“The daughter? She is about.”
“There was an understanding as to her between myself and her father.”
“Indeed. I had not heard of it.”
Joshua pushed himself up the pillows. His conscience had begun to prick him. It was late in the day for the growth of this long-dormant faculty, but he was fond of Ross, and in the long hours of his illness he had begun to wonder whether he should not have done more to keep his son's interests warm.
“I think maybe I’ll send Jud over tomorrow,” he muttered. “I’ll ask Jonathan to come and see me.”
“I doubt if Mr. Chynoweth will be free; it's the Quarter Sessions this week. Ah, that's a welcome sight!”
Prudie Paynter came lumbering in with two candles. The yellow light showed up her sweaty red face with its draping of black hair.
“Ad your physic, ’ave you?” she asked in a throaty whisper.
Joshua turned irritably on the doctor. “I’ve told you before, Choake; pills I’ll swallow, God help me, but draughts and potions I’ll not face.”
“I well remember,” Choake said ponderously, “when I was practising in Bodmin as a young man, one of my patients, an elderly gentleman who suffered much from strangury and stone—”
“Don’t stand there, Prudie,” snapped Joshua to his servant. “Get out.”
Prudie stopped scratching and reluctantly left the room.
“So you think I’m on the mend, eh?” Joshua said before the physician could go on. “How long before I’m up and about?”
“Hm, hm. A slight abatement, I said. Great care yet awhile. We’ll have you on your feet before Ross returns. Take my prescriptions regular and you will find they will set you up—”
“How's your wife?” Joshua asked maliciously.
Again interrupted, Choake frowned. “Well enough, thank you.” The fact that the fluffy lisping Polly, though only half his age, had added no family to the dowry she brought was a standing grievance against her. So long as she was unfruitful he had no influence to dissuade women from buying motherwort and other less respectable brews from travelling gypsies.
2
The doctor had gone and Joshua was once more alone—alone this time until morning. He might, by pulling persistently on the bell cord, call a reluctant Jud or Prudie until such time as they went to bed, but after that there was no one, and before that they were showing signs of deafness as his illness became more clear. He knew they spent most of each evening drinking, and once they reached a certain stage, nothing at all would move them. But he hadn’t the energy to round on them as in the old days.
It would have been different if Ross had been here. For once Charles was right but only partly right. It was he, Joshua, who had encouraged Ross to go away. He had no belief in keeping boys at home as additional lackeys. Let them find their own stirrups. Besides, it would have been undignified to have his son brought up in court for being party to an assault upon excise men, with its associated charges of brandy running and the rest. Not that Cornish magistrates would have convicted, but the question of gaming debts might have been raised.
No, it was Grace who should have been here, Grace who had been snatched from him thirteen years back.
Well, now he was alone and would soon be joining his wife. It did not occur to him to feel surprise that the other women in his life scarcely touched his thoughts. They had been creatures of a pleasant exciting game, the more mettlesome the better, but no sooner broken in than forgotten.
The candles were guttering in the draught from under the door. The wind was rising. Jud had said there was a ground swell this morning; after a quiet cold spell they were returning to rain and storm.
He felt he would like one more look at the sea, which even now was licking at the rocks behind the house. He had no sentimental notions about the sea; he had no regard for its dangers or its beauties; to him it was a close acquaintance whose every virtue and failing, every smile and tantrum he had come to understand.
The land too. Was the Long Field ploughed? Whether Ross married or not there would be little enough to live on without the land.
With a decent wife to manage things… Elizabeth was an only child; a rare virtue worth bearing in mind. The Chynoweths were a bit poverty-stricken, but there would be something. Must go and see Jonathan and fix things up. “Look here, Jonathan,” he would say. “Ross won’t have much money, but there's the land, and that always counts in the long run—”
Joshua dozed. He thought he was out walking round the edge of the Long Field with the sea on his right and a strong wind pressing against his shoulder. A bright sun warmed his back and the air tasted like wine from a cold cellar. The tide was out on Hendrawna Beach, and the sun drew streaky reflections in the wet sand. The Long Field had not only been ploughed but was already sown and sprouting.
