Ross Poldark

by Winston Graham

  A servant of the Warleggans brought in Red Gauntlet and another bird, and a moment later Dr. Choake returned with a couple of his own fancies, followed by the boy Bartle with three of Charles's birds.

  In the confusion Ross looked about for Elizabeth. He knew she hated cock-fighting; and sure enough she had slipped away to the end of the hall and was sitting on a settle beside the stairs drinking tea with Verity. Cousin William-Alfred, who disapproved of the sport on advanced Christian grounds, had withdrawn to a recess on the other side of the stairs where the Bible was kept on a three-legged mahogany table and family portraits frowned down over the scene. Ross heard him discussing with the Revd. Mr. Odgers the distressing condition of Sawle Church.

  A faint flush coloured Elizabeth's skin as Ross came up to her.

  “Well, Ross,” said Verity, “and does she not look sweet in her wedding gown? And has it not all been a great success until now? These men with their cockfighting! Their food doesn’t settle in their bellies unless they see blood flowing in some foolish pastime. Will you take tea?”

  Ross thanked her and refused. “A wonderful feast. My only wish is to sleep after it.”

  “Well, I must go and find Mrs. Tabb: there is more to see to yet. Half our guests will be staying the night.”

  Verity left them and they listened a moment to the arguments and discussions going on about the space which had been cleared. With sport in prospect the company was quickly recovering from its food exhaustion. This was a vigorous age.

  Ross said: “Are you among those who will stay?”

  “Tonight we are to stay. Tomorrow we leave for Falmouth for two weeks.”

  He stared down at her as she gazed across the room. Her fair hair was short at the nape of the neck, with the ears bare and a single wisp of a curl in front of each. The rest was curled and piled on her head, with a small headdress in the shape of a single row of pearls. Her dress was high at the neck with tufted sleeves of fine lace.

  He had sought this encounter and now didn’t know what to say. That had often been the way when they first met. Her fragile loveliness had often left him tongue-tied until he came to know her as she really was.

  “Ross,” she said, “you must wonder why I wanted you to come today. But you hadn’t been to see me and I felt I must speak to you.” She stopped a moment to bite at her lower lip and he watched the colour come and go in it. “Today is my day. I do want to be happy and to feel that all those about me are the same. There's no time to explain everything; perhaps I couldn’t explain it if there were. But I do want you to try to forgive me for any unhappiness I may have caused you.”

  “There's nothing to forgive,” said Ross. “There was no formal undertaking.”

  She glanced at him a moment out of grey eyes which seemed to show a hint of indignation.

  “You know that was not all—”

  The first cockfight was over amidst shouting and applause, and the defeated bird, dripping blood and feathers, was rescued from the arena.

  “Why, it was no fight at all,” said Charles Poldark. “Aarf! Rarely have I seen five guineas earned so quick.”

  “No,” said Dr Choake, whose bird had beaten one of the Warleggans’. “Paracelsus underrated his opponent. A fatal mistake.”

  “Eathily done!” said Polly Choake as she smoothed down the head of the victor while their manservant held it. “Conqueror looks none so vithious until hith temper be roused. People thay as how I am like that!”

  “He has not come through unscathed, ma’am,” said the servant. “You’ll soil your gloves.”

  “Well, now I thall be able to afford me a new pair!” said Polly.

  There was laughter at this, although her husband lowered his brows as at a breach of taste.

  Charles said: “It was a poor show all the same. There's many a youngster could have done better. My Royal Duke could swallow either of ’em, and he little more than a stag!”

  “Let us see this Royal Duke,” said Mr. Warleggan politely. “Perhaps you would like to match him with Red Gauntlet.”

  “With who? With what?” asked Aunt Agatha, wiping a dribble from her chin. “Nay, that would be a shame, it would.”

  “At least we should see if his blood were really blue,” said Mr. Warleggan.

  “A battle royal?” said Charles. “I am not averse. What is the weight of your bird?”

  “Four pounds exact.”

  “Then they fall in! Royal Duke is three pounds thirteen. Bring them in and let us see.”

