Ross Poldark (6 page)

Ross stared at them for some moments.

Then he withdrew and put the candlestick on the great low chest near the bed. He walked out of the room and made his way round to the stables at the east end of the house. Here he found a wooden pail and took it to the pump. This he filled, carried it round the house, through the hall, and into the bedroom. He tipped the water into the bed.

He went out again. A few stars were showing in the west, but the wind was freshening. In the stables, he noted, there were only two half-starved horses. Ramoth; yes, one was still Ramoth. The horse had been twelve years old and half blind from cataract when he left.

He carried the second bucket round, through the hall, across the bedroom, and tipped it into the bed.

The mare whinnied at his second passing. She preferred even his company to the darkness and unfamiliarity of the garden.

When he brought the third bucket, Jud was groaning and muttering and his bald head was in the opening of the box door. Ross allowed him this bucket to himself.

By the time he returned with the fourth, the man had climbed out of the bed and was trying to shake the streaming water from his clothing. Prudie was only just stirring, so Ross devoted the water to her. Jud began to curse and groped for his jack knife. Ross hit him on the side of the head and knocked him down. Then he went for another supply.

At his fifth appearance there was more intelligence in the eyes of the servant, though he was still on the ground. At sight of him Jud began to curse and sweat and threaten. But after a moment a look of puzzlement crept across his face.

“… Dear life!… Is it you, Mister Ross?”

“From the grave,” said Ross. “And there's a horse to be seen to. Up, before I kill you.” By the collar of his shirt he lifted the man to his feet and thrust him forward towards the door.

A
WET OCTOBER EVENING IS DEPRESSING, BUT IT DRAPES SOME SOFT SHADOWS on the rough edges of ruin and decay. Not so the light of morning.

Even at the height of his mining, Joshua had always had a few fields under care, the house had been clean and homely, well furnished, and well stocked considering the district. After a tour which lasted from eight until ten, Ross called the Paynters out of the house and stood with legs apart looking at them. They shuffled and were uneasy under his gaze.

Jud was four inches the shorter of the two. He was a man in the early fifties to whom bow legs gave a look of horsiness and bulldog strength. During the last ten years satirical nature had tonsured his head like a friar. He had lived in this district all his life, first as a tributer at Grambler Mine, then at Wheal Grace, where Joshua took to him in spite of his weaknesses.

Prudie Jud had picked up at Bedruthan ten years ago. Their first meeting was one of the things that Jud held his tongue about even in his cups. They had never married, but she had taken his name as a matter of course. She was now forty, six feet in height, with lank Spanish hair incurably lousy; and wide shouldered, with a powerful body which bulged everywhere it aesthetically shouldn’t.

“You’re tired after a hard morning's work,” said Ross.

Jud looked at him uneasily from under hairless brows. With Joshua he had always had to mind his Ps and Qs, but of Ross he had never been at all afraid. A harum-scarum, highly strung, lanky youngster—there was nothing in him to fear. But two years of soldiering had changed the boy.

“Tes as clean as a new-scrubbed place can be,” said Jud on a grudging note. “We been at un for two hour solid. Splinters I got in me and from the old floor,
drat un. Blood-poisoned I shall be maybe. Runs from your and to your arm, it do. Up yer veins, and then
phit—
ye’re dead.”

Ross turned his sleepy but unquiet eyes on Prudie. “Your wife has not suffered from her wetting? As well not to forget the feel and taste of water. Very little is used in gaol.”

Jud looked up sharply. “Who says gaol? Prudie an’t going to gaol. What she done?”

“No more than you have. A pity you can’t share the same cell.”

Prudie sniggered. “You will ’ave yer jest.”

“The jest,” said Ross, “was yours last night and for fifty nights before.”

“You can’t get neither of us convicted fur bein’ a bit tiddley,” said Jud. “Tedn’t law. Tedn’t right. Tedn’t just. Tedn’t sense. Tedn’t friendly. Leave alone all we’ve done for you.”

