Ross Poldark (7 page)

“I had no option on the girl.”

“It was strange,” she went on haltingly, “the way it happened. Francis had scarcely seen her until this summer past. They met at the Pascoes. Then he could—could talk of nothing else. Naturally I told him you had been friendly with her. But she had already told him that.”

“Kind of her—”

“Ross… I’m certain sure that neither of them wished to do anything unfair. It was just one of the things that happen. You do not argue with the clouds or the rain or the lightning. Well, this was like that. It came from outside them. I know Francis and he couldn’t help himself.”

“How prices have risen since I went away,” said Ross. “I paid three and three a yard for Holland linen today. All my shirts have been eaten by the moths.”

“And then,” said Verity, “there was the rumour of your having been killed. I do not know how it came about, but I think it was the Paynters who stood most to gain.”

“Not more than Francis.”

“No,” said Verity. “But it was not he.”

Ross kept his tortured eyes on the sea. “That was not a pretty thought,” he said after a moment.

She pressed his arm. “I wish I could help you, my dear. Will you not come over often? Why d’you not have dinner with us every day? My cooking is better than Prudie's.”

He shook his head. “I must find my own way out of this. When are they to be married?”

“November the first.”

“So soon? I thought it was to be more than a month.”

“They decided last night.”

“Oh. I see…”

“It is to be at Trenwith, for that suits us all best. Cusgarne is nearly falling down and full of draughts and leaks. Elizabeth and her mother and father are coming in their carriage in the morning.”

She chattered on, aware that Ross was hardly attending but anxious to help him over this difficult period. Presently she was silent and followed his example in staring out to sea.

“If,” she said, “if I were sure not to get in your way this winter, I would come over when I could. If—”

“That,” he said, “would help more than anything.”

They began to walk back towards the house. He did not see how red she had gone, flushing up to the roots of her hair.

So it was to be November the first, less than a fortnight forward.

He went a little way with his cousin, and when they parted he stood at the edge of the pine copse and saw her walking quickly and sturdily in the direction of Grambler. The smoke and steam from the mine was drifting in a cloud across the desolate rubble-scarred moorland towards Trenwith.

Beyond the rising ground which made up the southeastern rib of Nampara Combe was a hollow in which lay a cluster of cottages known as Mellin.

It was Poldark land, and in these six cottages, built in the form of a friendly right-angle so that everyone could the more easily watch everyone else's comings and goings, lived the Triggses, the Clemmows, the Martins, the Daniels, and the Viguses. Here Ross went in search of cheap labour.

The Poldarks had always been on good terms with their tenants. Distinction of class was not absent; it was under stood so clearly that nobody needed to emphasize it; but, in districts where life centred round the nearest mine, polite convention was not allowed to stand in the way of common sense. The small landowners with their long pedigrees and short purses were accepted as a part of the land they owned.

On his way to the Martins, Ross had to pass three of the cottages, before the door of the first of which Joe Triggs sat sunning himself and smoking. Triggs was a miner in the mid-fifties, crippled with rheumatism and supported by his aunt, who made a bare living fishjousting in Sawle. It did not seem that he had moved since Ross went away twenty-eight months ago. England had lost an empire in the west; she had secured her grip upon an empire in the east; she had fought
single-handed against the Americans, the French, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and Hyder Ali of Mysore. Governments, fleets, and nations had grappled, had risen, and been overthrown. Balloons had ascended in France, the
Royal George
had turned on her beam ends at Spithead, and Chatham's son had taken his first Cabinet office. But for Joe Triggs nothing had changed. Except that this knee or that shoulder was more or less painful, each day was so like the last that they merged into an unchanging pattern and slipped away unmarked.

While talking to the old man, Ross's eyes were straying over the rest of the cottages. The one next to this had been empty since the whole family had died of the smallpox, in ’79, and it had now lost part of its roof; the one beyond, the Clemmows’, looked little better. What could one expect? Eli the younger and brighter had gone off to some lackey's job in Truro, leaving only Reuben.

The three cottages of the opposite angle were all in good repair. The Martins and the Daniels were his particular friends. And Nick Vìgus looked after his cottage, for all that he was a slippery rogue.

