after noon. Fortunately, like her, they had been barefoot.

She had never had such a washing before. She gasped and choked as the water poured in spurts and volumes upon her head, coursed over her body, and ran away to the draining trough. Garrick yelped but refused to move, so took a good deal of the water at secondhand.

At length, fearing he would drown her, he stopped, and while the stream of water thinned to a trickle he went into the still-room and picked up the first cloth he could find.

“Dry yourself on this,” he said. “I will fetch you some thing to put on.”

As he re-entered the house he wondered what that something was to be. Prudie's things, even if they were clean enough, would smother the child like a tent. Jim Carter would have been the nearest choice for size if he had owned any other clothes but those he was wearing.

Ross went up to his own room and ransacked the drawers, cursing himself for never thinking more than one move ahead. One could not keep the child shivering there in the yard forever. Finally he picked out a Holland shirt of his own, a girdle, and a short morning gown of his father's.

When he went out he found her trying to cover herself with the cloth he had given her, while her hair still lay in wet black streaks on her face and shoulders. He did not give her the things at once but beckoned her to follow him into the kitchen, where there was a fire. Having just succeeded in shutting Garrick out of the house, he poked up the fire and told her to stand in front of it until she was dry and to put on the makeshift garments in what manner she chose. She blinked at him wetly, then looked away and nodded to show she understood.

He went out again to unsaddle Darkie.

D
EMELZA CARNE SPENT THE NIGHT IN THE GREAT BOX BED WHERE JOSHUA Poldark had passed the last few months of his life. There was no other room where she could immediately go; later she could be put in the bedroom between the linen cupboard and the Paynters’ room, but at present it was full of lumber.

To her, who had slept all her life on straw, with sacks for covering, in a tiny crowded cottage, this room and this bed were of unthought luxury and unimagined size. The bed itself was almost as big as the room she and four brothers slept in. When Prudie, grumbling and flopping, showed her where she had to spend the night, she guessed that three or four other servants would come in later to share the bed, and when no one came and it seemed she was to be left alone, a long time passed before she could bring herself to try it.

She was not a child who looked far ahead or reasoned deep; the ways of her life had given her no excuse to do either. With a cottage full of babies she had had no time at all to sit and think, scarcely any even to work and think; and what was the good of looking for tomorrow when today filled all your time and all your energy and some times all your fears? So that in this sudden turn in her fortunes, her instinct had been to accept it for what it was, and as long as it lasted, glad enough but as philosophically as she had taken the fight at the fair.

It was only this sudden luxury which scared her. The drenching under the pump had been unexpected, but its roughness and lack of concern for her feelings had run true to type; it fell in with her general experience. Had she then been given a couple of sacks and told to sleep in the stables she would have obeyed and felt there was nothing amiss. But this development was too much like the stories Old Meggy the Sumpman's mother used to tell her: It had some of the
frightening, nightmare temper of those and some of the glitter of her mother's fairy tales in which everyone slept in satin sheets and ate off gold platters. Her imagination could gladly accept it in a story, but her knowledge of life could not accept it in reality. Her strange garments had been a beginning; they fitted nowhere and hung in ridiculous lavender-scented folds over her thin body; they were agreeable but suspect, as this bedroom was agreeable but suspect.

When at length she found the courage to try the bed, she did so with strange sensations; she was afraid that the big wooden doors of the bed would swing quietly to and shut her up forever; she was afraid that the man who had brought her here, for all his air of niceness and kind eyes, had some Evil Design, that as soon as she went off to sleep he would creep into the room with a knife or a whip—or merely creep into the room. From these fears her attention would be turned by the pattern of the tattered silk hangings on the bed, by the gold tassel of the bellpull, by the feel of the clean sheets under her fingers, by the beautiful curves of the bronze candlestick on the three-legged wicker table by the bed—from which candlestick guttered the single light standing between her and darkness, a light which by now should have been put out, and which would very soon go out of its own accord.

She stared into the dark chasm of the fireplace and began to fancy that something horrible might at any moment come down the chimney and plop into the hearth. She looked at the pair of old bellows, at the two strange painted ornaments on the mantelpiece (one looked like the Virgin Mary), and at the engraved cutlass over the door. In the dark corner beside the bed was a portrait, but she had not looked at it while the Fat Lady was in the room, and since the Fat Lady had left she had not dared to move out of the circle of the candlelight.

