Ross Poldark (5 page)

“Can I get you something to drink?” Verity whispered to Elizabeth, who had just reached the bottom of the stairs.

“No, no… Please no.”

“Oh,” said Ross. “To… Elizabeth.”

“We are very happy,” said Mrs. Chynoweth, “that our two ancient families are to be united. Very happy and very proud. I am sure, Ross, that you will join with us in wishing Francis and Elizabeth all happiness in their union.”

Walking very carefully, Elizabeth came over to Mrs. Chynoweth.

“Your wrap, Mama.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

Ross went on with his meal.

“I don’t know what your opinion is,” said Charles heartily after a pause, “but for myself I am attached to this port. It was run over from Cherbourg in the autumn of ’79. When I tasted a sample I said to meself, it is too good to be repeated; I’ll buy the lot. Nor has it been repeated; nor has it.” He put down his hands to ease his great paunch against the table.

“Is’pose you’ll be settling down now, Ross, eh?” said Aunt Agatha, a wrinkled hand on his sleeve. “How about a little wife for you, eh? That's what we’ve to find next!”

Ross looked across at Dr. Choake.

“You attended my father?”

Dr. Choake nodded.

“Did he suffer much?”

“At the end. But the time was short.”

“It was strange that he should fail so quickly.”

“Nothing could be done. It was a dropsical condition that was beyond the power of man to allay.”

“I rode over,” said Cousin William-Alfred, “to see him twice. But I regret that he was not—hm—in the mood to make the most of such spiritual comfort as I could offer. It was to me a personal sorrow that I could be of so little help to one of my own blood.”

“You must have some of this apple tart, Ross,” said Verity in an undertone behind him, glancing at the veins in his neck. “I made it myself this afternoon.”

“I mustn’t stop. I called here only for a few minutes and to rest my horse, which is lame.”

“Oh, but there's no need to go tonight. I have told Mrs. Tabb to prepare a room. Your horse may stumble in the dark and throw you.”

Ross looked up at Verity and smiled. In this company no private word could pass between them.

Now Francis, and to a lesser degree his father, joined in the argument. But Francis was constrained, his father half-hearted, and Ross determined.

Charles said: “Well, have it as you wish, boy. I would not fancy arriving at Nampara tonight. It will be cold and wet and perhaps no welcome. Pour some more spirit into you to keep out the chill.”

Ross did as he was urged, drinking three glasses in succession. With the fourth he got to his feet.

“To Elizabeth,” he said slowly, “and to Francis… May they find happiness together.”

The toast was drunk more quietly than the others. Elizabeth was still standing behind her mother's chair; Francis had at last moved from the door to put a hand beneath her arm.

In the silence which followed, Mrs. Choake said:

“How nithe it must be to be home again. I never go away, even a little way, without feeling that gwatified to be back. What are the Amewican colonies like, Captain Poldark? They thay as how even the thun does not wise and thet in the thame way in foreign parts.”

Polly Choake's inanity seemed to relieve the tension, and talk broke out again while Ross finished his meal. There was more than one there conscious of relief that he had taken the news so quietly.

Ross, however, was not staying, and presently took his leave.

“You’ll come over in a day or two, will you not?” said Francis, a rush of affection in his voice. “We’ve heard nothing so far, nothing but the barest details of your experiences or how you were wounded or of your journey home. Elizabeth will be returning home tomorrow. We plan to be married in a month. If you want my help at Nampara, send a message over; you know I shall be pleased to come. Why, it's like old times seeing you back again! We feared for your life, did we not, Elizabeth?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth.

Ross picked up his hat. They were standing together at the door, waiting for Tabb to bring round Ross's mare. He had refused the loan of a fresh horse for the last three miles.

“He’ll be here now, that's if he can handle her. I warned him to be careful.”

Francis opened the door. The wind blew in a few spots of rain. He went out tactfully to see if Tabb had come.

Ross said: “I hope my mistimed resurrection hasn’t cast a cloud over your evening.”

