Ross Poldark (18 page)

Although he went to Truro several times, Ross saw nothing more of Margaret. Nor had he the desire to. If his adventure with her on the night of the ball had not cured him of his love for Elizabeth, it had proved to him that to seek lust for its own sake was no solution.

The child Demelza settled into her new home like a stray kitten into a comfortable parlour. Knowing the great strength of family ties among the miners, he had been prepared after a week to find her curled in a corner weeping for her father and his thrashings. Had she shown any signs of homesickness he would have packed her off at once; but she did not, and Prudie gave her a good character.

The fact that within three hours of her coming Demelza had found her way into the good graces of the monstrous Prudie was another surprise. Perhaps she appealed to some half-atrophied mother instinct, as a starving duckling might to a great auk.

So after a month's trial he sent Jim Carter—Jud would not go—to see Tom Carne with two guineas for the hire of the girl's services for a year. Jim said
that Carne had threatened to break every bone in his body; but he didn’t refuse the gold, and this suggested that he was going to acquiesce in the loss of his daughter.

After their one large-scale invasion, the miners of Illuggan made no move. There was always a chance of trouble when the next feast day came, but until then the distance between the places would save accidental clashes. Ross suspected for a time that they might try to take the child away by force, and he told her that she was not to go far from the house. One evening, riding home from St. Ann's, a hail of stones was flung at him from behind a hedge, but that was the last sign of public disfavour. People had their own concerns to think of.

Turning over the lumber in the library, Prudie came upon a piece of stout printed dimity, and this, washed and cut up, made two sacklike frocks for the girl. Then an old bedspread with a deep lace edge was cut up into two pairs of combinations. Demelza had never seen anything like them before, and when she was wearing them, she always tried to pull them down so that the lace showed below the hem of her skirt.

Much against her will, Prudie found herself enlisted in a campaign in which she had no personal belief: the war on lice. It was necessary to point out to Demelza at frequent intervals that her new master wouldn’t tolerate dirty bodies or dirty hair.

“But how do he know?” the girl asked one day when the rain was trickling down the bottle-green glass of the kitchen window. “How do he know? My hair's dark and there an’t that change whether you d’ wash it or no.”

Prudie frowned as she basted the meat which was roasting on a spit over the fire. “Yes. But it d’ make a powerful difference to the number of cra’lers.”

“Cra’lers?” echoed Demelza, and scratched her head. “Why, everyone's got cra’lers.”

“He don’t like ’em.”

“Why,” said Demelza seriously, “
you’ve
got cra’lers. You’ve got cra’lers worser than what I have.”

“He don’t like ’em,” Prudie said stubbornly.

Demelza digested this for a moment.

“Well, how do you get rid of ’em?”

“Wash, wash, wash,” said Prudie.

“Like a blathering duck,” said Jud, who had just entered the kitchen.

Demelza turned her head and gazed at him with her interested dark eyes. Then she looked again at Prudie.

“’Ow is it you an’t got rid of ’em, then?” she asked, anxious to learn.

“An’t washed enough,” said Jud sarcastically. “Tedn’t right fur human beings to ’ave skins. They must scrub theirselves raw as a buttock of beef to please some folk. But then again it depend ’pon how cra’lers do attach their selves. Cra’lers is funny, kicklish creatures. Cra’lers like some folk better’n other folk. Cra’lers ’ave a natural infinity with some folk, just like they was brother and sister. Other folk, God makes ’em clean by nature. Look at me. You won’t find no cra’lers on
my
head.”

Demelza considered him.

“No,” she said, “but you an’t gotten any hair.”

Jud threw down the turfs he had brought in. “If you learned her to hold ’er tongue,” he said pettishly to his wife, “twould be a sight betterer than learning ’er that. If you learned ’er manners, how to speak respectable to folk and answer respectable an’
be
respectable to her elders an’ betters, twould be a sight betterer than that. Then ye could pat yourself on the ’ead and say, ‘Thur, I’m doing a tidy job, learning her to be respectable.’ But what are ee doing? Tedn’t ’ard to answer. Tedn’t ’ard to see. You’re learning her to be sassy.”

