Ross Poldark (33 page)

He handed to the clerk the piece of notepaper on which, in watery ink, Choake had scrawled his diagnosis. The clerk stood hesitantly with it in his hand until Mr. Warleggan impatiently beckoned him to pass it to the bench. The note was read and there was a brief consultation.

“Is it your contention that the prisoner is not in a fit state of health to be sent to prison?” Warleggan asked.

“He is very gravely ill.”

“When was this examination made?” Dr Halse asked coldly.

“About three months ago.”

“Then he was in this state when he went poaching?”

Ross hesitated, aware now of the unfriendly nature of the question. “He has been ill for some time.”

Dr. Halse sniffed at his handkerchief. “Well, speaking for myself, I feel that if a man is—hm—well enough to go stealing pheasants, he is—hm—well enough to take the consequences.”

“Aye, true ’nough,” came a voice.

Mr. Warleggan tapped on the desk. “Any further disturbance—” He turned. “You know, Mr. Poldark, I’m of a mind to agree with my friend, Dr Halse. It is no doubt a misfortune for the prisoner that he suffers these disabilities, but the law gives us no opportunity to draw fine distinctions. The degree of a man's need should not determine the degree of his honesty. Else all beggars would be thieves. And if a man is well enough to err, he is surely also well enough to be punished.”

“Yet,” Ross said, “bearing in mind the fact that he has already suffered nearly four weeks’ imprisonment—and bearing in mind his good character and his great poverty, I cannot help but feel that in this case justice would be best served by clemency.”

Warleggan thrust out his long upper lip. “You may feel that, Mr. Poldark, but the decision rests with the bench. There has been a marked increase in lawlessness during the last two years. This, too, is a form of lawbreaking both difficult and expensive to detect, and those who are apprehended must be prepared to bear their full share of the blame. Nor can we apportion the guilt; we can only take cognizance of the facts.” He paused. “In view, how ever, of the medical testimony and of your own testimony as to Carter's former good character, we are willing to take a more lenient view of the offence than we should otherwise have done. The prisoner is sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.”

There was a murmur in the court, and someone muttered a word of disgust.

Ross said: “I trust I may never have the misfortune to have the leniency of the court extended to me.”

Dr. Halse lowered his handkerchief. “Have a care, Mr. Poldark. Such remarks are not entirely outside our jurisdiction.”

Ross said, “Only mercy enjoys that privilege.”

Mr. Warleggan waved a hand. “Next case.”

“One moment,” said Dr. Halse. He leaned forward, putting his fingertips together and pursing his thin lips. He disliked this arrogant young squireen afresh every time they met: at school, in the coach, in court. He was particularly gratified at having been able to put that sharp little question about dates which had turned the other magistrates to his own way of thinking. But even so the young upstart was trying to have the last word. It would not do. “One moment, sir. We don’t come here and administer justice according to the statute book without a considerable sense of our privileges and responsibilities. As a member of the Church, sir, I feel that responsibility with especial weight. God has given to those of his ministers who are magistrates the task of tempering justice with clemency. That task I discharge to the best of my poor ability, and I think it has been so discharged now. Your insinuations to the contrary are offensive to me. I do not think you have the least idea what you are talking about.”

“These savage laws,” Ross said, controlling his temper with the greatest difficulty, “these savage laws which you interpret without charity send a man to prison for feeding his children when they are hungry, for finding food where he can when it's denied him to earn it. The book from which you take your
teaching, Dr. Halse, says that man shall not live by bread alone. These days you’re asking men to live without even bread.”

A murmur of approval at the back of the court grew in volume.

Mr. Warleggan rapped angrily with his hammer.

“The case is closed, Mr. Poldark. You will kindly step down.”

“Otherwise,” said Dr. Halse, “we will have you committed for contempt of court.”

Ross bowed slightly. “I can only assure you, sir, that such a committal would be a reading of my inmost thoughts.”

