“It’s gone!” he shouted.
“The brandy!” said Prudie, lurching to her feet. “’Ere, who’s stolen it? Twas there an hour gone—”
“Not all three kegs!” said Constable Vage, instantly alert.
“Why we did oughter have heard them. They couldn’t move three kegs without—”
“Nay,” said Ned Bottrell, shouting above the clamour. “Not the drink, the corpse!”
***
They got it out of him bit by bit, in a rising clamour of voices. Lured by morbid curiosity and professional pride, he had carried the lantern from the kitchen and taken a peep in the shed, just, as he put it, to see if the ole man was comfortable in his nice new box. And there was the coffin, but the body was gone.
Some of them were as shaken as Ned, but Prudie took the situation firmly in hand. First she said Ned was as full as a can and couldn’t see straight and the ole man was still there, she’d lay a guinea. But when Ned invited her to come and see, she said her feet was hurting her and sent Constable Vage instead. When Vage, clearing his throat a good deal and patting his stomach, returned to confirm the story, she drained another glass and stood up.
“Tis they body stealers,” she said in a booming voice. “You d’know what tis like! I reckon tis those same thievin’ lyin’ murderers that corpsed him on Monday night. Come us on, my sons.”
With a great show of resolution a dozen of them, led now by the widow, pushed through into the lean-to shed and stared down at Ned Bottrell’s box. It looked a good bit of carpentry, and even in this moment of crisis Ned couldn’t refrain from giving it an admiring glance. But it was quite empty.
Prudie nearly tipped it up by sitting suddenly on the edge and bursting into tears.
“There, there, now,” said Paul Daniel, who had been wakened from a sound sleep and dragged in here without a full explanation. “It edn as if he’d been took sudden. We was all prepared for the worst.”
“He’s been took sudden, sure ’nough,” said Joe Permewan. “Tis where ’e’s been took that’s mystifying me.”
“We can’t ’ave a funeral without someone to teel,” said Betsy Triggs. “Twouldn’t be decent.”
“There, there, now,” said Paul Daniel, stroking Prudie’s lank hair. “You must be brave, my dear. We’ve all got to come to it sooner or later. Rich an’ poor, gentle an’ simple, saint an’ sinner. We all must be brave.”
“Brave be danged!” shouted Prudie, reacting ungratefully. “Go hold yer ’ead! I want to know what they done wi’ my ole man!”
There was a brief silence.
“We must look,” said Constable Vage. “Maybe he hasn’t been took far.”
This suggestion seemed better than doing nothing, so two more lanterns were lit. When they opened the door it was raining heavily and was pitch-dark, but after some shufflings and hesitation three small search parties were organized, while the women went back to the feast to console Prudie.
Prudie was inconsolable. It was the disgrace, she said. To have a husband ’an then not to have a husband, that was how she saw it, and she said she’d never live it down. Betsy Triggs was quite right, you couldn’t have a burying without someone to bury. The lying murdering thieves had not only robbed her of her old man, they’d even taken away the pleasure of seeing him planted decent. Everyone was coming back tomorrow for a proper slap-up funeral, and there was three ankers of brandy not touched yet, and all those pies and cakes and the preacher engaged, and the hole dug and nothing to put in it. It was more than flesh and blood could stand.
Aunt Sarah Tregeagle thought she’d help the time away with a story of one of her layings out, when a man had died with his knees up; but no one seemed to want to listen, so in the end she tailed off and silence fell. This was nearly as bad, they found, so Uncle Ben, who had been excused the search on account of age, turned to Joe Permewan, who had been excused the search on account of rheumatics, and asked him to play a tune. Joe said, all right, it was just what he’d thought of suggesting himself and got out his bass viol; but he was so fuddled with drink that when he came to play, the noise he made was even worse than the silence. As Prudie said, it was just as if he was drawing the bow over his own guts.
Ben then suggested a singsong, but nobody had the breath for this, and Prudie began to take offence at Jack Cobbledick’s snores from the corner under the window. It was insult on insult, she said. However, no amount of thumping would wake him, so they just went on and on.
