“You’ll come over in a day or two, will you not?” said Francis, a rush of affection in his voice. “We’ve heard nothing so far, nothing but the barest details of your experiences or how you were wounded or of your journey home. Elizabeth will be returning home tomorrow. We plan to be married in a month. If you want my help at Nampara, send a message over; you know I shall be pleased to come. Why, it's like old times seeing you back again! We feared for your life, did we not, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
Ross picked up his hat. They were standing together at the door, waiting for Tabb to bring round Ross's mare. He had refused the loan of a fresh horse for the last three miles.
“He’ll be here now, that's if he can handle her. I warned him to be careful.”
Francis opened the door. The wind blew in a few spots of rain. He went out tactfully to see if Tabb had come.
Ross said: “I hope my mistimed resurrection hasn’t cast a cloud over your evening.”
The light from indoors threw a shaft across her face, showed up the grey eyes. The shadows had spread to her face and she looked ill.
“I’m so happy that you’re back, Ross. I had feared, we had all feared—What can you think of me?”
“Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Too long perhaps.”
“Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth. “Take care the night air does not catch you.”
“No, Mama.”
“Goodbye.” He took her hand.
Francis came back. “He's here now. Did you buy the mare? She's a handsome creature but very ill tempered.”
“Ill usage makes the sweetest of us vicious,” said Ross. “Has the rain stopped?”
“Not quite. You know your way?”
Ross showed his teeth. “Every stone. Has it changed?”
“Nothing to mislead you. Do not cross the Mellingey by the bridge: the middle plank is rotten.”
“So it was when I left.”
“Do not forget,” said Francis. “We expect you back here soon. Verity will want to see more of you. If she can spare the time, we will ride over tomorrow.”
But only the wind and the rain answered him and the clatter of hoofs as the mare sidestepped resentfully down the drive.
3
Darkness had fallen by now, though a patch of fading light glimmered in the west. The wind blew more strongly, and the soft rain beat in flurries about his head.
His was not an easy face to read, and you couldn’t have told that in the last half hour he had suffered the worst knock of his life. Except that he no longer whistled into the wind or talked to his irritable mare, there was nothing to show.
At an early age he had caught from his father a view of things which took very little for granted, but in his dealings with Elizabeth Chynoweth, he had fallen into the sort of trap such an outlook might have helped him to avoid. They had been in love since she was sixteen and he barely twenty. When his own high-spirited misadventures caught up with him, he had thought his father's solution of a commission in the Army a good idea while the trouble blew over. He had gone away eager for fresh experience and sure of the one circumstance of his return which would really matter.
No doubt was in his own mind, and he had looked for none in hers.
After he had been riding for a time, the lights of Grambler Mine showed up ahead. This was the mine round which the varying fortunes of the main Poldark family centred. On its vagaries depended not merely the prosperity of Charles Poldark and his family but the subsistence level of some three hundred miners and their families scattered in huts and cottages about the parish. To them the mine was a benevolent Moloch to whom they fed their children at an early age and from whom they took their daily bread.
He saw swinging lights approaching and drew into the side of the track to let a mule train pass, with the panniers of copper ore slung on either side of the animals’ backs. One of the men in charge peered up at him suspiciously, then shouted a greeting. It was Mark Daniel.
The main buildings of the mine were all about him now, most of them huddled together and indeterminate, but here and there the sturdy scaffolding of headgear and the big stonebuilt engine houses stood out. Yellow lights showed in the arched upper windows of the engine houses, warm and mysterious against the low night sky. He passed close beside one of them and heard the rattle and clang of the great draught bob pumping water up from the lowest places of the earth.
There were miners in groups and a number of lanterns. Several men peered up at the figure on the horse, but although several said good night he thought that none of these recognized him.
Then a bell rang in one of the engine houses, a not unmellow note; it was the time for changing “cores”; that was why there were so many men about. They were assembling to go down. Other men now would be on their way up, climbing ant-like a hundred fathoms of rickety ladders, sweat-covered and stained with rusty markings of the mineral rock or the black fumes of blasting powder. It would take them half an hour or more to come to the surface carrying their tools, and all the way they would be splashed and drenched with water from the leaky pumps. On reaching grass many would have a three- or four-mile walk through the wind and rain.
He moved on. Now and then the feeling within him was so strong that he could have been physically sick.
