‘What I told you. Now look ee—’
‘What was the rumour exactly, Sir Hugh?’
‘That he was paying her serious attentions. No more and no less. Indeed I was surprised you’d not heard it. Gossip is always a pleasant topic over tea, especially bawdy gossip. I’ll tell you some when you come on Saturday.’
‘About Elizabeth and George?’
‘Nay, I know nothing more of them and misremember where I heard that. But stay, there was one other thing. I was in to Truro on Monday ordering some new cravats, and my tailor told me in confidence he’d just received an order for a wedding suit from George. ’Twas all secret at present, he said. So what George’s relations are with your cousin-in-law, I’d not pretend to say. Either he’s going to be legal about it or he’s keeping her for the side door. I hope for your sake it is the first, for it would be a grand thing for the Poldarks to get George Warleggan in the family. I wish Connie would marry again and marry someone like that. We need the money. I’m always nagging her to, and she’s always nagging me to, but I say I ain’t a marrying man; and then without fail she says I’m a bedding man and what’s the difference except for a service and a gold ring, and I say, ah, but the gold ring is just what I can’t face, for you can’t turn your wife out to grass like a prize mare. Now, m’dear, when you come on Saturday—’
‘I’m sorry, Sir Hugh, but I can’t manage Saturday. You see—’
‘Saturday sennight then. This army feller is accompanying Connie—’
‘I’m sorry, Sir Hugh.’
He bent his eyebrows at her again. ‘You’re a damned unaccommodating minx, ma’am, if you’ll excuse the familiarity. If I didn’t like you so well, I’d like you not at all.’
Demelza still had her hand in captivity. ‘I’m glad you like me so well, Sir Hugh, for I like you well too and I should be grieved to think I displeased you. But you’ve told me you look on women as prize mares which can be turned out to grass just whenever you think. Then can you not forgive a woman for wanting to gallop off as she pleases with no hand to bridle her and no man to order her where or how she shall go? Isn’t it good to have the exception as well as the rule? Must all women be just what you say so’s to win your approval?’
He stared at the V of her collar, not bothering to follow her argument but liking the paling colour and gentle swell of her skin there.
‘I’ll tell you what, miss,’ he said. ‘It will be my birthday in a few weeks’ time, and Connie and I are thinking of giving a party and a dance. Just a few friends – forty or fifty maybe. We get asked out here and asked out there, and I say to Connie it would be a good thing to push it through while the war’s on. We’ll do it in very good style, though; not like that fellow Trevaunance who’s too mean to spit. A band and what not. Now if I sat down and wrote a formal invitation to your stiff-necked husband, d’you think the two of you would come? Would that be right enough for you, eh?’
Demelza stared into his beady eyes, trying to read what ulterior purposes might be there.
‘Thank you, Sir Hugh. You’re being that kind to me now. Much kinder than I deserve.’
‘You can’t judge what you deserve, ma’am. Leave that to me, and one of these days I b’lieve you will get it.’
She reached home without the necessity of having to tell Ross where she had been. She had discovered what she had gone to discover, but was unrelieved for knowing it. She knew at once that she could not break the news to Ross, she found she could not even hint at it. What his response would be, how he would act, she had no idea. All she knew was that she did not want to be the one to tell him or to be present when he was told.
Chapter Four
Weeks passed, and the primroses flowered and the first bluebells. Dwight’s physician friend went home and Dwight made inquiries about joining the Navy as a surgeon. But he took no further action because the war was coming to an end. The optimists had been right and France was breaking up. Defeated by the Austrians, who had at last moved, General Dumouriez followed Lafayette into the enemy’s camp. Two thirds of the provinces were in revolt against Paris. The invasion of Holland had failed, and the British had taken Pondicherry and Tobago. For the second year running, Paris lay open to any army with the enterprise to take it. Obviously this time someone would, even if it had to be the grand old Duke of York.