Then Betsy Triggs heard footsteps at the door and all waited eagerly to see what news the returning searchers brought.
Jud Paynter limped in. He was in his best underclothes and was very wet and very cross. The tablecloth he’d borrowed from the kiddley down the lane wasn’t much protection from the rain.
“’Ere,” he said truculently, “what’s all this? An’ where’s my pipe?”
Chapter Eleven
Jud’s recovery was a nine days’ wonder and scandal in the district. The doctors and apothecaries who had not bothered with him when he was supposedly dead now rode long distances to see the freak who had recovered. They peered at him and sounded him and took samples and talked in long Latin names about it. They prescribed febrifuges and antimonies and inserted setons and administered glysters, and one of them even wanted to fire off a pistol near his ear to help to disperse any lingering fever. Only Jud’s language made it impossible. After the first impetus of his recovery he was very ill again, and he lay in bed with a dirty bandage round his head glowering up at his tormentors.
Ordinary people in the district also flocked to see him, but when he began to get better their presence annoyed him so much that Prudie couldn’t let them in any more. Even then they clustered round his window and peeped in through the broken boards, and when he saw them he would shout and swear and aim anything he could lay his hands on, so that Prudie had to hide even her best boots.
Gratitude for his escape didn’t stir him deeply; his chief feeling was anger with Prudie.
“Darned old fool,” he said to Ross when Ross called. “Darned old fool. She spends all me money on me funeral and I aren’t dead. All me money! Drunk away, like it was poured down a drain. She could as lief’ve throwed it to the crows!”
“How did you first—come round?”
Jud said with dignity that he had been lying quiet in his coffin when the rain coming through the leaky roof had begun to fall on his face, and this had wakened him. He explained that he had been dreaming of gin but the taste was wrong, and when he first sat up he thought he was at sea in the One and All. It seemed to be a rough night so he climbed out of his bunk and went on deck, but when he got there it was raining faster than ever and he saw trees and knew he was home after all.
“Then I feels thirsty so I goes down Jake’s lane to Jake’s kiddley and goes in wanting for a drop o’ custom to ease me, like, and damme, what d’you think, they all ups and screams like they was stuck veers and goes scrabbling over each other to get out o’ the other door—and leaves me all alone. So I finished up the drinks they’d left, an’ puts the table sheet round me ’ead and goes home to find Prudie.”
“She thought the money was hers,” Ross said. “Everyone thought you were dead. It was her wish to give you a fine funeral.”
“It was her wish to have a rare old caprouse, that’s what twas! Drunk they all was! Drunk as emmets round a jam pot! And on my gold! When I was strick down there was fifteen gold sov’reigns. What is there now, eh? Three sov’reigns and two kegs of brandy an’ a wooden coffin standing on its end like a grandfather’s clock wi’ no face! Tedn right, I tell ee!”
In the weeks that followed Jud made a slow recovery. He limped about with a stick, one leg dragging a little, and would speak to no one. Nor did he take kindly to the inquiries of his friends. It was almost impossible to go out for a drink without being asked what Heaven looked like or whether Gabriel hadn’t a
nswered his knock, and if there was gin or brandy up-along.
All his life he’d been a disgruntled man, but what made his present grievance almost impossible to bear was that he could tell no one the worst of it. He had risked the reprisal to gain the guineas, and now had suffered the reprisal and lost the guineas as well. If he ever did see Gabriel there would be a fine tale to tell.
On the first Friday in May, Ross and Francis rode in to make final arrangements about the opening of the mine. They explained something of their plans to Harris Pascoe in the back room of the bank, and Pascoe eyed the cousins and wondered how long the partnership would last. He had only the outsider’s view of their misunderstandings, knowing nothing of the long friendship of their youth, and he was grateful for being spared the necessity of refusing them a loan on their venture.
Francis said: “There is one point on which I already have Ross’s agreement. I want my interest in this mine to be vested in my son’s name.”
“Your little boy? He’s only a child, isn’t he?”