The Mellingey was forded, and horse and rider began wearily to climb the narrow track towards the last clump of fir trees. Ross took a deep breath of the air, which was heavy with rain and impregnated with the smell of the sea. He fancied he could hear the waves breaking. At the top of the rise the mare, all her ill nature gone, stumbled again and almost fell, so Ross awkwardly got down and began to walk. At first he could hardly put his foot to the ground, but he welcomed this pain in his ankle, which occupied thoughts that would have been elsewhere.
In the coppice it was pitch black, and he had to feel his way along a path which had become part overgrown. At the other side the ruined buildings of Wheal Maiden greeted him—a mine which had been played out for forty years; as a boy he had fought and scrambled about the derelict windlass and the horse whim, had explored the shallow adit that ran through the hill and came out near the stream.
Now he felt he was really home; in a moment he would be on his own land. This afternoon he had been filled with pleasure at the prospect, but now nothing seemed to matter. He could only be glad that his journey was done and that he might lie down and rest.
In the cup of the valley the air was still. The trickle and bubble of Mellingey stream had been lost, but now it came to his ears again like the mutterings of a thin old woman. An owl hooted and swung silently before his face in the dark. Water dripped from the rim of his hat. There ahead in the soft and sighing darkness was the solid line of Nampara House.
It struck him as smaller than he remembered, lower and more squat; it straggled like a row of workmen's cottages. There was no light to be seen. At the lilac tree, now grown so big as to overshadow the windows behind it, he tethered the mare and rapped with his riding whip on the front door.
There had been heavy rain here; water was trickling from the roof in several places and forming pools on the sandy overgrown path. He thrust open the door; it went creaking back, pushing a heap of refuse before it, and he peered into the low, irregularly beamed hall.
Only the darkness greeted him, an intenser darkness which made the night seem grey.
“Jud!” he called. “Jud!”
The mare outside whinnied and stamped; something scuttled beside the wainscot. Then he saw eyes. They were lambent, green-gold, stared at him unwinkingly from the back of the hall.
He limped into the house, feeling leaves and dirt underfoot. He fingered his way round the panels to the right until he came to the door leading into the parlour. He lifted the latch and went in.
At once there was a scuffling and rustling and the sound of animals disturbed. His foot slid on something slimy on the floor, and in putting out his hand he knocked over a candlestick. He retri
eved it, set the candle back in its socket, groped for his flint and steel. After two or three attempts, the spark caught and he lit the candle.
This was the largest room in the house. It was half panelled with dark mahogany, and in the far corner was a great broad fireplace half the width of the room, recessed and built round with low settles. This was the room the family had always lived in, large enough and airy enough for the rowdiest company on the hottest days, yet with warm corners and cosy furniture to cheat the draughts of winter. But all that was changed. The fireplace was empty and hens roosted on the settles. The floor was filthy with old straw and droppings. From the bracket of a candle sconce a cockerel viewed him with a liverish eye. On one of the window seats were two dead chickens.
Opening out of the hall on the left was Joshua's bedroom, and he next tried this. Signs of life: clothing which had never belonged to his father, filthy old petti coats, a battered three-cornered hat, a jar without stopper from which he sniffed gin. But the box bed was closed and the three captive thrushes in the cage before the shuttered window could tell him nothing of the couple he looked for.
At the farther end of the room was another door leading into that part of the house which had never been finished, but he did not go in. The place to look was in the bedroom upstairs at the back of the house where Jud and Prudie always slept.
He turned back to the door, and there stopped and listened. A peculiar sound had come to his ears. The fowls had settled down, and silence, like a parted curtain, was falling back upon the house. He thought he heard a creak on the shallow stairs, but when he peered out with the candle held high, he could see nothing.
This was not the sound he was listening for, nor the movement of rats, nor the faint hissing of the stream outside, nor the crackle of charred paper under his boot.
He looked up at the ceiling, but the beams and floorboards were sound. Something rubbed itself against his leg. It was the cat whose bright eyes he had seen earlier: his father's kitten, Tabitha Bethia, but grown into a big grey animal and leprously patched with mange. She seemed to recognize him, and he put down his hand gratefully to her enquiring whiskers.
Then the sound came again, and this time he caught its direction. He strode over to the box bed and slid back the doors. A powerful smell of stale sweat and gin; he thrust in the candle. Dead drunk and locked in each other's arms were Jud and Prudie Paynter. The woman was in a long flannel nightgown, her mouth was open and her varicosed legs asprawl. Jud had not succeeded in getting properly undressed, but snored by her side in his breeches and leggings.
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.
CHAPTER THREE
1
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.
2
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.
Ross Poldark Page 4