Among the results of a general rise in spirits was a fall in the price of copper and tin. But the fall was not enough to make the difference. Success or failure at Wheal Grace still depended on their ability to eke out their finances during the change-over, to preserve a delicate balance between earnings and outgoings. Henshawe’s hundred pounds was already gone, but they were existing on credit provided for them by Pascoe’s bank against the next coinage. Trains of mules carried the black tin into Truro, where the bank issued its tin cheques on the quality and value of the white tin which would be extracted; and on the credit of these cheques the mine was able to continue.
Most of the economies they could make were eaten up above-ground, where a rearrangement and extension of the dressing floors had to be undertaken. Not only did it mean more dressers and spallers, it often meant new ones, for a good copper worker often did not understand how to treat tin. Much of the ore was sent out to the tin stamps of Sawle Combe.
On the second of May, Charlie Kempthorne’s body was found floating in the sea off Basset’s Cove. Dwight went to identify him.
The man had been in the water several days. There were no signs of violence, but the sea had not been kind to him. Dwight stared for a while at the remains of this person he had cured of miner’s phthisis, one of his few real medical successes.
Traitor, informer, bridegroom for Rosina, sail-maker, father, decaying eyeless flotsam, no ready-made deceitful smile now, only the black gape of corruption. Familiarity with death had not lessened Dwight’s essential distaste. The more he saw of it, the less he understood it. The instant disappearance of personality, light from a candle, leaving nothing of value or interest except to the surgeon with his scalpel able to probe now at will. And it was not in his temperament to want to do that. All his preoccupation was with the living, even when the living lied and cheated and sold their friends.
Rosina Hoblyn came to see him at the Gatehouse. Dwight had avoided her since the night of his fight with Kempthorne.
‘Is it true, sur,’ she said, ‘was it Charlie that was washed up?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘Had he been – done to death – killed, afore he was dropped in the water?’
‘Not so far as I could tell. It’s possible. But he may well have fallen in.’
‘Charlie wouldn’t fall in, sur. ’Twasn’t in his nature.’
Dwight knew in his heart that she was right. Rosina understood her man.
‘Or he may have committed suicide – have done himself to death. He cannot have been happy the way things turned out.’
‘Nor me, sur.’
‘You – are you very unhappy for him?’
She flushed sharply. ‘Yes, sur. Or I don’t rightly know. He was always that kind to me . . . ’Tis part that and part the disgrace. It don’t seem right somehow, hard to believe; for it to have been the same man: him that was kind and him that played Judas. And I feel the disgrace so bad – as if I’d done it myself – like I’d known about’n all along. And I didn’t, sur; I didn’t; I never knowed a thing!’
‘Of course not, Rosina; nobody could possibly suppose you did.’
‘Sometimes folk look, so much as to say . . . They d’think if you’re walking out with a man . . .’
‘Be thankful at least that you didn’t marry him. Has your knee been any trouble since that night?’
‘No, sur. I’m that grateful. It seems funny, though, that if you’d never come t’help me . . .’
He would be married, living in a strange town, Ross perhaps in prison or deported; much, so much, hanging on a single thread; three, four, five, countless people’s lives altered by a single wanto
n circumstance. Here the girl at the centre of it all. Rosina’s knee. Ludicrous. After Francis’s death Ross had railed at the sudden changes of fortune that made nonsense of man’s striving and contriving. So it had been once again, more outrageously than ever.
When Rosina left, Dwight felt the urgent need to talk to somebody. Other people discussed their troubles with him, but there was no outlet for himself. He repressed his own troubles and they festered and grew worse.
He knew now that he must get away. It was necessary to restore his self-respect. For no reward he must give up the things he had been reluctant to give up for Caroline. That was not the whole of it: the issue was not as simple as he sometimes tried to believe; but he knew he could not stay here with the memory of his failures.
There were only two people he could talk to, because they alone knew the truth – or part of it. But the opportunity had to be sought, the breaking of the ice. He decided to go at once, without more thought, before the old hesitations and the old embarrassments came. What mattered was the unburdening of his mind. Since his friend Wright went home, the long hours alone had become more than he could bear.
