Ross Poldark (15 page)

He stared up at the row of portraits on the wall beside the stairs. There were others about the hall and many more in the gallery above. He would have had difficulty in picking out more than a dozen by name; most of the early ones were Trenwiths, and even some later portraits were unnamed and undated. A small faded painting in the alcove with the Bible, where it should not get too much light, was that of the founder of the male side of the family, one Robert d’Arqué, who had come to England in 1572. The oil paint had cracked and little was to be distinguished except the narrow ascetic face, the long nose, and the hunched shoulder. There was then discreet silence for three generations until one came to an attractive painting by Kneller of Anna-Maria Trenwith and another by the same artist of Charles Vivian Raffe Poldarque, whom she had married in 1696. Anna-Maria was the beauty of the collection, with large dark blue eyes and fine red-gold hair.

Well, Elizabeth would be a worthy addition, would grace the company if someone could be found to do justice to her. Opie might be too fond of the dark pigments.

He heard a door shut and a footstep. He turned, expecting Verity, and found Elizabeth.

“Good morning, Ross,” she smiled. “Verity is in Sawle. She always goes on a Wednesday morning. Francis and his father are at the mine. Aunt Agatha is in bed with the gout.”

“Oh yes,” he said woodenly. “I had forgotten. No matter.”

“I am in the parlour,” she said, “if you would care to keep me company a few minutes.”

He followed her slowly towards the parlour door; they entered and she sat down at the spinning wheel but did not resume what she had been doing.

She smiled again. “We see so little of you. Tell me how you enjoyed the ball.”

He took a seat and looked at her. She was pale this morning, and her simple dress of striped dimity emphasized her youth. She was a little girl with all the appeal of a woman. Beautiful and fragile and composed, a married woman. A black desire rose in him to smash the composure. He subdued it.

“We were so pleased that you were there,” she went on. “But even then you danced so little that we hardly saw you.”

“I had other business.”

“We had no intention of being there,” she said, a little put out by the grimness of his tone, “it was quite on impulse that we went.”

“What time will Francis and Charles be back?” he asked.

“Not yet, I’m afraid. Did you see how George Warleggan enjoyed the
écos-saise?
He had sworn all along that nothing would persuade him to attempt it.”

“I don’t remember the pleasure.”

“Did you wish to see Francis on something of importance?”

“Not Francis—my uncle. No. It can wait.”

There was silence.

“Verity said you were going to Redruth Fair yesterday. Did you get all the stock you wanted?”

“Some of it. It was on a question of unexpected stock that I wished to see my uncle.”

She looked down at the spinning wheel. “Ross,” she said in a low voice.

“My coming here upsets you.”

She did not move.

“I’ll meet them on the way back,” he said, rising.

She did not answer. Then she looked up and her eyes were heavy with tears. She picked up the woollen thread she had been spinning and the tears dropped on her hands.

He sat down again with a sensation as if he was falling off a cliff.

Talking to save himself, he said: “At the fair yesterday I picked up a girl, a child; she had been ill treated by her father. I needed someone to help Prudie in the house; she was afraid to go home; I brought her back to Nampara. I shall keep her as a kitchen maid. I don’t know the law of the matter. Elizabeth, why are you crying?”

She said: “How old is the girl?”

“Thirteen. I—”

“I should send her back. It would be safer even if you had her father's permission. You know how hard people are judged.”

“I shall not come here again,” Ross said. “I upset you—to no purpose.”

She said: “It's not your
coming
—”

“What am I to think, then?”

“It only hurts me to feel that you hate me.”

He twisted his riding crop round and round. “You know I don’t hate you. Good God, you should know that—”

She broke the thread.

“Since I met you,” he said, “I’ve had no eyes and no thought for any other girl. When I was away, nothing mattered about my coming back but this. If there was one thing I was sure of, it wasn’t what I’d been taught by anyone else to believe, not what I learned from other people was the truth but the truth that I felt in myself—about you.”

“Don’t say any more.” She had gone very white. But for once her frailness did not stop him. It had to come out now.

“It isn’t very pretty to have been made a fool of by one's own feelings,” he said. “To take childish promises and build a—a castle out of them. And yet— even now sometimes I can’t believe that all the things we said to each other were so trivial or so immature. Are you sure you felt so little for me as you pretend? D’you remember that day in your father's garden when you slipped away from them and met me in the summerhouse? That day you said—”

“You forget yourself,” she whispered, forcing the words out.

“Oh no I don’t. I remember you.”

All the conflicting feeling inside her suddenly found an outlet. The mixed motives for asking him in; the liking, the affection, the feminine curiosity, the
piqued pride; they suddenly merged into indignation to keep out some thing stronger. She was as much alarmed at her own feelings as indignant with him; but the situation had to be saved somehow.

She said: “I was wrong to ask you to stay. It was because I wanted your friendship, nothing more.”

“I think you must have your feelings under a very good control. You turn them about and face them the way you want them to be. I wish I could do that. What's the secret?”

Trembling, she left the spinning wheel and went to the door.

“I’m married,” she said. “It isn’t fair to Francis to speak as you—as we are doing. I’d hoped that we could still be good neighbours—and good friends. We live so close—could help each other. But you can forget nothing and forgive nothing. Perhaps I’m expecting too much… I don’t know. But, Ross, ours was a boy-and-girl attachment. I was very fond of you and still am. But you went away and I met Francis, and with Francis it was different. I
loved
him. I’d grown up. We were not children but grown people. Then came the word that you were dead… When you came back I was so happy; and so very sorry that I’d not been able to—to keep faith with you. If there’d been any way of making it up to you, I’d gladly have done it. I wished that we still should be close friends, and thought… Until today I thought that we could. But after this—”

“After this it's better that we shouldn’t be.”