He left the box and pushed his way out of court amid much noise and the shouts of the usher for silence. In the narrow street outside he took a breath of the warm summer air. The deep gutter here was choked with refuse and the smell was unsavoury, but it seemed agreeable after the smell of the court. He took out a kerchief and mopped his forehead. His hand was not quite steady from the anger he was trying to control. He felt sick with disgust and disappointment.

A long mule train was coming down the street with the heavy panniers of tin slung on each side of the animals and with a number of travel-stained miners plodding slowly along by their side. They had walked miles since dawn from some outlying district with this tin for the coinage hall, and would ride home on the backs of the weary mules.

He waited until they were past and then was about to cross the narrow street. A hand touched his arm.

It was Jinny, with her father, Zacky Martin, in the rear. There were pink flushes in her cheeks, showing up against the pale freckled skin.

“I want to thank ee, sur, for what you said. Twas more’n good of you to try so ’ard for Jim. And what you said—”

“It did no good,” Ross said. “Take her home, Zacky. She’ll be best with you.”

“Yes, sur.”

He left them abruptly and strode off up Coinagehall Street. To be thanked for his failure was the last straw. His disgust was partly levelled at himself for having lost his temper. Be as independent as you liked when it was your own freedom you were bartering; but at least have a greater restraint when it was someone else's. His whole attitude, he told himself, had been wrong. A good beginning, and then it had gone awry. He was the last person to make a success of such a job. He should have been obsequious, flattering to the bench. He should have upheld and praised their authority, as he had begun by doing, and at the same
time have brought it home to them that a lenient sentence might be passed out of the benevolence of their hearts.

Deep down he wondered if even the golden voice of Sheridan would have charmed them from their prey. An even better approach, he thought now, would have been to see the magistrates before the court opened and have pointed out to them how inconvenient it would be for him to be deprived of his manservant. That was the way to get a man off, not by the testimony of doctors or sentimental appeals for clemency.

He was in Prince's Street by this time, and he turned down into the Fighting Cock's Inn. There he ordered a bottle of brandy and set about drinking it.

I
N THE HOT SUNSHINE OF THE EARLY SUMMER AFTERNOON, DEMELZA AND PRUDIE were thinning out the young turnips which had been sown in the lower half of the Long Field.

Prudie was not slow in her complaints, but if Demelza heard, she did not pay any attention. She thrust and dragged rhythmically with her hoe, breaking the young weeds at the same time as she cleared spaces for the growth of the plants. Now and then she paused, hands on hips, to stare out over Hendrawna Beach. The sea was very quiet under the hot sun. Faint airs moved across from time to time, brushing dark gentle shadows over it as over the down of a bird's wing. Where the water was shallow, its surface was an ever-shifting pattern of mauve and bottle-green wrinkles.

Sometimes she hummed a tune, for she loved warmth of any kind, especially the warmth of the sun. Much to Prudie's disapproval, she had taken off her blue bonnet and worked now in one of her blue print frocks with sleeves rolled up and bare legs and hard wooden-soled shoes.

With a groan and a pressing of hands, as if this were a movement not often to be made, Prudie straightened her back and stood upright. With one dirty finger she lifted her bonnet and tucked away a strand of black hair.

“I’ll be that stiff in the morning. There's no more I can do today. My hips! I’ll ’ave no easement all the night.” She plucked at the heel of one slipper, which was tucked under and was letting in a trickle of soil. “You’d best finish too. There's calves to be meated and I can’t do all—Now who be this?”

Demelza turned and frowned into the sun.

“Why, it's—What can
he
be wanting?”

She dropped her hoe and ran across the field towards the house. “Father!” she called.

Tom Carne saw her and stopped. She ran up to him. Since his last visit when he had announced his coming marriage her feelings for him had changed. The memory of his ill treatment was faded, and now that there was no point at issue between them she was willing to let bygones be bygones and to offer him affection.