He skirted the field until he reached the furthest tip of Damsel Point where the low cliff climbed in ledges and boulders down to the sea. The water surged and eddied, changing colour on the shelves of dripping rocks.
With some special purpose in mind he climbed down the rocks until the cold sea suddenly surged about his knees, sending pain through his legs unpleasantly like the pain he had felt from the swelling these last few months. But it did not stop him, and he let himself slip into the water until it was up to his neck. Then he struck out from the shore. He was full of joy at being in the sea again after a lapse of two years. He breathed out his pleasure in long, cool gasps, allowed the water to lap close against his eyes. Lethargy crept up his limbs. With the sound of the waves in his ears and heart he allowed himself to drift and sink into cool, feathery darkness.
Joshua slept. Outside, the last trailing patterns of day light moved quietly out of the sky and left the house and the trees and the stream and the cliffs in darkness. The wind freshened, blowing steadily and strongly from the west, searching among the ruined mine sheds on the hill, rustling the tops of the sheltered apple trees, lifting a corner of loose thatch on one of the barns, blowing a spatter of cold rain in through a broken shutter of the library where two rats nosed with cautious jerky scraping movements among the lumber and the dust. The stream hissed and bubbled in the darkness, and above it a long-unmended gate swung whee-tap on its hangings. In the kitchen, Jud Paynter unstoppered a second jar of gin and Prudie threw a fresh log on the fire.
“Wind's rising, blast it,” said Jud. “Always there's wind. Always when you don’t want it there's wind.”
“We’ll need more wood ’fore morning,” said Prudie.
“Use this stool,” said Jud. “The wood's ’ard, twill smoulder.”
“Give me a drink, you black worm,” said Prudie.
“Wait on yourself,” said Jud.
Joshua slept.
BOOK ONE
OCTOBER 1783—APRIL 1785
CHAPTER ONE
1
IT WAS WINDY. THE PALE AFTERNOON SKY WAS SHREDDED WITH CLOUDS, THE road, grown dustier and more uneven in the last hour, was scattered with blown and rustling leaves.
There were five people in the coach; a thin clerkly man with a pinched face and a shiny suit, and his wife, fat as her husband was thin, and holding to her breast a con fused bundle of pink and white draperies from one end of which pouted the creased and overheated features of a young baby. The other travellers were men, both young, one a clergyman of about thirty-five, the other some years his junior.
Almost since the coach left St. Austell there had been silence inside it. The child slept soundly despite the jolting of the vehicle and the rattle of the windows and the clank of the swingle bars; nor had the stops wakened it. From time to time the elderly couple exchanged remarks in undertones, but the thin husband was unwilling to talk, a little overawed by the superior class in which he found himself. The younger of the two men had been reading a book throughout the journey, the elder had watched the passing countryside, one hand holding back the faded dusty brown velvet curtain.
This was a small spare man, severe in cl
erical black, wearing his own hair scraped back and curled above and behind the ears. The cloth he wore was of fine quality and his stockings were of silk. His was a long, keen, humourless, thin-lipped face, vital and hard. The little clerk knew the face but could not name it.
The clergyman was in much the same position over the other occupant of the coach. A half-dozen times his glance had rested on the thick unpowdered hair opposite, and on the face of his fellow traveller.
When they were not more than fifteen minutes out of Truro and the horses had slowed to a walking pace up the stiff hill, the other man looked up from his book and their eyes met.
“You’ll pardon me, sir,” said the clergyman in a sharp, vigorous voice. “Your features are familiar, but I find it hard to recall where we have met. Was it in Oxford?”
The young man was tall and thin and big-boned, with a scar on his cheek. He wore a double-breasted riding coat cut away short in front to show the waistcoat and the stout breeches, both of a lighter brown. His hair, which had a hint of copper in its darkness, was brushed back and tied at the back with brown ribbon.