That evening Jim Carter was sitting in the Martins’ cottage talking to Jinny. With the family of Martins he had become fondly familiar during the winter of his work at Nampara. As his attachment for Jinny grew, he saw less and less of his own family. He was sorry for this, for his mother would miss him, but he could not be in two places at the same time, and he felt more at home, more able to expand and talk and enjoy himself in the easygoing cottage of these people who knew him less intimately.

His father, an expert tributer, had earned good money until he was twenty-six, and then the phthisis with which he had been threatened for years became the master, and in six months Mrs. Carter was a widow with five young children to bring up, the eldest, Jim, being eight.

Fred Carter had gone to the lengths of paying sixpence a week for him to attend school at Aunt Alice Trevemper's, and there had been talk of the child staying there another year. But necessity blew away talk as wind blows smoke and Jim became a jigger at Grambler. This was “grass” or surface work, for the Cornish miners did not treat their children in the heartless fashion of the up-country people. But jigging was not ideal, since it meant sieving copper ore in water and standing in a doubled-up position for ten hours a day. His mother was worried because he brought up blood when
he got home. But many other boys did the same. The one and threepence a week made a difference.

At eleven he went below, beginning by working with another man and wheeling the material away in barrows; but he had inherited his father's talent and by the time he was sixteen he was a tributer on his own pitch and earning enough to keep the household. He was very proud of this, but after a couple of years he found himself losing time through ill health and saddled with a thick loose cough like his father's. At twenty, with a deeply laid grievance against fate, he allowed his mother to bully him into leaving the mine, into throwing away all his earning power, into handing over his pitch to his younger brother and applying for work as a
farm labourer.
Even with the fair wages paid by Captain Poldark, he would earn less in a quarter than he usually made in a month; but it was not only the loss of money, not even the loss of position which upset him. He had mining in his blood; he liked the work and wanted the work.

He had given up something that he wanted very much. Yet already he was stronger, steadier. And the future had lost most of its fear.

In the Martins’ cottage he sat in a corner and whispered to Jinny, while Zacky Martin smoked his clay pipe on one side of the fireplace, reading a newspaper, and on the other side Mrs. Zacky nursed on one arm Betsy Maria Martin, aged three, who was recovering from a perilous attack of measles, while on the other arm their youngest, a baby of two months, grizzled fitfully. The room was faintly lighted by a thin earthenware lamp or “chill,” with two wicks in little lips at the sides of the well. The well contained pilchard oil and the smell was fishy. Jinny and Jim were seated on a homemade wooden form and were glad of the comfortable obscurity of the shadows. Jinny would not go out after dark yet, even with Jim for escort—the only sore point in their friendship—but she swore she hadn’t a minute's peace when every bush might hide a crouching figure. Better here, even with all her family to play gooseberry.

In the dim light only portions of the room showed up, surfaces and sides, curves and ends and profiles. The table had just been cleared of the evening meal of tea and barley bread and pease pudding; a wet circle showed where the ancient pewter teapot had leaked. At the other end was a scattering of crumbs left by the two youngest girls. Of Zacky could be seen only the thick brush of his red-grey hair, the jutting angle of his pipe, the curl of the closely printed
Sherbome Mercury
, grasped in a hairy hand as if it was in danger of flying away. Mrs. Zacky's steel-rimmed spectacles glinted and each side of her flat face with
its pursed whistling lips was illuminated in turn like different phases of the moon as she gazed first at one fretful child and then the other. The only thing to be seen of the infant Inez Mary was a grey shawl and a small chubby fist clasping and unclasping air as if asserting her frail stake in existence. A shock of red hair and a freckled nose slumbered uneasily on Mrs. Zacky's other shoulder.

On the floor Matthew Mark Martin's long bare legs glimmered like two silver trout; the rest of him was hidden in the massive pool of shadow cast by his mother. On the wall beside Jinny and Jim another great shadow moved, that of the tawny cat, which had climbed on the shelf beside the chill and blinked down on the family.

This was the best week of all, when Father Zacky was on the night core, for he allowed his children to stay up until nearly nine o’clock. Use had accustomed Jim to this routine, and he saw the moment approaching when he must leave. At once he thought of a dozen things he still had to say to Jinny, and was hurrying to say them, when there came a knock on the door and the top half swung open to show the gaunt, powerful figure of Mark Daniel.

Zacky lowered his paper, unscrewed his eyes, and glanced at the cracked hourglass to reassure himself that he had not overstayed his leisure.

