Warleggan (20 page)

They had their interview in Ross's private room upstairs. Only in the middle of this room was it possible for either of them to stand upright. A fire burned in the tiny grate, flickering on the yellow stone walls and lighting an old needlework sampler with `God Save Our Queen,' worked in red wool. The rough floor boards were covered with a home-woven rag, and
threadbare heavy curtains over
door and window kept out some of the draught.

A disastrous change in Mark. Once these two men, of an age and a build, had been superficially alike. Not so now.
Mark
's hair was white and had worn up at the temples. He was thinner, and the enormous power had gone from his hands and shoulders. He had not been able to live with his memories.

They gripped hands and sat down ands passed the ordinary talk of friends who have not met for a long time. Mark was working for a boatbuilder in Galway. He had made few friends, he said, and had not
married again. I
d'feel I still art married,' he said. `Nought will change that.' Ross brought out a bottle of brandy, but Mark would not touch it. `I keep guard on my ton
gue,' he said. `Night an' day.
Night an' day."

Ross told him what he could of his family, accepted messages for them all. Although the next hour would decide so much, he found he could not rush his fences. They spoke of France and Mark's reasons for leaving it, the crisis now Mark was more interested in England and the scenes he had left. All this life he was living now was an uneasy dream, something from which he still hoped to wake. Ross realised that he was living only for the possibility of being able to return some day to his own home. It was not an
ambition
in. which Ross felt he could honestly encourage him.
Too many
people remembered, would rem
ember for another twenty years.
If he returned, the magistrates would be forced to move against
him.

At length silence fell. Ross looked at the other man, who was twisting his bony knuckles and frowning. `You know why I wanted you to come here?'

`Yes. You said in your letter, sur. I got it
read. Ever since, I been tryin
to think.'

`You don't remember?'

'Oh, I mind what I said well 'nough. And I mind what I saw. But 'tis hard to remember just where 'I saw it. I was fair crazed that day. I wandered.. '..'

'Would a plan of the workings help?'

'Oh, yes. 'Twould, there's no doubt.'

Ross lifted the model schooner off the Plush-covered table and unrolled the
plan
he had brought. It was one he had drawn just before he left, carefully
omitting any work which had been done since the mine reopened. A plan of a mine, so essenti
ally a three-dimensional thing,
is hard to put on paper; but he had tried to make it easier by usin
g three colours of ink for the
three levels which the old men had worked.

He spread the ma
p carefully and pinned it down,
then because Mark puckered his eyes he carried the table impatiently
to th
e salt--rimed window, and they
bent, over it together. Now. Now. This was the moment The preparation and the
waiting.
But Mark was still hesitant to begin, unable, to get his bearings. Never a quick thinker, the,
years of exile
had slowed him' down in every way. He could have been in his sixties instead of his early thirties. Presently, having related the plan to
all the familiar
landmarks above ground, he began to retrace the steps he had taken on Tuesday the twelfth
of August, 1789,

A hard task, fraught with all the obstacles of bitter remembrance, on which his mind for four, years had been trying to close the door. And while he struggled,. Ross watched, knowing all that it meant for himself and Demelza and Jeremy. Had he been a praying man, he would have prayed now, to some deity, to
some patron
saint, that what this man said
-
some magical words he would utter
-
would change the picture from failure to
success, would make a
ll his striving and contriving into a sensible pattern that showed
adequate, return or work done, a
prospect of money to be earned for money, spent
-
no more senseless searching-after a hopeless mirage, no more groping and wandering in the, dark.

`I went d
own ... so far as I could tell.there was water, then
I walked 'twould be in the thirty level
-
I walked thi
nkin' to myself. . An,' then I stopped a
nd set down. There was, hours to spend. I thought to end everything by casting myself. And then I went on, bearing east so far as I
recollect. There's
deep gunnies here.. .

`That's so,' said Ross.

I climbed
across'n
a
plank, 'alf rotten..
He stopped.

`Ye've put a
stone, sir? There was
enough cash for a stone?'

`Yes. ' We put a stone. With the words, you said. "Keren
Daniel.
Wife o
f Mark Daniel Age
22."

He rubbed a. hand across his forehead. 'Twenty-two, that's
was
a
ll she was. I did ought
to have
known better. She
was
but a
child.
That surgeon, Enys, is he still around? I reckon 'twas he I should've killed.'

'Try to remember, Mark. What did you do then?'

Mark turned his tortured eyes beck to the map. 'Well
'twas just
above the gunnies, bearing right. There was en old pick down there; and
to
keep myself from thinking I, began to
cast
around, just as if I was looking for a pitch to take. Soon
enough, pickin
g at the rock.... A fine bit o'
ground it looked to me.'

`Where was it?' said Ross, pointing. `Just here?'

`Yes, I
reckon. There on. It ran at a
steep inclin
ation.

`We found it,' s
aid Ross, `It was good ground wh
ile it lasted, but there was no breadth. It was a foot wi
de where you saw it, but three
fathoms down it ran as thin as paper, and above, of course, it had been stopped. Henshawe thinks it was an offshoot from the champion lode.'

There was silence. The wood crackled on the fire, an
d Mark Daniel
breathed through his nose, `Then I went on again.

Climbing' now all th
e while.... An old air shaft---
'

`Here,'
said Ross, pointing.

"Twas fil
led in. I reckoned I was barely
fifteen fathoms from grass, From there ye can turn two ways. I turned east.'