  The two birds were brought forward and compared. Red Gauntlet was small for his weight, a vicious creature scarred and toughened with twenty fights. Royal Duke was a young bird which had fought only once or twice and that locally.

  “And the stakes?” said George Warleggan.

  “What you will.” Charles glanced up at his guest.

  “A hundred guineas?” said Mr. Warleggan.

  There was a moment's silence.

  “… And the whole range of columns supporting the roof,” said Mr. Odgers, “are held together only by iron bars and clamps, which are constantly in need of reinforcement. The east and west walls are virtually tottering.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll back my fancy,” shouted Charles. “Get on with the fight.”

  Preparations were begun with more care for detail than usual. Whatever might be the habits of Mr. Nicholas Warleggan, it was not the custom of the local squires of Mr. Poldark's financial status to wager so much.

  “… You knew that was not all,” Elizabeth repeated in an undertone. “Something was understood between us. But we were so young—”

  “I don’t see,” said Ross, “in what way explanations will help. Today has made it—”

  “Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth, coming on them suddenly. “You must remember this is your day. You must join in, not isolate yourself in this manner.”

  “Thank you, Mama. But you know I’ve no taste for this. I am sure I shall not be missed until it is over.”

  Mrs. Chynoweth straightened her back, and their eyes met. But she sensed the decision in her daughter's low voice and did not force an issue. She looked up at Ross and smiled without warmth.

  “Ross, I know you are not uninterested in the sport. Perhaps you will instruct me in its finer points.”

  Ross smiled back. “I feel convinced, ma’am, that there are no subtleties of combat on which I can offer you any useful advice.”

  Mrs. Chynoweth looked at him sharply. Then she turned. “I’ll send Francis to you, Elizabeth,” she said as she left them.

  There was silence before the opening of the fight.

  “What is more,” said Mr. Odgers, “the churchyard is worst of all. So full of graves is it that the ground can scarce be opened without turning up putrid bodies or skulls or skeletons. One is afraid to put in a spade.”

  “How dare you say that to my mother!” Elizabeth said.

  “Is honesty always offensive?” Ross answered. “I’m sorry.”

  A sudden sharp murmur told that the fight had begun. From the start Red Gauntlet had the advantage. His little eyes gleaming, he flew in three or four times, finding his mark and drawing blood and knowing just when to withdraw before the other bird could use his own spurs. Royal Duke was game enough but in a different class.

  This was a long fight, and everyone watching it became excited. Charles and Agatha led a chorus of encouragement and counter-encouragement. Royal Duke was down in a flutter of feathers with Red Gauntlet on top of him, but miraculously avoided the coup de grace and was up again and fighting back. At last they separated to spar for an opening, heads down and neck feathers out. Even Red Gauntlet was tiring and Royal Duke was in a sorry state. Gauntlet could do everything but finish him off.

  “Withdraw!” yelled Aunt Agatha. “Charles, withdraw! We have a champion there. Do not let him be maimed in his first fight!”

  Charles plucked at his bottom lip and was indecisive. Before he could make up his mind they were at it again. And suddenly
, quite surprising everyone, Royal Duke took the initiative. He seemed to have drawn fresh reserves from his triumphant youth. Red Gauntlet, winded and taken unawares, was down.

  George Warleggan grasped his father's arm, upsetting his snuffbox. “Stop the fight!” he said sharply. “The spurs are in Gauntlet's head.”

  He had been the first to see what they now all saw, that the Duke, by sheer staying power and some luck, had won the fight. If Warleggan did not at once intervene, Red Gauntlet would fight no more. He was wriggling round and round on the floor in a desperate and weakening effort to throw off the other bird.

  Mr. Warleggan motioned back his manservant, bent and took up his snuffbox and put it away. “Let them go on,” he said. “I don’t encourage pensioners.”

  “We’ve got a champion!” crowed Aunt Agatha. “Ecod, we’ve got a champion, sure ’nough. Well, isn’t the fight over? The bird's done for. Lor’ bless us, he looks dead to me! Why wasn’t they stopped?”