“Early tonight, boy. Come in and make yourself ’tome, if you’ve the mind. I’ve not put so much as foot to boot yet.”

“Nor me neither,” said Daniel. “Twas a word or two I wanted with ee, boy, just neighbourly, as you might say.”

Zacky knocked out his pipe. “That's free. Come in and make yourself ’tome.”

“Twas a word in private,” said Mark. “Asking Mrs. Zacky's pardon. A word in your ear ’bout a little private business. I thought mebbe as you’d step outside.”

Zacky stared and Mrs. Zacky whistled gently to her fretful charges. Zacky put down his paper, smoothed his hair, and went out with Mark Daniel.

Jim gratefully took advantage of the respite to add to his whisperings: words of importance about where they should meet tomorrow, if she had finished mine work and housework before dark and he his farming… She bent her head to listen. Jim noticed that in whatever shadow they sat some light attached itself to the smooth pale skin of her forehead, to the curve of her cheeks. Light, there was always light for her eyes.

“Tes time you childer was all asleep,” said Mrs. Zacky, unpursing her lips. “Else you’ll be head-in-the-bed when you did ought to be up. Off now, Matthew Mark. And you, Gabby. And Thomas. Jinny, m’ dear, it is hard to lose your young man s’early in the day, but you know how tis in the morning.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Jinny, smiling.

Zacky returned. Everyone gazed at him curiously, but he affected to be unaware of their scrutiny. He went back to his chair and began folding the newspaper.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Zacky, “that I holds wi’ secret chatter between grown men. Whispering together just like they was babies. What was you whispering about, Zachariah?”

“About how many spots there was on the moon,” said Zacky. “Mark says ninety-eight and I says an hundred and two, so we agrees to leave it till we see the preacher.”

“I’ll have none of your blaspheming in here,” said Mrs. Zacky. But she said it without conviction. She had far too solid a faith in her husband's wisdom, built up through twenty years, to do more than make a token protest at his bad behaviour. Besides, she would get it out of him in the morning.

Greatly daring among the shadows, Jim kissed Jinny's wrist and stood up. “I think it is about time I was going, Mr. and Mrs. Zacky,” he said, using what had come to be a formula of farewell. “And thank ee once again for a comfortable welcome. Good night, Jinny; good night, Mr. and Mrs. Zacky; good night, all.”

He got to the door but Zacky stopped him there. “Wait, boy. I d’ feel like a stroll, and there's swacks of time. I’ll take a step or two with you.”

A protest from Mrs. Zacky followed him into the drizzling darkness. Then Zacky shut the doors and the night closed in on them, dank and soft with the fine misty rain falling like spider's webs on their faces and hands.

They set off, stumbling at first in the dark but soon accustomed to it, walking with the surefootedness of countrymen on familiar ground.

Jim was puzzled at his company and a little nervous, for there had been something grim in Zacky's tone. As a person of “learning,” Zacky had always been of some importance in his eyes: whenever Zacky took up the tattered
Sherborne Mercury
, the magnificence of the gesture struck Jim afresh; and now too he was Jinny's father. Jim wondered if he had done something wrong.

They reached the brow of the hill by the Wheal Grace workings. From there the lights of Nampara House could be seen, two opal blurs in the dark.

Zacky said: “What I d’ want to tell you is this. Reuben Clemmow's been seen at Marasanvose.”

Marasanvose was a mile inland from Mellin Cottages. Jim Carter had a nasty feeling of tightness come upon his skin as if it were being screwed up.

“Who seen him?”

“Little Charlie Baragwanath. He didn’t know who twas, but from the describing there's little room to doubt.”

“Did he speak to un?”

“Reuben spoke to Little Charlie. It was on the lane twixt Marasanvose and Wheal Pretty. Charlie said he’d got a long beard, and a couple of sacks over his shoulders.”

They began to walk slowly down the hill towards Nampara.

“Just when Jinny was getting comfortable,” Jim said angrily. “This’ll upset her anew if she’d get to know.”

“That's why I didn’t tell the womenfolk. Mebbe some thing can be done wi’out they knowing.”

For all his disquiet, Jim felt a new impulse of gratitude and friendship towards Zacky for taking him into his confidence in this way, for treating him as an equal, not as a person of no account. It tacitly recognized his attachment for Jinny.