Jeremy Poldark

by Winston Graham

  So he just missed Francis, who turned into the inn after he had left.

  Francis asked for him and, on being told he was out, said that he had been promised a share of his room for the night. The innkeeper eyed him doubtfully, trying to size him up, impressed by his gentlemanly speech and bearing which weighed against his muddy tattered clothes, suspecting he was drunk yet not quite reconciling that with his fine drawn expression and resolute speech.

  “I’m sorry, sur, but twouldn’t be for the likes of me to let one gent into another gent’s chamber wi’out a by-your-leave. Twouldn’t be playing fair, like.”

  “Nonsense. Dr. Enys invited me. What time will he be back?”

  “I dunno, sur. He didn’t say.”

  Francis put down his saddlebag. “It is a common custom in times of need to ask two gentlemen to share the same chamber. And you know it. And we are not strangers but friends. Come, tell me what Dr. Enys is paying and I’ll give you the same.”

  “That and gladly when Dr. Enys comes in.”

  “I am not prepared to wait all the night for it.” Francis took out a purse and from it some gold coins. “I’ll pay you my rent now, so that you can’t be the loser.”

  The landlord’s eyes boggled. “It’s but a small chamber, your honour, and but a single bed.”

  “I have no care for the size of the bed.”

  The landlord stared again and then turned to the potboy. “Here, Charlie, take this gent up to number six.”

  Francis paid his dues and followed the boy up the creaking stairs. Once in the room and rid of the boy he shut the door and turned the key. A low narrow chamber with a plain deal table before the empty fireplace, a single bed by the half-shuttered window, two candles flickering, lifting the shadows beside the bed. He leaned against the door for a minute, taking in the room, then picked up one of the candles and carried it to the table. Then he undid his bag, took out a clean shirt, washed himself, put on the shirt and a clean neckcloth. He sat down at the table, took some sheets of paper from his bag, and after some thought began to write. All this was undertaken with deliberation but it was not quite the deliberation of drunkenness. He had passed through drunkenness to a deadly sobriety beyond.

  For five minutes the room was possessed by a new quiet made explicit by the single scratching whisper of the pen. Occasionally there were noises outside, or a burst of laughter would drift up through the squat walls from the taproom like echoes of a remote world. Just now and then one of the candle flames would tremble and a flicker of smoke come into being and detach itself and drift away. He wrote with a concentration which came from both outward and inner urgency: he was not only writing against the clock but against some imperative mechanism within himself which told him that the thing he had to do could wait no longer.

  At length he signed his name, got up, went to his bag again, took out a pistol. It was a single-barrel duelling weapon of the flintlock type employing a heavy bullet and a light charge of powder. He primed it and set it on the table beside him. Then he looked round. All was ready. The silence of the room had become oppressive, it beat in his ears; it echoed the terror of the final initiative, the last compulsion of mind and muscle to which all this had been proceeding as a river hurries to the annihilation of the sea.

  He raised the pistol to his head.

  ***

  The hospital, Dwight found, consisted of a few rooms on the first floor of a squat building near the assize court. Beneath it was the Reading Society; you visited the ground floor to gain a book, the first floor to lose a leg. He was not fortunate enough to find Dr. Halliwell, who had not yet returned from a day’s shooting, but a stout dropsical woman, after a brief suspicious argument at the door, showed him round the two wards.

  The beds were arranged much on the London principle, built into the walls, with wooden sides, rather like great drawers pulled out of a cabinet, each ward being lit by a single lantern in which a squat candle steadily burned. The crowds and events of the week had brought their crop of accidents and illnesses, so the hospital was fairly full. There was the usual close and horrid smell. The patients were four in a bed, lying head to feet; and there did not seem to have been much attempt to sort them out according to their various infirmities. Under the lantern a woman who had had her hand amputated shared a bed with another in the first stages of labour, and the third in their company, to any trained eye, was plainly dying. She had a flushed, feverish face, and pale violet blotches on her hands, and her breathing was halting and strained.

  “A doxy found in the streets,” said the stout woman, hitching up her stomach. “Give birth to twin boys a week past. She’ll be gone afore morning, if you ask me…This other one’s been in labour no more than an hour yet. Tis her father’s child, they say, though she’ll say naught. We put ’em in together for company like…This here be the men’s ward.”

  Dwight did not stay long. He did not know Dr. Halliwell, and one could never be sure that his visit might not be unwelcome. When he got out into the street again he took some grateful breaths of the night air. It had been raining heavily while he was inside, and more was blowing up from the west; but it had not at all damped the spirits of the revellers, and there were dozens still roistering in the streets. He saw two of the more respectable merchants being pushed home in wheelbarrows.

  The innkeeper met him with the news of the unexpected visitor. Dwight had forgotten all about his morning invitation to Francis, and their encounter this afternoon made him wish he’d never issued it. He went up the stairs expecting to find his guest sprawling asleep on the bed, and his irritation was increased when he found the door locked. He thumped on it impatiently, hoping his guest was not too drunk to hear. There was no reply. It was too bad, for there might be no means of waking the man before morning. The landlord probably would not have another key, even supposing this one was not blocking the keyhole on the other side.