It was a rough, blustering evening for early May, with lowering cloud. The sea was as wild as winter, and between the white lines of breakers was a vivid oily green. In the distance the horizon was hidden in a pale grey mist, and he wisely waited a time in the porch. Sure enough the rain came, blinding in the stronger wind that brought it. It lasted some minutes and then as abruptly ceased, leaving everything guttering and dripping, and the sun flung a single sabre of green across the sea.
As he topped the hill, he could see both people he wanted. Demelza was brushing the water from her steps with the energy of one whose time is limited; and Garrick, nose on forepaws on the wet grass, was obviously waiting for some inner prompting or perhaps a fluttering jackdaw to set him galloping across the valley. Ross was just leaving one of the sheds of the mine.
Their tracks would not converge until near the house, and Dwight saw that Ross would be there well before him. He did not hurry. From this high ground he could survey the whole valley. Presently Demelza saw Ross coming and waved. Garrick, although through all his years at Nampara he had remained obstinately Demelza’s dog, got slowly up and went to meet his master.
At that moment Dwight felt a slight tremor in the ground and a consciousness of noise which he could not specify and could not locate. It might have been an explosion far out to sea, but somehow he knew it was not. By the time the sensation was a few seconds old, he had decided it was some trick of his ears or an extra gust of wind.
Ross had paused to whack Garrick on the flanks; this was what Garrick really liked: pats were no use and he clearly despised anyone who attempted them. Demelza came down to speak to Ross and they were discussing something in the garden. Here Dwight went into the first ring of hawthorn trees, whose tops were bent at sharp angles by the prevailing wind. Between these and the apple trees was a clear gap; and as he came out into this, he saw a man running towards the house from the mine. He looked then at the mine and saw that, in addition to the ordinary coal smoke from the chimney, there had gathered about the engine house a sort of haze which gave the impression of being neither smoke nor steam. As he watched, the balance bob of the engine slowed and came to a stop.
Dwight also stopped. Other figures were emerging from the engine house. The man running had not yet reached Ross, but Demelza had seen him. They were going to meet him. Dwight began to run towards the mine.
Casual accidents in Cornish mines were common enough – a man would fall and break a leg, blasting work was unreliable and hazardous – but major accidents were rare. In the five years of his being mining surgeon there had been none in these parts. Ross was running back now with the man and with Demelza a little behind him.
But Dwight would be there ahead of them. The first person he met was Peter Curnow, who, grey-faced and dirty, had just come out of the engine house.
‘What is it, man, what is it?’
‘A stull’s run, sur, and filled all the bottom with deads! Jack Carter’s just give the alarm. He d’say there’s four, five trapped. The others is coming up now!’
‘Some hurt?’
‘Aye, half of ’em or more.’
‘Look, will you do something for me? Run straight to the Gatehouse and fetch my bag and instruments. Tell Bone. He’ll know what to bring.’
‘Aye, sur. I’ll do that!’ He went off racing.
The stuff about the engine house was dust. The wind was clearing it now, but down below it would be still thick. Three or four more men had come out, but they waved Dwight away – nothing serious, scratches or bruises – and many had stayed below, some to tend the injured, others already beginning to dig.
As they spoke, Ross arrived. Dwight could see from his expression what he felt. Every day the great cavity above them created by the hasty mining of the tin had grown larger. It had not looked too bad a risk. There had been some hasty shoring up which might well have sufficed. Other mines had taken and were taking similar risks. Often such gunnies existed for twenty years without collapsing. But the luck had been against them and the work had caved in. With it had fallen thousands of tons of rock, burying the lode deep and the men as well.