“I’m heavily in debt to Warleggan interests and have recently quarrelled with the family. So far, I’ll give ’em credit, no pressure has been put on me; but you know how Ross and the Warleggans get on, and if they learn we are in partnership they may try to get at him through me. If this interest belongs to Geoffrey Charles, no one can touch it.”
“We c-can arrange that. There are, of course, a few extra difficulties which may crop up in the possession of this sort of property by a minor. I suppose you would not prefer it in your wife’s name?”
Francis looked at his fingers. “No. I would not.”
“Just so. Very well, then. When do you intend to begin work?”
“The first of June,” Ross said. “The engine pieces are already well ahead, but of course we shall not need pumping gear right at the outset.”
“I suppose you’re having a Boulton and Watt?”
“Well, no. There are two young engineers from Redruth Henshawe speaks highly of, and we think they will build a more efficient one at a smaller cost.”
“Only t-take care not to get involved in litigation over that. What has the important patent, and I believe there are some years for it yet to run.”
Soon after, they called on Nat Pearce, who was to draw up the deeds of association; then they had a meal at the Red Lion Inn. Francis had some business of his own to do, so he left Ross talking to Richard Tonkin, who had joined them at the meal. Tonkin had news of many of their former associates, but Ross would have welcomed this at any other time more sincerely than now when he was trying his best to forget all the circumstances of twelve months ago.
Tonkin went on to say he had heard that Margaret Vosper, née Cartland, née nobody knew what, had left her husband and was making up to Sir Hugh Bodrugan. Ross said, Indeed, indeed, thinking, Well and good if it keeps him from sniffing round my home like a mangy old tomcat. They rose from the table and moved to go downstairs. At the top of the stairs they saw George Warleggan coming up.
Tonkin half hesitated, glanced at Ross, saw no change in his expression, and continued down a step behind him. George had seen them now, but he made no effort to avoid them. Indeed avoidance was impossible; they would meet at the bend in the stairs.
Ross would have gone down as if the other man did not exist, but George put his long malacca cane against the banisters waist-high, barring his path. It was a dangerous thing to do.
“Well, Ross!” he said. “This is favourably met. We’ve not seen each other for some time.”
Ross looked at him.
“As you remark.”
A ruby as big as a pea made oriental gleams in George’s extremely expensive neckcloth. Ross, by comparison, was shabby.
George said: “You’re not looking so well as when I last saw you. Can it be the anxieties of the trial?”
“Nor you,” said Ross. “Can you have had some disappointment?”
George poked the rail with his stick. “I know of nothing to cause me disappointment. I am well satisfied with my many enterprises. I hear, by the way, that you’re embarking on a new one.”
“As usual you have your ear well to the ground,” said Ross. “Or should it be to the keyhole?”
The sense of inferiority in the depths of George’s consciousness was one that Ross more than any other man could call up. It was altogether the strongest element in his lust for power and far more important as a cause of his hatred for Ross than any of the more obvious reasons.
He withdrew his stick. “I like a gambler. Especially one who plunges when the luck is running against him.”
“A good gambler,” said Ross, “always knows before other people when his luck is beginning to turn.”
“And a bad gambler believes it when it isn’t true.” George laughed. “I must confess I found some amusement in your choice of partner. Francis of all people! Have you forgotten what he did for the Carnmore Copper Company?”
Ross was well aware that Richard Tonkin was listening intently.
He said: “By the way, one of the witnesses at my trial was only three weeks ago set on and nearly died from an attack made by hired bullies of some sort. I shouldn’t like to feel that this kind of retaliation was to become a common practice.”
The flicker of surprise in George’s eyes looked genuine. He leaned against the wall to let two people pass up the stairs.
“He must be an idle creature who has time to carry on personal vendettas with village riffraff. But why should you suppose it to be anything of the kind?”
“Whoever is behind it would be mistaken if he thought intimidation could remain one-sided. The miners, you know, have their own way of showing their displeasure.”
“We all have,” said George politely. “Oh, I hear you’ve been disposing of part of your holding in Wheal Leisure—one of the few really profitable ventures in the county. A grave mistake, I’m sure.”