  “I’ll give you my draft for a hundred guineas,” Warleg gan said to Charles with an evenness which did not deceive anyone. “And if you wish to dispose of your bird, give me the first refusal. I believe something could be made of him.”

  “It was a lucky stroke,” said Charles, his broad red face shining with sweat and pleasure. “A rare lucky stroke. I seldom saw a better fight or a more surprising finish. Your Gauntlet was a game bird.”

  “Game indeed,” said Mr. Chynoweth. “A battle royal—um—as you said, Charles. Who is to fight next?”

  “He that fights and runs away,” said Aunt Agatha, trying to adjust her wig, “lives to fight another day.” She chuckled. “Not against our Duke. He kills ere ever they can be separated. I must say you was all mortal slow. Or peevish. Was you peevish? Poor losers lose more’n they need.”

  Fortunately no one was attending to her, and two more cockerels were brought forward.

  “You have no right,” said Elizabeth, “no right or reason to insult my mother. What I have done I have done willingly and of my own mind. If you wish to criticize anyone, you must criticize me.”

  Ross glanced at the girl beside him, and the anger suddenly went out of him and left only pain that everything was over between them.

  “I don’t criticize anyone,” he said. “What's done is done, and I don’t want to spoil your happiness. I’ve my own life to live and… we shall be neighbours. We shall see something of each other—”

  Francis withdrew himself from the crowd and dabbed a spot of blood from his silk stock.

  “Someday,” Elizabeth said in a low tone, “I hope you’ll come to forgive me. We were so young. Later—”

  With death in his heart Ross watched her husband approach.

  “Not following this?” Francis said to his cousin. His handsome face was flushed with food and wine. “I don’t blame you. An anti-climax after the other bout. It was an astonishing performance, that. Well, my dear, are you feeling neglected on your wedding day? It is shameful of me and shall be remedied. May I shrivel and waste if I leave you again today.”

  2

  When Ross left Trenwith much later that evening, he mounted and rode for miles, blindly and blackly, while the moon climbed up the sky, until at last Darkie, not yet sound from her earlier injury, showed signs of lameness again. By then he was far beyond his own house in bare wind-swept country unfamiliar to him. He turned his mare about and allowed her to find her own way home.

  This she lamentably failed to do, and the night was far gone before the broken chimney stack of Wheal Grace showed that he was on his own land.

  He rode down into the valley and unsaddled Darkie and entered the house. He drank a glass of rum and went up to his bedroom and lay there on the bed fully clothed and booted. But his eyes were not closed when dawn began to lighten the squares of the windows. This was the darkest hour of all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  l

  FOR ROSS THE EARLY PART OF THE WINTER WAS ENDLESS. FOR DAYS ON END the driving mists filled the valley until the walls of Nampara House ran with damp and the stream was in yellow spate. After Christmas the frosts cleared the atmosphere, stiffening the long grass on the cliff edges, whitening the rocks and heaps of mining attle, hardening the sand and painting it salt-coloured until licked away by the unquiet sea.

  Only Verity came often. She was his contact with the rest of the family, bringing him gossip and companionship. They walked miles together, sometimes in the rain along the cliffs when the sky was hung with low clouds and the sea drab and sullen as any jilted lover, sometimes on the sand at the sea's edge, when the waves came lumbering in, sending up mists of iridescence from their broken heads. He would stride on, sometimes listening to her, more seldom talking himself, while she walked swiftly beside him and her hair blew about her face and the wind stung colour into her cheeks.

  One day in mid-March she came and stayed an unusual time, watching him hammering a support for one of the beams of the still-room.

  She said: “How is your ankle, Ross?”

  “I feel little of it.” Not quite the truth, but near enough for other people. He limped scarcely at all, having forced himself to walk straight, but the pain was often there.

  She had brought over some jars of her own preserves, and these she now began to take down from their shelves and rearrange.

  “Father says if you are short of fodder for your stock, you can have some of ours. Also that we have seed of radish and French onion if you would like it.”