Two men were killed by the fall and three seriously injured. All the work at the bottom of the mine had collapsed, carrying with it ladders, pumping gear, platforms; and nothing was to be seen in the flickering dusty light but a great pile of shattered rock, at which a dozen subhuman figures were frantically digging. The death toll would have been five, but the three who were recovered alive had heard the collapse begin and had run up part way and flattened themselves against the wall of rock as the stuff crashed down. The most seriously injured were Ellery and Joe Nanfan, who were buried four hours before they were rescued. Dwight went down for a time; but he soon realized that he could do more good aboveground, and he went up with the first seriously injured man to be recovered. The changing-shed had been turned into a sort of hospital, with six men lying in it. Someone in the first panic had sent for Surgeon Choake, and he temporarily overlooked his dislike of his young rival. One man had his arm broken, and Choake had the arm off above the elbow almost before a sickened Demelza could turn her head away. Knife in hand, he looked round for the next victim and knitted his brows in disappointment when there seemed no more carving to be done. When Dwight came up, he was binding a head injury, and the two men exchanged a few cold words before concentrating on their common task.
Midnight was past before the last two survivors were brought up, and it was soon plain to Dwight that Joe Nanfan was near death. A beam had fallen on him; his right hip was crushed and a great bruise was spreading across the abdomen, which had suffered internal injury. He was wet with sweat and his breath came in agonized gasps. Dwight did what he could, administered laudanum, and bound up the abdomen to give it support.
Ellery was unconscious, with a deep wound in the temple. There was some prospect of a trepanning operation to remove bone pressing on the brain, and Choake said it was worth attempting anyway because he needed the practice; but eventually it was decided to see how the man went on unmolested.
Ross did not come up all night, and Demelza was not unaware of the dangers of a further fall. While others took it in turns to dig, he remained below. At four Demelza wanted to go down herself, but Dwight would not let her. Instead he sent Gimlett with a message asking Ross to come up. Ross sent word back that he would come when there was no more to do.
Light began to grow soon after four, but the black dawn sky was as torn and ragged as a beggar’s coat. The sun rose in another flurry of rain and a rainbow arched its back across the head of the valley. The second vigil, Demelza thought, that she had spent in this engine house. But this time even the engine had stopped. In the cold morning light she shivered and stretched – tried not to yawn, aware of fatigue and ashamed of it. Sitting on the steps above her Daniel Curnow was quite motionless, as if a
part of the engine he had stopped. Six others. The wife and sons of one of those buried; two sisters and a father of the other. Hoping for the impossible – or if the worst, then for a body to bear away.
At five o’clock Jim Ellery, having been wrapped in warm blankets and kept perfectly quiet, began to come round without any operation. By seven he was taking a little light broth, and at nine he was able to walk home.
At nine Ross came up, having been below thirteen hours. He had no energy and no speech left. They had been unable to recover the two others, and the water was slowly rising.
Contrary to Dwight’s every conviction, Joe Nanfan lived the night and three days later appeared to be on the mend. Fascinated, Dwight compared him privately with one of those insects that you crush underfoot and which still contrive to move away as if nothing has happened.
On the seventh of May, Wheal Grace officially closed. There was nothing much else that could be done. It would take six weeks’ work to remove enough of the debris to reach the lode again. Twenty fathoms of pumping gear had been destroyed. Two hundred pounds would not set it working.
Ross was not sure that he even wanted to see it working again. It had cost the lives of three men. It had been an ill-wished venture from the start.
On the ninth of May he received a letter from Elizabeth.
Chapter Five
He had been in Truro all day, once again making arrangements with the venturers of Wheal Radiant for the disposal of the headgear of the mine. Half his life, it seemed to him, he was active in starting business ventures which he spent the other half winding up. Well, this was the end of them. From now on he farmed his land and, if he was allowed, lived on in debt-ridden poverty for the rest of his days. Now he had no mine, and no interest in a mine, and that was the way it would stay.
He was taking this failure very hard but not saying much about it. Looking back, he thought sometimes he had overdramatized his disappointments as a younger man. As one grew older one saw that no good came of kicking at the table like a hurt child. You took the bad luck and swallowed it and shook off the injury and pretended to yourself as well as to other people that it didn’t matter.
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