At the Martin cottage Mrs. Zacky Martin, flat-faced and bespectacled and cheerful, showed him into the single dark room downstairs with its floor of well-trodden earth on which three naked babies rolled and crowed. There were two new faces since Ross left, making eleven in all, and Mrs. Martin was pregnant again. Four boys were already underground at Grambler, and the eldest daughter, Jinny, was a spaller at the mine. The three next youngest children, aged five and upwards, were just the sort of cheap labour Ross needed for clearing his fields.

This sunny morning, with the sights and sounds and smells of his own land about him, the war of which he had been a part seemed unsubstantial and far off. He wondered if the real world was that one in which men fought for policies and principles and died or lived gloriously—or more often miserably—for the sake of an abstract word like patriotism or independence, or if reality belonged to the humble people and the common land.

It seemed that nothing would stop Mrs. Zacky talking; but just then her daughter Jinny came back from her shift at the mine. She seemed out of breath and about to say something when she pushed open the half door of the cottage, but on seeing Ross she came forward and curtsied awkwardly and was tongue-tied.

“My eldest,” said Mrs. Zacky, folding her arms across her wide bosom. “Seventeen a month gone. What's to do, child? Have ee forgotten Mister Ross?”

“No, Mother. No, sur. Tedn’t that at all.” She went to the wall, untied her apron, and pulled off her big linen bonnet.

“She's a fine girl,” said Ross, inspecting her absently. “You should be proud of her.”

Jinny blushed.

Mrs. Zacky was staring at her daughter. “Is it that Reuben that's been playing you up again?”

A shadow fell across the door, and Ross saw the tall figure of Reuben Clemmow striding towards his cottage. He still wore his damp blue miner's drill coat and trousers, the old hard hat with its candle stuck to the front by clay, and he carried four excavating tools, one of them a heavy iron jumper used for boring.

“He follow me every day,” said the girl with tears of annoyance in her eyes. “Bothering me to walk wi’ him; and when I walk he says nothing but only looks. Why don’t he leave me alone!”

“There now, don’t take on so,” said her mother. “Go tell they three young imps to come in if they d’ want anything t’ eat.”

Ross saw his opportunity to leave, and got up as the girl ran from the hut and called out in a shrill clear voice to three of the Martin children who were working in a potato patch.

“He's a prime worry to we,” said Mrs. Martin. “He d’ follow her everywhere. Zacky's warned ’im twice.”

“He keeps his cottage in an uncommon bad state. You must find the stench very poor when the wind is that way.”

“Oh, we don’t creen nothing ’bout that. It is the maid we’reconsarned for.”

Ross could see Reuben Clemmow standing at his cottage door watching Jinny, following her with his small pale eyes and his disconcerting stare. The Clemmows had always been a trouble to the neighbourhood. Father and Mother Clemmow had been dead some years. Father Clemmow had been a deaf mute and had fits; children had made fun of him because of his twisted mouth and the gobbling noises he made. Mother Clemmow had been all right to look at, but there had been something rotten about her; she was not a woman content with the ordinary human sins of copulation and drunkenness. He remembered seeing her publicly whipped in Truro market for selling poisonous abortion powders. The two Clemmows had been in and out of trouble for years, but Eli had always seemed the more difficult.

“Has he given trouble while I have been away?”

“Reuben? Naw. ’Cept that he scat in Nick Vigus's head one day last winter when he was tormenting of him. But we hold no blame to him fur that, for I could do it myself oftentimes.”

He thought: by returning to the simple life of the peasant one did not escape. In his case he exchanged the care of his company of infantry for this implicit
concern for the welfare of people living on his land. He might not be a squire in the fullest sense, but the responsibilities did not deter him.

“Do you think he means harm to Jinny?”

“That we can’t tell,” said Mrs. Zacky. “If he was to do anything, he’d never get into no court o’ law. But he's worrying for a mother, my dear, as you’ll acknowledge.”

Reuben Clemmow saw that he in his turn was being watched. He stared blankly at the two people in the doorway of the other cottage, then he turned and entered his own cottage, slamming the doors behind him.