  Dwight thumped again with all his strength. The dark narrow passage was cobwebbed in every corner, and there were cracks along the walls where they bulged as if some superior weight was leaning on them from the other side. A claustrophobe would have shrunk and hurried through before they collapsed together and trapped him. From one of the wider cracks near the door a black beetle showed up for a moment as if disturbed and resenting the noise. Suddenly Dwight heard a movement inside the room and the key turn.

  With relief he lifted the latch and went in and was surprised to see the bed empty and unused and Francis walking slowly back to the table on which the two candles burned.

  His irritation going, Dwight laughed a little awkwardly.

  “You’ll excuse the noise. I thought you might be asleep.”

  Francis did not reply but sat down at the table and stared at two sheets of paper in front of him. He didn’t look as drunk as when they last met. With mounting surprise Dwight noticed the clean shirt, the neat neckcloth—and the completely bloodless face.

  He said: “The landlord told me you’d come. I thought you might have difficulty. The town is fairly seething.”

  “Yes,” said Francis.

  Aware of some deeper tension within the room than he had yet penetrated to, Dwight slowly unbuttoned his coat and threw it off, stood for a moment in his shirt sleeves, uncomfortable, hesitating. The other man’s silence forced him to go on.

  “I was sorry for leaving so sharply this afternoon, but, as I explained, I had to rejoin a friend. You’ve supped, I suppose?”

  “What? Oh, yes.”

  “If you’re writing a letter go on with it.”

  “No.”

  Silence fell. Dwight stared at the other more closely.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Are you a fatalist, Enys?” Francis brought his brows together in a sudden grimace of nervous resentment. It broke over his frozen face like a storm. “D’you believe we are masters of ourselves or merely dance like puppets o
n strings, having the illusion of independence? I don’t know.”

  “I’m afraid I’m a little tired for a philosophical discussion. Have you some personal problem before you that puts the question more conveniently?”

  “Only this.” Francis swept the papers impatiently aside and picked up the pistol they had covered. “Five minutes ago I tried to shoot myself. The thing misfired. Since then I have been debating whether I should try again.”

  A glance showed Dwight that the other man was not joking. He stared at Francis, trying to find something to say.

  “You’re a little shocked,” Francis said, and pointed the pistol at his face and squinted down the barrel, his finger on the trigger. “Of course it wouldn’t have been in the best of taste—to have made use of the hospitality of your chamber for such a purpose—but none of my own was to be had, and to do it in some dark corner of a street is faintly vulgar. I’m sorry. Anyway, the thing’s not done yet, so you have a talkative companion for a few moments instead of a silent one.”

  Dwight stared at him, resisting the impulse to say or do the obvious things. A wrong move might be fatal. After a long minute he forced himself to relax, to move across to the ewer and basin by the window so that his back was towards the other. He began to wash his hands, and found they were not quite steady. He felt that Francis was closely watching him.

  “I don’t understand you,” he said at length. “I don’t understand why you could possibly wish to destroy yourself—and, if you did, why you should ride twenty-five miles to a strange town to do it.”

  There was a rustle of papers as if Francis were putting them together.

  “The deceased behaved irrationally before he died. Is that it? But who behaves rationally even when wanting to stay alive? If we were thinking brains suspended in fluid…But we’re not. We have viscera, my dear Enys, as you should know; and nerves and blood and things called emotions. One can develop a quite unreasoning prejudice against spilling one’s blood on one’s own doorstep. Impulses are hard to put under a slide rule.”

  “If this was an impulse, then I hope it’s past.”

  “No, it is not. But now you are here give me your opinion. What happens to a resolve when you put the barrel to your head and pull the trigger and the hammer clicks and nothing takes place? Do you accept the jibe, not having had the foresight to buy fresh powder or the intelligence to realize that powder kept long in this damned Cornish atmosphere gets damp? Or is it the last humiliation to shirk another try?”

  Dwight began to dry his hands. “It’s the only sensible course. But you didn’t quite answer my question. Why suicide? If I may say so, you’re young, propertied, respected, have a wife and son, safely got through serious illness, are under no cloud—”

  “Stop,” said Francis, “or I shall weep for joy.”

  Dwight half turned, and out of the corner of his eye saw that the pistol now lay on the table again, a hand resting lightly on it. “Well, if you were your cousin, I might see a greater reason for all this. He has lost his only child, is likely to have some sentence tomorrow, failed last year in an enterprise he put all his heart to…”

  Francis got up, pushing the table aside with a squeak, stalked across the room. “God damn you, be quiet…”

  Dwight set down the towel. “No doubt Ross still has his self-respect. Which you perhaps have lost…”

  Francis turned. At close quarters his face was streaky with dried sweat. “What makes you say that?”

  The pistol was a long way away. Dwight felt a little more confident of being able to deal with this situation.

  “I think there must be a loss of self-respect before suicide can be even thought of.”

  “You do, eh?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Francis made the facial movements of a laughter which was more bitter for its silence. “There are times when it may be the only means of restoring one’s self-respect. Can you conceive that, or is it outside your scope?”