The light from indoors threw a shaft across her face, showed up the grey eyes. The shadows had spread to her face and she looked ill.

“I’m so happy that you’re back, Ross. I had feared, we had all feared—What can you think of me?”

“Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Too long perhaps.”

“Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth. “Take care the night air does not catch you.”

“No, Mama.”

“Goodbye.” He took her hand.

Francis came back. “He's here now. Did you buy the mare? She's a handsome creature but very ill tempered.”

“Ill usage makes the sweetest of us vicious,” said Ross. “Has the rain stopped?”

“Not quite. You know your way?”

Ross showed his teeth. “Every stone. Has it changed?”

“Nothing to mislead you. Do not cross the Mellingey by the bridge: the middle plank is rotten.”

“So it was when I left.”

“Do not forget,” said Francis. “We expect you back here soon. Verity will want to see more of you. If she can spare the time, we will ride over tomorrow.”

But only the wind and the rain answered him and the clatter of hoofs as the mare sidestepped resentfully down the drive.

Darkness had fallen by now, though a patch of fading light glimmered in the west. The wind blew more strongly, and the soft rain beat in flurries about his head.

His was not an easy face to read, and you couldn’t have told that in the last half hour he had suffered the worst knock of his life. Except that he no longer whistled into the wind or talked to his irritable mare, there was nothing to show.

At an early age he had caught from his father a view of things which took very little for granted, but in his dealings with Elizabeth Chynoweth, he had fallen into the sort of trap such an outlook might have helped him to avoid. They had been in love since she was sixteen and he barely twenty. When his own high-spirited misadventures caught up with him, he had thought his father's solution of a commission in the Army a good idea while the trouble blew over. He had gone away eager for fresh experience and sure of the one circumstance of his return which would really matter.

No doubt was in his own mind, and he had looked for none in hers.

After he had been riding for a time, the lights of Grambler Mine showed up ahead. This was the mine round which the varying fortunes of the main Poldark family centred. On its vagaries depended not merely the prosperity of Charles Poldark and his family but the subsistence level of some three hundred miners and their families scattered in huts and cottages about the parish. To them the
mine was a benevolent Moloch to whom they fed their children at an early age and from whom they took their daily bread.

He saw swinging lights approaching and drew into the side of the track to let a mule train pass, with the panniers of copper ore slung on either side of the animals’ backs. One of the men in charge peered up at him suspiciously, then shouted a greeting. It was Mark Daniel.

The main buildings of the mine were all about him now, most of them huddled together and indeterminate, but here and there the sturdy scaffolding of headgear and the big stonebuilt engine houses stood out. Yellow lights showed in the arched upper windows of the engine houses, warm and mysterious against the low night sky. He passed close beside one of them and heard the rattle and clang of the great draught bob pumping water up from the lowest places of the earth.

There were miners in groups and a number of lanterns. Several men peered up at the figure on the horse, but although several said good night he thought that none of these recognized him.

Then a bell rang in one of the engine houses, a not unmellow note; it was the time for changing “cores”; that was why there were so many men about. They were assembling to go down. Other men now would be on their way up, climbing ant-like a hundred fathoms of rickety ladders, sweat-covered and stained with rusty markings of the mineral rock or the black fumes of blasting powder. It would take them half an hour or more to come to the surface carrying their tools, and all the way they would be splashed and drenched with water from the leaky pumps. On reaching grass many would have a three- or four-mile walk through the wind and rain.

He moved on. Now and then the feeling within him was so strong that he could have been physically sick.

The Mellingey was forded, and horse and rider began wearily to climb the narrow track towards the last clump of fir trees. Ross took a deep breath of the air, which was heavy with rain and impregnated with the smell of the sea. He fancied he could hear the waves breaking. At the top of the rise the mare, all her ill nature gone, stumbled again and almost fell, so Ross awkwardly got down and began to walk. At first he could hardly put his foot to the ground, but he welcomed this pain in his ankle, which occupied thoughts that would have been elsewhere.