Jinny and the three children were returning. Ross looked at the girl with more interest. Neat and trim she was; a pretty little thing. Those good brown eyes, the pale skin slightly freckled across the nose, the thick auburn hair, there would be plenty of admirers among the young men of the district. Little wonder that she turned up her nose at Reuben, who was nearly forty and weak in the head.

“If Reuben gives further trouble,” Ross said, “send up a message to me and I’ll come and talk to him.”

“Thank ee, sur. We’d be in your debt. Maybe if you spoke to him ’e’d take some account of it.”

On his way home Ross passed the engine house of Wheal Grace, that mine from which had come all his father's prosperity and into which it had all returned. It stood on the hill on the opposite side of the valley from Wheal Maiden, and, known as Trevorgie Mine, had been worked in primitive fashion centuries ago, Joshua having used some of the early working and rechristened the venture after his wife. Ross thought he would look over it, for any concern was better than moping the days away.

The next afternoon he put on a suit of his father's mining clothes and was about to leave the house, followed by mutterings from Prudie about rotten planks and foul air, when he saw a horseman riding down the valley and knew it to be Francis.

He was on a fine roan horse and was dressed in a fashionable manner, with buff-coloured breeches, a yellow waistcoat, and a narrow-waisted coat of dark brown velvet with a high collar.

He reined up before Ross, and the horse reared at the check.

“Hey, Rufus, quiet boy! Well, well, Ross.” He dismounted, his face smiling and friendly. “
Quiet
, boy! Well, what's this? Are you on tribute at Grambler?”

“No, I have a mind to examine Grace.”

Francis raised his eyebrows. “She was an old strumpet. You don’t hope to re-start her?”

“Even strumpets have their uses. I’m taking a stock of what I own, whether it is worthless or of value.”

Francis coloured slightly. “Sensible enough. Perhaps you can wait an hour.”

“Come down with me,” Ross suggested. “But perhaps you no longer care for such adventure—in that attire.”

Francis's flush became deeper. “Of course I’ll come,” he said shortly. “Give me an old suit of your father's.”

“There's no need. I’ll go another day.”

Francis handed his horse to Jud, who had just come down from the field. “We can talk on the way. It will be of interest to me.”

They went indoors, and Ross searched among such of his father's belongings as the Paynters had not sold. When suitable things had been found, Francis stripped off his fine clothes and put them on.

They left the house, and to overcome the restraint Ross forced himself to talk of his experiences in America, where he had been sent as a raw ensign after only a month with his regiment in Ireland; of those hectic first three months under Lord Cornwallis when almost all the fighting he had seen had taken place, of the advance towards Ports mouth and the sudden attack by the French while they were crossing the James River, of the routing of Lafayette; of a musket ball in the ankle and his being drafted to New York as a result, so escaping the siege of Yorktown; of a bayonet cut in the face during a local skirmish while the articles of the preliminary peace were being signed.

They reached the mine and the engine house, and Ross poked about among the tall gorse for some minutes; then he went over to his cousin, who was peering down the shaft.

“How deep did they drive it?” Francis asked.

“No more than thirty fathoms, I believe; and most of that will be under water. But I have heard my father say that most of the old Trevorgie working drained itself.”

“We have begun an eighty-fathom level at Grambler, and it promises big things. How long since this ladder was used?”

“Ten years, I suppose. Shelter me, will you.”

The strong breeze hindered the lighting of the hempen candles. With one candle in the front of each hard hat they began to descend the ladder. Francis would have gone first, but Ross stopped him.

“Wait. I’ll try it out.”

The first dozen rungs seemed stout enough, and Francis began to follow. This was a fairly wide shaft, the ladder nailed to the side and supported with wooden platforms at intervals. Some of the pumping gear was still in position, but farther down it had fallen away. As they left the daylight, the strong dank smell of stagnant water rose to meet them.

The first level was reached without incident. By the smoky flickering light on his hat, Ross peered into the narrow opening of the tunnel; he decided to try for the next level. He called this up to the man above him and they went on down. Once Francis dislodged a stone, and it clattered on the next platform and fell with a sleek plop into the unseen water below.