“You were my father's personal servant. When he died, you were left in a position of trust. Well, you may have a guinea for every field you find that isn’t choked with weed and lying fallow, the same for a barn or a stable that is not falling down for need of a timely repair. Even the apples in the orchard are mouldering amongst the dead leaves for lack of someone to gather them—”

“Twur a poor summer for frewt. Down come the apples rottin’ away wi’ wasps in un. Shockin’ twas. You can’t do nothing to an apple when thur's a drane in un. Not except kill the drane and eat the apple, an’ thur's a limit t’what two bodies can eat.”

“Twas a nice chanst I didn’ swaller one of they wasps,” said Prudie. “Thur was I munching away as clever as you like. Then sharp, just as I has me teeth in un, I hears a ‘vuzz-vuzz.’ And, my ivers, there ’e is! You can’t see the front end, but the back end is there wavin’ about like a lamb's tail, all ’is legs a-going and striped like a flag. If I ’adn’t just urd—”

“Get one of they in yer ozle,” said Jud gloomily. “Out come their sting an’
phit—
ye’re dead.”

“Lazy in everything,” said Ross, “but the search for excuses. Like two old pigs in their sty and as slow to move from their own patch of filth.”

Prudie picked up her apron and began to dab her nose.

Ross warmed to his theme. He had learned abuse from a master and had added to it while away. Also he knew his listeners. “I suspect it must be easy to convert good stock into cheap gin,” he ended. “Men have been hanged for less.”

“We thought—twas rumoured—” Jud sucked his gums in hesitation. “Folks said—”

“That I was dead? Who said it?”

“Twas common belief,” Prudie said sombrely.

“Yet I find it only near my own home. Did you begin the story?”

“No, no; tedn’t true. Not by no means. ’Tis we you should thank for giving the lie to such a story. Nail it, I says. Nail it to the bud, I says. I’ve got the firmest faith, I says; and Prudie can bear me forth. Did we b’lieve such a wicked lie, Prudie?”

“Dear life, no!” said Prudie.

“My uncle has always thought you wastrels and parasites. I think I can arrange for your case to come before him.”

They stood there on shifty feet, half resentful, half alarmed. He had no understanding of their difficulties and they had no words to explain. Any guilt they might have felt was long since overgrown by these explanations which they could not frame. Their feeling now was one of outrage at being so harshly attacked. Everything had been done, or left undone, for a very good reason.

“We’ve only four pairs of ’ands,” said Jud.

Ross's sense of humour was not working or he might have been undone by this remark.

“There is much gaol fever this year,” he said. “A lack of cheap gin will not be your only hardship.”

He turned and left them to their fears.

In the gloom of the Red Lion Stables he had thought his hired mare had a damaged fetlock, but the light of day showed the lameness to be no more than the result of a very bad shoeing. The mare had an open flat foot, and the shoe was fitted too short and too close.

He rode into Truro next day on the almost blind Ramoth to see if he could do business with the landlord of the Red Lion.

The landlord was a little doubtful whether enough time had passed to give him the right to dispose of his surety; but legality was never Ross's strong point, and he had his way.

While in the town he drew a bill on Pascoe's Bank and spent some of his slender capital on two young oxen which he arranged for Jud to collect. If the fields were to be worked at all, there must be an outlay upon working animals.

With some smaller things slung over his saddle he arrived back shortly after one and found Verity waiting for him. For a sudden leaping moment he thought it was Elizabeth.

“You did not come to visit me, Cousin,” she said, “so I must wait on you. That I have now been doing for forty odd minutes.”

He bent and kissed her cheek. “You should have sent word. I have been to Truro. Jud will have told you.”

“Yes. He offered me a garden chair but I was afraid to sit on it lest it collapse under my weight. Oh, Ross, your poor house!”

He glanced up towards the building. The conservatory was smothered with giant convolvulus, which had swept over it, flowered, and was beginning to rot.