`Thus way?'

"Yes
, I reckon. Sixty or seventy paces on
you double back 'pon yourself,
and in the turn.... There's a cros
s-course.' And about it, 'tis a
ll keenly
country; mostly silver lead it
peered to me, and iron.'

A man came up the street outside carrying a bunch of glimmering fish on the end of a stick. They looked like some exotic f
ruit he had plucked from the sea
bed. His footsteps struck musical echoes along the cobbled street.

'You'd an amazing good eye to see it there,' Ross said grimly.

`W
hy?' Mark frowned at hire. `Did
you ...'

`We struck it twenty fathoms below. We've stoped all that ground. It's been our best find, The cross-course had thrown the old men out, and we picked up their copper vein forty-odd feet to the south of that turning.. But something had gone aw
ry with the lode just the same,
for the quality's indifferent. At; least it is if you have an engine to run. Perhaps in the old days it might have paid its way....'

Mark stared out to sea. The ketch that had brought him had already left. A week might pass before it came again.

Ross said: `There's no hurry. We're marooned here. Take your time.'

'Nay. I'll go on now. 'Tis little more I can tell ee, I fear. I sat down an' dozed for a while, then I woke an' t
hought t'was dark time already a
n' I hastened back. But goin' back, at the
big gunnies, I took the east level i
nstead of the west. I'd went no
more'n two hundred paces when I knew 'twas wrong. But I found my way back by a branch level. See here; here 'tis.'

`Yes. Yes, I see.'

`In this there's two narrow gunnies, an' betwixt them is goo
d ground I'll wager. Ye go down
over broken steps where the lode's been worked. But only the bottom's been worked. All the backs is untouched. There's fine quartzy rock, and gossan.
'Twas too high for me to get to’n
, but I'd lay there was a mint o' money in that one place alone!'

Ross did not speak for a minute., He stared at the map and then got up as if to, stretch his cramped muscles. He took out a handkerchief and wiped
the moisture off the palms
of his hands.'

'And then after that you came
up?'

`I waited nigh the main shaft, waited for the dark and for Paul's light to show. I tho
ught the day would never end.

`Yes, said Ross. `It was an anxious time.'

Mark watched !him as he moved across the room, stooping to avo
id the beams. `This last place I've t
elled you of. Is it n
o betterer? Have ye proven it
useless like the others?'

`'Let's go for a walk, shall we? The room is close and there's no space to breathe or straighten. Fresh air will help us both.'

Mark stood up somewhat reluctantly as Ross opened the door. `Aye, whatever you d'say, sur. But I'd be obliged if ye'd answer. . , .

`What you tell; me will bear investigation, Mark, I'm sure of that. There's no doubt a deal of
its promise has escaped us. I -
think you've given me several valuable hints.'

They said more on th
e way downstairs and out, until Mark seemed, partly satisfied.
He did not know how much depended on his answers, but he knew what was entailed in the opening of a mine, and he would have been grievously upset to fail his friend. So Ross's first concern was to hide his own feelings, and that at the, moment was very hard.

He did not in fact feel' that Mark had failed him - only that he him
self had failed those w
ho gave him their affection and their trust. By building so much on the chance utterances of a man crazed with rage and grief, he had brough
t himself to this present pass:
Now, as he walked along with Mark by the side of the sea, and while the cold breeze stung his face
and chilled the sweat which had broken out on him during th
e interview, now it seemed to
him' that he had kno
wn for some time that this last
throw would fail.
The expectation was too much. At the beginning
it c
ould have been true;
but experienced miners could hardly expl
ore the old workings for months
on end and not find whatever good ground was to be found. In his heart he had
feared this; but it was the old
story of
the drowning man and the straw.

This las
t discovery Mark spoke of had been
the first Ross's men had found. What, Mark had seen was one of those complex, mixtures, which abound in mineral-bearing ground; quartz in this particular case, with schorl and oxide of iron and oxide of tin. Any good miner might, have expected results from it.

But the ground had hardly paid for the working.

By Saturday, Dwight had given up hope of seeing Ross
again before he left. Demelza had had no word, and no one
seemed to know when or where the run was expected. That
was as it should be, of course. And even Mr. Trencrom was
dependent on wind and weather,
What Dwight did not know was
that Mr. Trencrom had
business dealings with the owner of a farm on the windy sand
dunes of Gwithian: Farrell, the master of the One and All,
bro
ught his vessel in close enough
, to be seen before darkness
fell.. Then he stood hastily away, from the land again, for Hell's Mouth was not far off; and the farmer's son mounted an excellent pony given him by Mr. Trencrom for the purpose and rode the fifteen miles to see his benefactor.

So in the early dusk there was unaccustomed movement in a number of cottages and farmhouses of the district, a quiet preparing for a night of strenuous but stealthy work, An empt
ying of sacks and a saddling of
mules, a coiling of ropes , and a fetching out of black-tarred lanterns. Here and there, too, a pistol was primed or a flintlock taken down from the wall.

But this was not the whole of the preparations going on. At St. Ann's, about a cottage separated a little from the rest and overlooking, the bay, other men were quietly gathering, and inside, in the living-room,
the three leaders were making final arrangements
: Captain McNeil, Customs Officer Vercoe, and his assistant Bell, Vercoe was titular head of this expedition, but McNeil by virtue of his rank was deferred to on all
decisions, of
importance. He
also commanded the largest part
of the men at their disposal, seven dragoons.