“You’re the Revd. Dr. Halse, aren’t you?” he said.
The little clerk, who had been following this exchange, made an expressive face at his wife. Rector of Towerdreth, Curate of St. Erme, Headmaster of Truro Grammar School, high burgess of the town and late mayor, Dr. Halse was a personage. It explained his bearing.
“You know me, then,” said Dr. Halse with a gracious air. “I usually have a memory for faces.”
“You have had many pupils.”
“Ah, that explains it. Maturity changes a face. And—hm. Let me see… is it Hawkey?”
“Poldark.”
The clergyman's eyes narrowed in an effort of remembrance. “Francis, is it? I thought—”
“Ross. You will remember my cousin more clearly. He stayed on. I felt, quite wrongly, that at thirteen my education had gone far enough.”
Recognition came. “Ross Poldark. Well, well. You’ve changed. I remember now,” said Dr. Halse with a glint of cold humour. “You were insubordinate. I had to thrash you at frequent intervals, and then you ran way.”
“Yes.” Poldark turned the page of his book. “A bad business. And your ankles as sore as my buttocks.”
Two small pink spots came to the clergyman's cheeks. He stared a moment at Ross and then turned to look out of the window.
The little clerk had heard of the Poldarks, had heard of Joshua, from whom, they said, in the fifties and sixties no pretty woman married or unmarried was safe. This must be his son. An unusual face with its strongly set cheekbones, wide mouth, and large, strong white teeth. The eyes were a very clear blue-grey under the heavy lids which gave a number of the Poldarks that deceptively sleepy look.
Dr. Halse was returning to the attack.
“Francis, I suppose, is well? Is he married?”
“Not when I last heard, sir. I’ve been in America some time.”
“Dear me. A deplorable mistake, the fighting. I was against it throughout. Did you see much of the war?”
“I was in it.”
They had reached the top of the hill at last and the driver was slackening his bearing reins at the descent before him.
Dr. Halse wrinkled his sharp nose. “You are a Tory?”
“A soldier.”
“Well, it was not the fault of the soldiers that we lost. England's heart was not in it. We have a derelict old man on the throne. He’ll not last much longer. The Prince has different views.”
The road in the steepest part of the hill was deeply rutted, and the coach jolted and swayed dangerously. The baby began to cry. They reached the bottom and the man beside the driver blew a blast on his horn. They turned into St. Austell Street. It was a Tuesday afternoon and there were few people about the shops. Two half-naked urchins ran the length of the street begging for a copper, but gave up the chase as the coach swayed into the mud of St. Clement's Street. With much creaking and shouting they rounded the sharp corner, crossed the river by the narrow bridge, jolted over granite cobbles, turned and twisted again, and at last drew up before the Red Lion Inn.
In the bustle that followed, the Revd. Dr. Halse got out first with a stiff word of farewell and was gone, stepping briskly between the puddles of rainwater and horse urine to the other side of the narrow street. Poldark rose to follow, and the clerk saw for the first time that he was lame.
“Can I help you, sir?” he offered, putting down his belongings.
The young man refused with thanks and, handed out from the outside by a postboy, climbed down.
2
When Ross left the coach rain was beginning to fall, a thin fine rain blowing before the wind, which was gusty and uncertain here in the hollow of the hills.
He gazed about him and sniffed. All this was so familiar, quite as truly a coming home as when he would reach his own house. This narrow cobbled street with the streamlet of water bubbling down it, the close-built squat houses with their bow windows and lace curtains, many of them partly screening faces which were watching the arrival of the coach, even the cries of the postboys seemed to have taken on a different and more familiar note.
Truro in the old days had been the centre of “life” for him and his family. A port and a coinage town, the shopping centre and a meeting place of fashion, the town had grown rapidly in the last few years, new and stately houses having sprung up among the disorderly huddle of old ones to mark its adoption as a winter and town residency by some of the oldest and most powerful families in Cornwall. The new aristocracy too were leaving their mark: the Lemons, the Treworthys, the Warleggans, families which had pushed their way up from humble beginnings on the crest of the new industries.