“It can be put right.”

“I am ashamed,” she said, “that we have not been over, that I have not been over more often. These Paynters—”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Oh, we have. Only now that the crops are in have we time to look round. But that is no excuse.”

He glanced down at her as she stood beside him. She, at least, had not changed, with her trim little figure and untidy hair and big generous mouth. She had walked over from Trenwith in her working dress with no hat and her dove grey cloak pulled carelessly about her shoulders.

They began to walk round to the stables. “I have just bought a mare,” he said. “You must see her. Old Squire is beyond recall and big Ramoth has not eyes to avoid the stones and ruts.”

“Tell me about your wound,” she said. “Does it pain you much now? When was it done?”

“Oh, long ago. At the James River. It is nothing.”

She glanced at him. “You were always one to hide your hurt, were you not?”

“This is the mare,” he said. “I have just paid five and twenty guineas for her. A great bargain, don’t you think?”

She hesitated. “Does
she
not limp too? Francis was saying… And that right leg, which she holds—”

“Will get better more quickly than mine. I wish you could heal any injury by a change of shoes.”

“What is her name?”

“No one knows. I am waiting for you to christen her.”

Verity pushed back her hair and frowned with one eyebrow. “Hm… I should call her Darkie.”

“For any reason?”

“She has that pretty black streak. And also it is a tribute to her new owner.”

He laughed and began to unsaddle Ramoth and rub him down, while his cousin leaned against the stable door and chattered. Her father often complained that she was “lacking in the graces,” meaning that she was incapable of the flowery but agreeable small talk which added so much to the savour of life. But with Ross she was never tongue-tied.

He asked her to dinner, but she refused. “I must go soon. I have far more to see to now that Father is not so nimble.”

“And enjoy it, I suppose. Walk with me as far as the sea first. It may be days before you come again.”

She did not argue, for it was pleasant to her to have her company sought. They set off linking as they had done as children, but this way his lameness was too noticeable and he loosed her arm and put his long bony hand on her shoulder.

The nearest way of reaching the sea from the house was to climb a stone wall and drop down upon Hendrawna Beach, but today they climbed the Long Field behind the house and walked the way Joshua had walked in his dream.

“My dear, you’d have some hard work to get things shaped up,” Verity said, looking about her. “You must have help.”

“There is all winter to spend.”

She tried to read his expression. “You’re not thinking of going away again, Ross?”

“Very quickly if I had money or were not lame; but the two together—”

“Shall you keep Jud and Prudie?”

“They have agreed to work without wages. I shall keep them until some of the gin is sweated out of them. And also this morning I’ve taken a boy named Carter, who called asking for work. Do you know him?”

“Carter? One of Connie Carter's children from Grambler?”

“I think so. He has been at Grambler, but the under ground work was too heavy. There's not enough air in the sixty-fathom level to clear the blasting powder, and he says he started coughing black phlegm in the mornings. So he has to have outdoor work.”

“Oh, that will be Jim, her eldest. His father died young.”

“Well, I can’t afford to pay invalids, but he seems an acceptable boy. He's starting tomorrow at six.”

They reached the edge of the cliff where they were seventy or eighty feet above the sea. On the left the cliffs slipped down to the inlet of Nampara Cove, then rose again more steeply towards Sawle. Looking east, upon Hendrawna Beach, the sea was very calm today: a smoky grey with here and there patches of violet and living, moving green. The waves were shadows, snakes under
a quilt, creeping in almost unseen until they emerged in milky ripples at the water's edge.

The gentle sea breeze moved against his face, barely touching his hair. The tide was going out. As they looked, the green of the sea quickened and stirred under the crouching clouds.

He had not slept well last night. Seen from this side with the pale blue-grey eyes half lidded, and the scar showing white on the brown cheek, his whole face had a strange disquiet. Verity looked away and abruptly said: “You would be surprised to learn—to learn about Francis and Elizabeth—”