  “It’s not outside my scope to imagine such a situation. But I’m not able to imagine why you should feel yourself in it.”

  “Let’s see, what were those gracious words you used: young, propertied, respected? But young by what standards? And propertied, did you say? The question is, who owns property in these bankrupt days? Usually some upstart sneering moneylender with a smooth voice and the ethical code of a cuttlefish…And respect?” Francis said the word savagely. “Respected by whom? We are back at the same old gate, respect of oneself, which is the impasse. Drink loosens the disillusion but sharpens the paradox. A pistol ball has no morning after.”

  Dwight went across and lit another couple of candles on the mantelpiece. The shadows at the end of the room lifted, showing the faded flock paper, the dusty antlers of the stag. The light was like a creeping sanity, moving over the dark places of the mind. “A pistol ball is very—dramatic,” he said slowly.

  “Sudden solutions usually are. You ought to know that—in your profession. But you can’t rule them out because they offend your sense of propriety.”

  “Oh, I don’t. All the same, I prefer things on a more homely level. Let’s have a drink and talk it over. What’s the hurry? We’ve all night before us.”

  “Dear God…” Francis let out a slow breath and turned away. “My tongue’s like burnt paper…”

  In the street outside someone was laughing inanely. Dwight went to the cupboard.

  “I’ve brandy here. We can sample that.” He heard Francis folding the papers and stuffing them into a pocket. When he turned Francis had picked up the pistol again, but was taking out the bullet. Half done, he hesitated and the glitter came back into his eyes.

  “Drink this,” said Dwight quickly. “Cheap gin will poison you and bring up all sorts of unhealthy thoughts.”

  “The thoughts were there without the gin.”

  “Well, you can tell me about them if it pleases you. I don’t mind.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll keep my sorrows to myself.” He accepted the glass and looked at it. “Well, here’s to the devil. I don’t know whose side he has been on tonight.”

  Dwight drank without comment. The emotional storm was blowing itself out. Chance had prevented Francis from making his gesture. In exhaustion he would now wish to talk of anything but tonight’s motives. But that was just why it was important that he should do so. Only by getting him to talk it out of himself could one make reasonably sure that the crisis should not happen again.

  Chapter Ten

  Before the Reformation the Franciscans had been a power in the town, owning much of the property at its heart; and although the monks no longer walked the streets in their grey habits or cared for the sick and poor, the property remained as their monument, turned to secular use but unmistakably ecclesiastical in design. Of such was the Refectory of the Grey Friars, where the assizes were held.

  Its Great Hall, a hundred and fifty-odd feet long and sixty in height, with its east window of stained glass, was an impressive chamber; but it bore its age—a matter of five hundred years—with increasing uncertainty, and there were other drawbacks to its use as a court of justice.

  The weather turned from warm to sultry overnight, and when dawn broke a thick mist had fallen over the town. It did not clear much as the sun gained power, and when the judges walked across from their lodgings in their wigs and ermine the fog drifted about them like wet smoke.

  Demelza had had a terrible night, dozing to find nightmares round every corner and starting into a wakeful reality which was no escape. She felt that she had failed utterly last evening, that the outcome of all her efforts had been a futile conversation without issue and without point, that she had failed Ross in every way.

  It was not until last night that she had realized how much she had been privately and foolishly building on her own efforts; all these weeks of waiting she had fed on the hope of being able to give cr
ucial help. Yet it was some native good sense which had prevented her from pressing her overtures with the judge when they at last met. She bitterly blamed herself now for not casting herself and her story on his mercy; but if she had been confronted with the opportunity again she would have done just the same. Ill judgment might have conceived the meeting, but good judgment had saved it from the worst disaster.

  Verity had been nearly as upset as she when she returned. Francis had called, in a strange drunken mood, and had departed in a stranger, which left her in a state of increasing anxiety. Worried almost equally for both the Poldarks, she too had hardly slept, and when she saw Francis ahead of her going into the assize courts she felt sudden relief, as if she had not expected to see him safe and well today. But the other care remained, and when she got inside, the anxiety was doubled by what she saw of the earlier cases that came on.

  Places had been saved for them near the front of the hall, which was already crowded when they took their seats. Guards and turnkeys, jurors and witnesses, barristers and notaries filled the front of the hall, and behind were the public places. The few front rows here had been saved for people of note, and many who were in town for the elections had come to see the fun. Verity saw Unwin Trevaunance with a red-haired girl, and Sir Hugh Bodrugan and several ladies and gentlemen of quality with fans and snuffboxes. In a corner by himself, holding a long malacca stick, was George Warleggan. Behind these rows were the rabble.

  The hall, though high, was ill ventilated and stuffy, and one could tell that it would soon grow hot with the press. There were men at the door and inside selling hot pasties and chestnuts and lemonade, but they were driven out just before ten o’clock. Then the clerk of the court rapped with his hammer and everyone stood up, and the Hon. Mr. Justice Lister, connoisseur of church music, came in, bowed solemnly to the court, and sat down with the sheriffs and aldermen. He pulled the great bunch of aromatic herbs nearer to him and put a vinegar-soaked handkerchief on the top of his papers. Another heavy day was begun.