He stood there with his round hat on the back of his head, feet planted stolidly apart, and allowed Demelza to kiss the prickles of his black beard. She noticed at once that his eyes were less bloodshot and that he was dressed in respectable clothes: a jacket of coarse grey cloth, a grey waistcoat, with thick trousers turned up some inches at the bottoms, showing brown worsted stockings and heavy shoes with bright brass clasps. She had forgotten that the Widow Chegwidden had a long purse.

“Well, dattur,” he said, “so you be still ’ere.”

She nodded. “And happy too. Hope you’re the same.”

He pursed his lips. “That's as may be. Is there any place we can talk, maid?”

“There's no one can hear us here,” she answered. “ ’Cept the crows and they’re not interested.”

At this he frowned and stared across at the house, lying close and warm in the sun.

“I don’t know as ’tis any place for a dattur o’ mine,” he said harshly. “I don’t know ’tall. I bin much troubled about ee.”

She laughed. “What's to do wi’ a dattur of yourn?” She was lapsing into the broader speech she had begun to lose. “And how's Luke and Samuel and William and John and Bobbie and Drake?”

“Brave enough. ’Tis not o’ they I’m thinking.” Tom Carne shifted his position and took up an even firmer one. The gentle breeze just stirred his whiskers. “Now look ee here, Demelza, I’ve walked all this way to see ee, an’ I’ve come to ask ee to come home. I’ve come to see Cap’n Poldark to explain why.”

As he spoke she had a feeling as if something were freezing inside her. The newfound daughterly affection would be among the first things to go if all this had to be thrashed out again. Surely it wouldn’t have to be. But this was a new and more reasonable father than she had known before. He was not blustering or shouting or even ordinarily drunk. She shifted to leeward of him to see if she could catch any smell of spirits. He would be more dangerous if one could not so easily put him in the wrong.

“Cap’n Poldark's in to Truro. But I’ve told ee afore. I want to stay here. And what about… how is she… the Wid… your—”

“Well-a-fine. ’Tis she in part do feel you be betterer wi’ we than ’ere in this house exposed to all the temptations o’ the world, the flesh, and the devil. You’re but sixteen yet—”

“Seventeen.”

“No matter. You’re too young to be wi’out guidance.” Carne thrust out his bottom lip. “Do ee ever go to church or meetin’ house?”

“Not so often.”

“Mebbe if you coined back to us you’d be saved. Baptized in the Holy Ghost.”

Demelza's eyes widened. “What's to do? What's the change in ee, Father?”

Tom Carne met his daughter's eyes defiantly.

“When you left me, I was in the darkness and the shadow o’ death. I was the servant o’ the devil and was iniquitous and a drunkard. Last year I was convinced o’ sin under Mr. Dimmick. Now I am a noo man altogether.”

“Oh,” said Demelza. So the Widow Chegwidden had been successful after all. She had underrated the Widow Chegwidden. But perhaps indeed it was more than the widow. It would need Something Awful to have changed the man she knew.

“The Lord,” said Tom Carne, “hath brought me out of a horrible pit of mire an’ clay, and set my feet ’pon a rock and hath put a new song in my mouth. There's no more drinkings and living in sin, Dattur. We d’ live a good life an’ we’d be willing to welcome ee back. Tis your natural place in the world.”

Demelza stared a moment at her father's flushed face, then looked down bleakly at her shoes.

Tom Carne waited. “Well, maid?”

“It's mortal kind of you, Fathur. I’m that glad there's been a change. But I been here so long now that this is my home. It would seem like leaving home to come back wi’ you. I learned all ’bout farming here and everything. I’m part of the house. They’d not be able to get along without me.
They
need me, not you. One day I’ll walk over and see ee… you an’ the boys and all. But you don’t need me. You got she to look after you. There's nought I can do ’cept eat your food.”

“Oh yes there is.” Carne stared over the horizon. “The Lord has blessed our union. Nellie is six months forward an’ will be delivered in August month. ’Tis your proper place and your bounden duty to come ’ome and look after us.”