A strange town. He felt it more on his return. A secretive, important little town, clustering in the fold of the hills astride and about its many streams, almost sur rounded by running water and linked to the rest of the world by fords, by bridges, and by stepping-stones. Miasma and the other fevers were always rife.
…There was no sign of Jud.
He limped into the inn.
“My man was to meet me,” he said. “Paynter is his name. Jud Paynter of Nampara.”
The landlord peered at him shortsightedly. “Oh, Jud Paynter. Yes, we know him well, sir. But we have not seen him today. You say he was to meet you here? Boy, go and ascertain if Paynter—you know him?—if Paynter is in the stables or has been here today.”
Ross ordered a glass of brandy and by the time it came the boy was back to say that Mr. Paynter had not been seen that day.
“The arrangement was quite definite. It doesn’t matter. You have a saddle horse I can hire?”
The landlord rubbed the end of his long nose. “Well, we have a mare that was left here three days gone. In fact, we held it in lieu of a debt. I don’t think there could be any objection to loaning her if you could give me some reference.”
“My name is Poldark. I am a nephew to Mr. Charles Poldark of Trenwith.”
“Dear, dear, yes; I should have recognized you, Mr. Poldark. I’ll have the mare saddled for you at once.”
“No, wait. There's some daylight yet. Have her ready in an hour.”
Out in the street again, Ross turned down the narrow slit of Church Lane. At the end he bore right and, after passing the school where his education had come to an ungracious end, he stopped before a door on which was printed: “Nat. G. Pearce. Notary and Commissioner of Oaths.” He pulled at the bell for some time before a pimply woman admitted him.
“Mr. Pearce bean’t well today,” she said. “I’ll see if he’ll see you.”
She climbed the wooden stairs, and after an interval called down an invitation over the worm-eaten banisters. He groped a way up and was shown into a parlour.
Mr. Nathanial Pearce was sitting in an easy chair in front of a large fire with one leg tied in bandages propped upon another chair. He was a big man with a big face, coloured a light plum purple from overeating.
&n
bsp; “Oh, now this is a surprise, I do exclaim, Mr. Poldark. How pleasant. You’ll forgive me if I don’t rise; the old trouble; each attack seems worse than the last. Take a seat.”
Ross grasped a moist hand and chose a chair as far from the fire as was polite. Insufferably hot in here and the air was old and stale.
“You’ll remember,” he said, “I wrote you I was returning this week.”
“Oh yes, Mr.—er—Captain Poldark; it had slipped my memory for the moment; how nice to call in on your way home.” Mr. Pearce adjusted his bob-wig which, in the way of his profession, had a high frontlet and a long bag at the back tied in the middle. “I am desolate here, Captain Poldark; my daughter offers me no company; she has become converted to some Methodist way of belief, and is out almost every night at a prayer meeting. She talks so much of God that it quite embarrasses me. You must have a glass of canary.”
“My stay is to be short,” said Ross. It certainly must, he thought, or I shall sweal away. “I am anxious to be home again but thought I’d see you on my way. Your letter did not reach me until a fortnight before we sailed from New York.”
“Dear, dear, such a delay; what a blow it would be; and you have been wounded; is it severe?”
Ross eased his leg. “I see from your letter that my father died in March. Who has administered the estate since then, my uncle or you?”
Mr. Pearce absently scratched the ruffles on his chest. “I know you would wish me to be frank with you.”
“Of course.”
“Well, when we came to go into his affairs, Mr.—er—Captain Poldark, it did not seem that he had left much for either of us to administer.”
A slow smile crept over Ross's mouth; it made him look younger, less intractable.
“Everything was naturally left to you. I’ll give you a copy of the will before you go; should you predecease him, then to his niece Verity. Aside from the actual property there is little to come in for. Ouch, this thing is twinging most damnably!”
Ross Poldark Page 2