Ross Poldark

by Winston Graham

  Sometimes she even sat with him in the evening. It had begun with her going to ask him for orders about the farm, by her staying to talk; and then somehow she was sitting in the parlour with him two or three evenings a week.

  She was, of course, the most amenable of companions, being content to talk if he wanted to talk, or to persevere with her reading if he wanted to read, or willing to slip out at once if her presence was unwelcome. He still drank heavily.

  She was not quite a perfect housekeeper. Though she came near enough to it for normal needs, there were times when her temperament played a part. The “moods” of which Prudie had spoken still took her. Then she could outswear Jud, and once had nearly outfought him. Her sense of personal danger was at all times nonexistent; but at such times even her industry was misdirected.

  One dark rainy morning of last October she had chosen to clean out part of the cattle shed, and began pushing the oxen around when they got in the way. Presently one resented this and she came out boiling with indignation and wounded in a manner that made sitting down impossible for a week. Another time she chose to move all the kitchen furniture while Jud and Prudie were out. But one cupboard was too much even for her energy, and she pulled it over on herself. Prudie came back to find her pinned underneath, while Garrick barked his appreciation at the door.

  The affair of the quarrel with Jud had a more serious side and was now discreetly forgotten by all. Demelza had tasted the bottle of spirits in the old iron box in the library, and, liking the taste, had finished the bottle. Then she went prancing in to Jud, who by mischance had also been having a private sup. She so tormented him that he fell upon her with some indistinct notion of slaying her. But she fought back like a wildcat, and when Prudie came in, she found them struggling on the floor. Prudie had jumped instantly to the wrong conclusion and had attacked Jud with the hearth shovel. Ross's arrival was only just in time to prevent most of his staff from being laid up with serious injuries.

  A frozen equanimity had fallen on the kitchen for weeks after that. For the first time Demelza had felt the acid sting of Ross's tongue and had curled up and wanted to die.

  But that was twelve months ago. It was a grisly spectre buried in the past.

  Without further speech they passed through the apple trees and walked towards the house, through the garden on which Demelza had put in so many extra hours last summer. All the weeds had been cleared, leaving much bare earth and a few straggling remnants of the plants Ross's mother had grown.

  There were three lavender bushes, tall and ungainly from the press of weeds; there was a bush of rosemary, freed from its tangle and promising flower. She had also unearthed a damask rose with its bright splashed flowers of pink and white, and a moss rose and two monthly roses; and in her quest about the countryside she had begun to bring home seeds and roots from the hedgerows. These were no easy things to rear: They had all the waywardness of wild things, ready to luxuriate in desolate places of their own choosing but apt to pine and die when confined within the luxury of a garden. But last year she had had fine spurs of viper's bugloss, a patch of sea pinks, and a row of crimson foxgloves.

  They stopped now, Demelza explaining what she pro posed to do here and here, suggesting that she might take cuttings from the lavender bush and try to root them to make a hedge. Ross looked about him with a tolerant eye. He was not greatly interested in flowers, but he admired the neatness and the colour; and herbs which could be cooked or infused were useful.

  Recently he had given her a little money for her own use, and with this she had bought a bright kerchief to wrap around her head, a pen to learn to write, two copy books, a pair of shoes with paste buckles, a big cloam mug to hold flowers, a sunbonnet for Prudie and a snuffbox for Jud. Twice he had let her mount Ramoth and ride with him into Truro, once when he had promised to visit the cockpit and watch Royal Duke fight for a fifty-guinea purse. This entertainment, to his surprise and amusement, quite disgusted her.

  “Why,” she said, “tis no better than Fathur do do.” She had expected something more refined of a cockfight patronized by the nobility and gentry.

  On the way home she had been unusually silent. “Don’t you think animals d’ feel hurt like we?” she got out eventually.

  Ross considered his answer. He had been led once or twice before into pitfalls by making unthinking replies to her questions.

  “I don’t know,” he said briefly.