Time passed, and the candle was flaring up before it went out, sending smoky curls like wisps of an old woman's hair spiralling towards the beams. There were two doors, and that which led she-didn’t-know-where held a special danger although it was tight shut every time she craned to look.

Something scratched at the window. She listened with her heart thumping. Then suddenly she caught something familiar in the noise, and she jumped from the bed and flew to the window. Minutes passed before she saw how to open it. Then when a six-inch gap had been slowly levered at the bottom, a wriggling black thing squirmed into the room, and she had her arms round Garrick's neck, half strangling him from love and anxiety that he should not bark.

Garrick's nearness changed the whole picture for her. With his long rough tongue he licked her cheeks and ears while she carried him towards the bed.

The flame of the candle gave a preliminary lurch and then straightened for a few seconds more. Hurriedly she pulled across the hearthrug and another rug from near the door, and with these made on the floor an improvised bed for herself and the puppy. Then as the light slowly died from the room and one object after another faded into the shadows, she lay down and curled herself up with the dog and felt his own excited struggles relax as she whispered endearments in his ear.

Darkness came and silence fell and Demelza and Garrick slept.

Ross slept heavily, which was not surprising, as he had had no sleep the night before, but a number of odd and vivid dreams came to disturb him. He woke early and lay in bed for a time looking out at the bright windy morning and thinking over the events of the past two days. The ball and the gaunt, wild Margaret: the aristocratic commonplace and the disreputable commonplace. But neither had been quite ordinary for him. Elizabeth had seen to that. Margaret had seen to that.

Then the fair and its outcome. It occurred to him this morning that his adoption of yesterday might have trouble some results. His knowledge of the law was vague and his attitude towards it faintly contemptuous, but he had an idea that one could not take a girl of thirteen away from her home without so much as a by-your-leave to her father.

He thought he would ride over and see his uncle. Charles had been a magistrate for over thirty years, so there was a chance he would have some views worth hearing. Ross also gave more than a thought to the violent court being paid to Verity by Captain Andrew Blamey. After the first, they had danced every dance together up to the time of his leaving the ballroom. Everyone would soon be talking, and he wondered why Blamey had not been to see Charles before now. The sun was high when he rode over to Trenwith. The air was exhilaratingly fresh and alive this morning, and all the colouring of the countryside was in washed, pastel shades. Even the desolate area round Grambler was not unsightly after the greater desolation he had seen yesterday.

As he came in sight of the house, he reflected again upon the inevitable failure of his father to build anything to rival the mellow Tudor comeliness of this old home. The building was not large, but gave an impression of space and of having been put up when money was free and labour cheap. It was
built in a square about a compact courtyard, with the big hall and its gallery and stairs facing you as you entered, with the large parlour and library leading off on the right and the withdrawing room and small winter parlour on the left, the kitchens and buttery being behind and forming the fourth side of the square. The house was in good repair for its age, having been built by Jeffrey Trenwith in 1509.

No servant came out to take the mare, so he tethered her to a tree and knocked on the door with his riding whip. This was the official entrance, but the family more often used the smaller door at the side, and he was about to walk round to that when Mrs. Tabb appeared and bobbed respectfully.

“Morning, sur. Mister Francis you’re wanting, is it?”

“No, my uncle.”

“Well, sur, I’m sorry but they’re both over to Grambler. Cap’n Henshawe come over this morning and they both walked back wi’ him. Will ee come in, sur, while I ast how long they’ll be?”

He entered the hall and Mrs. Tabb hurried off to find Verity. He stood a minute staring at the patterns made by the sun as it fell through the long narrow mullioned windows, then he walked towards the stairs where he had stood on the day of Elizabeth's wedding. No crowd of bedecked people today, no raucous cockfight, no chattering clergymen; he preferred it this way. The long table was empty except for its row of candlesticks. On the table in the alcove beside the stairs stood the big brass-bound family Bible, now seldom used except by Aunt Agatha in her pious moments. He wondered if Francis's marriage had yet been entered there, as all the others had for two hundred years.