“Time will show.”
George said: “Of forty-four engines built in Camborne and Illuggan during the last ten years only four are still working. In Leisure you had a rare combination of good ore and easy drainage. At Grace you have certainly not the drainage. What are you looking for—gold?”
“No,” said Ross, “freedom to call our souls our own.”
George, flushing, said quickly, spitefully: “I suppose you know where Francis got the money he’s investing in your mine, do you?”
“I’ve an idea. It was very obliging of you.”
“Yes, we paid it him—the Warleggans—for services rendered. Six hundred pounds…or thirty pieces of silver.”
Down in the taproom two men were quarrelling over a mug of beer: their rough growling voices seemed to Tonkin like the reverberation of some worn-out clockwork mechanism which failed to move the arrested figures on the stairs. Then before he could do anything they slipped into motion.
Ross reached out a hand and grasped George by the neckcloth. It had annoyed him from the first moment he saw it. With it he pulled George towards him and shook him. For a second of surprise George did nothing, but choked with the sudden tightened clasp about his throat—then he lifted his cane to hit Ross across the head. Ross grasped the hand at the wrist and twisted it down. George bunched his other fist and hit Ross a swinging blow on the side of the head. They overbalanced and crumped against the banisters which, being immensely strong, did not give way.
Tonkin stepped forward with an appeal to their common sense, but he was ignored; for a moment they were beyond common sense; a man below had seen them and was calling for the innkeeper.
George, empurpling, swung his great fist again, but he was off balance and the force was half astray. The cane clattered to the floor, and Ross, loosing his, grip, hit George in the mouth. Then at last he released the neckcloth and grasped George about the waist. Like two bulls they swung across the stairs, knocking Tonkin out of th
e way. There was little in it for strength, but Ross had led the harder life. George felt his feet going. Raging angry at this exhibition, he sought Ross’s eyes with his thumbs; but it was too late. He was lifted off his feet, was going over the banisters. At the last moment he sought to cling to something, but only tore the front out of Ross’s shirt. With a great crash he fell to the floor below, landing on a chair and a small table and smashing them as if they were matchwood.
Ross swayed and gasped and spat, began to come down the stairs. His forehead was bleeding and the blood was trickling along his eyebrow and down one cheek. George was twisting and groaning on the floor. The landlord came rushing out and halted, appalled at the sight; then ran to the foot of the stairs.
“Captain Poldark, sir…disgraceful! What is the meaning of it, please?…Mr. Warleggan, what has happened?…Are you hurt, sir? Captain Poldark, I want an explanation…Mr. Tonkin, pray give me an explanation. One does not expect the gentlemen…a table and two good chairs…damage perhaps to the banisters. Captain Poldark…”
As Ross came down the last step the little innkeeper got in his way; Ross saw the red waistcoat and, in the last flicker of an anger such as he had not felt for years, he shoved it out of his path. He meant it as no more than a gesture but the little man staggered back and sat down abruptly against the wainscot, and a plate came down from the wall and smashed beside him. As Ross walked out of the inn George Warleggan was just getting to his knees.
***
At Nampara they were cutting hay. The crop was good this year, and John and Jane Gimlett and Jack Cobbledick were at work together with two of the younger Martin children, superintended a little discontentedly by Demelza, who had been forbidden to take a hand in it. She was proscribed so many things these days and didn’t like it. She felt fine, and it was a waste loafing about when there was much to do.
It was a bright day with a strong southeast breeze, and after dinner she didn’t follow the haymakers up to the field again but fed her small stock of poultry and did a few odd jobs about the house—all this with a restless air, as if mere activity brought no satisfaction in itself. Verity had written last week, saying with some obvious apprehension that her two stepchildren were coming to visit her at last—but most of her space was filled with loving concern and advice. Demelza thought: Don’t overtire myself indeed; I never get a chance; Ross has set the Gimletts on me like terriers. I should not be astonished if they do not drop their scythes soon and come scurrying back to see if all is well.
Jeremy Poldark Page 27