In the coppice it was pitch black, and he had to feel his way along a path which had become part overgrown. At the other side the ruined buildings of
Wheal Maiden greeted him—a mine which had been played out for forty years; as a boy he had fought and scrambled about the derelict windlass and the horse whim, had explored the shallow adit that ran through the hill and came out near the stream.

Now he felt he was really home; in a moment he would be on his own land. This afternoon he had been filled with pleasure at the prospect, but now nothing seemed to matter. He could only be glad that his journey was done and that he might lie down and rest.

In the cup of the valley the air was still. The trickle and bubble of Mellingey stream had been lost, but now it came to his ears again like the mutterings of a thin old woman. An owl hooted and swung silently before his face in the dark. Water dripped from the rim of his hat. There ahead in the soft and sighing darkness was the solid line of Nampara House.

It struck him as smaller than he remembered, lower and more squat; it straggled like a row of workmen's cottages. There was no light to be seen. At the lilac tree, now grown so big as to overshadow the windows behind it, he tethered the mare and rapped with his riding whip on the front door.

There had been heavy rain here; water was trickling from the roof in several places and forming pools on the sandy overgrown path. He thrust open the door; it went creaking back, pushing a heap of refuse before it, and he peered into the low, irregularly beamed hall.

Only the darkness greeted him, an intenser darkness which made the night seem grey.

“Jud!” he called. “Jud!”

The mare outside whinnied and stamped; something scuttled beside the wainscot. Then he saw eyes. They were lambent, green-gold, stared at him unwinkingly from the back of the hall.

He limped into the house, feeling leaves and dirt underfoot. He fingered his way round the panels to the right until he came to the door leading into the parlour. He lifted the latch and went in.

At once there was a scuffling and rustling and the sound of animals disturbed. His foot slid on something slimy on the floor, and in putting out his hand he knocked over a candlestick. He retrieved it, set the candle back in its socket, groped for his flint and steel. After two or three attempts, the spark caught and he lit the candle.

This was the largest room in the house. It was half panelled with dark mahogany, and in the far corner was a great broad fireplace half the width of the
room, recessed and built round with low settles. This was the room the family had always lived in, large enough and airy enough for the rowdiest company on the hottest days, yet with warm corners and cosy furniture to cheat the draughts of winter. But all that was changed. The fireplace was empty and hens roosted on the settles. The floor was filthy with old straw and droppings. From the bracket of a candle sconce a cockerel viewed him with a liverish eye. On one of the window seats were two dead chickens.

Opening out of the hall on the left was Joshua's bedroom, and he next tried this. Signs of life: clothing which had never belonged to his father, filthy old petti coats, a battered three-cornered hat, a jar without stopper from which he sniffed gin. But the box bed was closed and the three captive thrushes in the cage before the shuttered window could tell him nothing of the couple he looked for.

At the farther end of the room was another door leading into that part of the house which had never been finished, but he did not go in. The place to look was in the bedroom upstairs at the back of the house where Jud and Prudie always slept.

He turned back to the door, and there stopped and listened. A peculiar sound had come to his ears. The fowls had settled down, and silence, like a parted curtain, was falling back upon the house. He thought he heard a creak on the shallow stairs, but when he peered out with the candle held high, he could see nothing.

This was not the sound he was listening for, nor the movement of rats, nor the faint hissing of the stream outside, nor the crackle of charred paper under his boot.

He looked up at the ceiling, but the beams and floorboards were sound. Something rubbed itself against his leg. It was the cat whose bright eyes he had seen earlier: his father's kitten, Tabitha Bethia, but grown into a big grey animal and leprously patched with mange. She seemed to recognize him, and he put down his hand gratefully to her enquiring whiskers.

Then the sound came again, and this time he caught its direction. He strode over to the box bed and slid back the doors. A powerful smell of stale sweat and gin; he thrust in the candle. Dead drunk and locked in each other's arms were Jud and Prudie Paynter. The woman was in a long flannel nightgown, her mouth was open and her varicosed legs asprawl. Jud had not succeeded in getting properly undressed, but snored by her side in his breeches and leggings.