  Ross hesitated a moment. “Thanks,” he said. “I put in peas and beans last week. There's room enough.”

  Verity stared at a label of her own writing. “Do you think you can dance, Ross?” she said.

  “Dance? What do you mean?”

  “Oh, not the reel or the hornpipe, but at a formal ball such as they are holding in Truro next Monday week, Easter Monday.”

  He paused in his hammering. “I might if I were so inclined. But as I am not the need doesn’t arise.”

  She considered him a moment before speaking again. For all his hard work this winter he was thinner and paler. He was drinking too much and thinking too much. She remembered him when he had been a high-strung, light-hearted boy, full of talk and fun. He used to sing. This gaunt, brooding man was a stranger to her for all her efforts to know him. The war was to blame as well as Elizabeth.

  “You’re still young,” she said. “There is plenty of life in Cornwall if you want it. Why don’t you come?”

  “So you are going?”

  “If someone will take me.”

  Ross turned. “This is a new interest. And are not Francis and Elizabeth to be there?”

  “They were, but have decided not.”

  Ross picked up his hammer. “Well, well.”

  “It is a Charity Ball,” Verity said. “It is to be held at the Assembly Rooms. You might meet friends there whom you have not seen since your return. It would be a change from all this work and solitude.”

  “Certainly it would.” The idea did not appeal. “Well, well, perhaps I’ll think it over.”

  “It would not—it would not perhaps matter so much,” said Verity, blushing, “if you did not want to dance a great deal—that is, if your ankle is painful.”

  Ross was careful not to notice her colour. “A long ride home in the dark for you, especially if it is wet.”

  “Oh, I have the offer of the night in Truro. Joan Pascoe, whom you know, will put me up. I will send in to ask them to accommodate you also. They would be delighted.”

  “You move too fast,” he said. “I haven’t said I would go. There's so much to do here.”

  “Yes, Ross,” she said.

  “Even now we’re late with our sowing. Two of the fields have been under water. I cannot trust Jud to work alone.”

  “No, Ross,” she said.

  “In any case, I couldn’t stay the night in Truro, for I have arranged to ride into Redruth to the fair on the Tuesday morning. I want more livestock.”

  “Ye
s, Ross.”

  He examined the wedge he had thrust under the beam. It was not secure yet. “What time shall I come round for you?” he asked.

  That night he went line fishing on Hendrawna Beach with Mark and Paul Daniel and Zacky Martin and Jud Paynter and Nick Vigus. He had no zest for the old ways, but the drift of circumstances was leading him back to them.

  The weather was cold and unsuitable, but the miners were too used to wet clothes and extremes of temperature to pay much heed to this, and Ross never took any notice of the weather. They caught no fish, but the night passed pleasantly enough for out of the driftwood on the beach they built a big fire in one of the caves and sat round it and told stories and drank rum while the dark cavern echoed with the noise they made.

  Zacky Martin, father of Jinny and the other ten, was a quiet, keen little man with humorous eyes and a permanent grey stubble on his chin which was never a beard and never a clean shave. Because he could read and write, he was known as the scholar of the neighbourhood. Twenty odd years ago he had come to Sawle, a “stranger” from Redruth, and had overcome strong local prejudice to marry the smith's daughter.

  While they were in the cave, he drew Ross aside and said Mrs. Zacky had gone on and on at him about some promise Mister Ross had made when he was over at their cottage soon after he came home. It was only about Reuben Clemmow and the way he was frightening young Jinny, making her life a misery, following her about, watching her, trying to get her away from her brothers and sisters to speak to her alone. Of course, he hadn’t done anything yet: they’d deal with him themselves if he did; but they didn’t want for that to happen, and Mrs. Zacky kept on saying if Mister Ross would speak to him perhaps it would bring him to see sense.

  Ross stared across at Jud's bald head, which was just beginning to nod with the effects of the rum and the hot fire. He looked at Nick Vigus's pockmarked face glowing red and demonic through the flames, at Mark Daniel's long powerful back as he bent over the fishing tackle.