He came up to the door and put his hand on it. Her eyes were dry enough now and exceptionally dark.

“For some time,” she said, “this is goodbye.”

“It's goodbye.” He bent and kissed her hand. She shrank from his touch as if he was unclean. He thought he had become repulsive to her.

She went with him to the front door, where Darkie whinnied at the sight of him.

“Try to understand,” Elizabeth said. “I love Francis and married him. If you could forget me, it would be better. There's no more I can say than that.”

He mounted the mare and looked down at her.

“Yes,” he agreed. “There's no more to say.”

He saluted and rode away, leaving her standing in the dark of the doorway.

W
ELL, HE TOLD HIMSELF, THAT WAS OVER. THE SUBJECT WAS CLOSED. IF that queer perverted pleasure which came from striking with his barbed tongue at her composure—if that were satisfaction, then he had found some in the interview.

But all he felt was an ashen desolation, an emptiness, a contempt for himself. He had behaved badly. It was so easy to play the jilted lover, the bitter and sarcastic boor.

And even if he had upset her by his attack, yet her defence had more than levelled the score. Indeed, their positions being what they were, she could in a single sentence strike more surely at him than he at her with all the ingenuity his hurt could devise.

He was past Grambler and nearly home before he realized he had not seen either Charles or Verity, and the two questions he had gone to Trenwith to ask remained unanswered.

He rode down the valley, too full of a deadly inertia of spirit to find satisfaction in the sight of his land, which was at last beginning to show signs of the attention it was receiving. On the skyline near Wheal Grace he could see Jud and the boy Carter busy with the six yoked oxen. At present they were not used to working as a team, but in a week or so a child would be able to drive them.

At the door of Nampara he climbed wearily down from his horse and stared at Prudie, who was waiting for him.

“Well, what is it?” he said.

“Thur's three men to see ee. They stank into the ’ouse without so much as a by-your-leave. They’re in the parlour.”

Uninterested, Ross nodded and entered the living-room. Three workingmen were standing there, big and square-shouldered and stolid. From their clothes he could tell they were miners.

“Mister Poldark?” the eldest spoke. There was no seemly deference in his tone. He was about thirty-five, a powerfully built, deep-chested man with bloodshot eyes and a heavy beard.

“What can I do for you?” Ross asked impatiently. He was in no mood to receive a delegation.

“Name of Carne,” said the man. “Tom Carne. These my two brothers.”

“Well?” said Ross. And then after he had spoken, the name stirred in his memory. So the matter was to resolve itself without Charles's advice.

“I hear tell you’ve gotten my dattur.”

“Who told you that?”

“The Widow Richards said you took ’er ’ome.”

“I don’t know the woman.”

Carne shifted restlessly and blinked his eyes. He had no intention of being sidetracked.

“Where's my dattur?” he said grimly.

“They’ve searched the ’ouse,” came from Prudie at the door.

“Hold your noise, woman,” said Carne.

“By what right do you come here and talk to my servant like that?” Ross asked with malignant politeness.

“Right, by God! You’ve slocked my dattur. You ’ticed her away. Where is she?”

“I have no idea.”

Carne thrust out his bottom lip. “Then you’d best find out.”

“Aye!” said one of the brothers.

“So that you may take her home and beat her?”

“I do what I choose wi’ me own,” said Carne.

“Her back is already inflamed.”

“What right ha’ you to be seein’ her back! I’ll have the law on you!”

“The law says a girl may choose her own home when she is fourteen.”

“She's not fourteen.”

“Can you prove it?”

Carne tightened his belt. “Look ’ere, man; tedn’t fur me to prove nothing. She's my dattur, and she’ll not go to be plaything to a rake-hell dandy, not now, nor when she's forty, see?”

“Even that,” said Ross, “might be better than caring for your pigsty.”

Carne glanced at his brothers.

“He ain’t going to give ’er up.”

“We can make un,” said the second brother, a man of about thirty with a pockmarked face.

“I’ll go fetch Jud,” said Prudie from the door, and went out flapping in her slippers.

“Well, mister,” said Carne. “What's it to be?”

“So that's why you brought your family,” said Ross. “Without the spunk to do a job yourself.”

“I could ’a brought two ’undred men, mister.” Carne thrust his face forward. “We don’t ’old wi’ cradle thiefs down Illuggan way. Scat un up, boys.”

Immediately the other two turned; one kicked over a chair, the other upended the table on which were some cups and plates, Carne picked up a candlestick and dashed it on the floor.

Ross walked across the room and took down from the wall one of a pair of French duelling pistols. This he began to prime.

“I’ll shoot the next man who touches furniture in this room,” he said.

There was a moment's pause. The three men stopped, plainly thwarted.

“Where's my dattur?” shouted Carne.

Ross sat on the arm of a chair. “Get off my land before I have you committed for trespass.”

“We’d best go, Tom,” said the youngest brother. “We can come back wi’ the others.”

“Tes my quarrel.” Carne plucked at his beard and stared obliquely at his opponent. “Will ye buy the girl?”

“What d’you want for her?”

Carne considered. “Fifty guineas.”

“Fifty guineas, by God!” shouted Ross. “I should want all seven of your brats for that.”

“Then what’ll you give me for ’er?”

“A guinea a year so long as she stays with me.”

Carne spat on the floor.

Ross stared at the spittle. “A thrashing, then, if that's what you want.”

Carne sneered. “Tes easy to promise from behind a gun.”

“It is easy to threaten when it's three to one.”

“Nay, they’ll not interfere if I tell ’em no.”

“I prefer to wait until my men arrive.”

“Aye, I thought you would. Come us on, boys.”

“Stay,” said Ross. “It would give me pleasure to wring your neck. Take off your coat, you bastard.”