  “Then why do veers squeal like they do when you put rings through their noses?”

  “Cockerels aren’t pigs. God made it their nature to fight.”

  She did not speak for a time. “Yes, but God didn’ give ’em steel spurs to fight with.”

  “You should have been a lawyer, Demelza,” he commented, and at that she had been silent again.

  He thought of these things while they talked in the garden. He wondered if she knew what Nat Pearce and the others had been thinking when they stared at her in the parlour a couple of hours ago, and whether she agreed with him that no idea could be more ridiculous. When he wanted that sort of pleasure he would call for Margaret in Truro, or one of her kind.

  It seemed to him sometimes that if pleasure lay in the unsubtle sport that a harlot afforded, then he had not quite the normal appetites of a normal man. Well, there was an odd satisfaction in asceticism, a cumulative self-knowledge and self-reliance.

  He thought very little about it these days. He had other interests and other concerns.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1

  BEFORE SHE LEFT HIM DEMELZA SAID SHE HAD SEEN JINNY CARTER EARLY THAT day, and Jim was sick with a pleurisy. But Jim with his uncertain health was often laid up for a few days, and Ross did not take account of it. All the next fortnight he was busy with matters concerning the opening of the mine, and he put off seeing Jim until he could offer him certain cut-and-dried duties. He did not want this to seem a made-up job.

  The library at Nampara was to serve as a mining office, and the domestic life of the house was disrupted while part of this was cleared and repaired. News that a mine was to open instead of close spread quickly, and they were besieged with miners from up to eighteen miles distant, anxious to take the work at any price. Ross and Henshawe tried to strike bargains fair to both sides. They engaged forty men, including a “grass” captain and an underground captain, who would be responsible to Henshawe.

  At the end of the fortnight Ross met Zacky Martin and enquired about Jim. Jim was up, Zacky said, though not yet back at the mine, being troubled with his cough.

  Ross thought over the arrangements so far as they had gone. Next Monday eight men would begin the adit from the face of the cliff, and another twenty would be at work on the first shaft. It was time for the assistant purser to be brought in.

  “Tell him to come round and see me tomorrow morning, will you?” Ross said.

  “Yes,” said Zacky. “I’ll see Jinny tonight. I’ll tell her to tell him. She won’t forget.”

  2

  Jim Carter was not asleep and heard the faint tapping on the door almost as soon as it began.

  Very cautiously, so as not to wake Jinny or the babies, he slid out of bed and began to gather up his clothes. Once he trod on a loose floor board, and he stood still for some seconds suppressing a cough, until the girl's regular breathing reassured him. Then he pulled on his breeches and shirt and picked up his boots and coat.

  The hinge of the trap door usually groaned when it was moved, but he had put grease on it earlier in the day and it opened now with no noise. He was halfway through when a voice said:

  “Jim.”

  He bit his lip in annoyance but did not reply; she might yet be only speaking in her sleep. There was silence. Then she went on:

  “Jim. You’re going out with Nick Vigus again. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I knew you’d only make a fuss.”

  “Well, you needn’t go.”

  “Yes, I do. I promised Nick yesterday.”

  “Tell ’i
m you’ve changed your mind.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Cap’n Poldark wants you in the morning, Jim. Have you forgotten that?”

  “I shall be back long afore morning.”

  “Maybe he’ll want ee to take a pitch at the new mine.”

  Jim said: “I couldn’t take it, Jinny. ’Tis a speculation, no more and no less. I couldn’t give up a good pitch for that.”

  “A good pitch is no good if you’ve to wade to your chin in water going forth and back to it. No manner of wonder you cough.”

  “Well, when I go out to get a bit of extry, all you do is complain!”

  “We can manage, Jim. Easy. I don’t want more. Not that way. It fair sticks in my throat when I think how you’ve come by it.”

  “I aren’t all that Methody.”

  “No more am I. ’Tis knowing the danger you’ve been in to get it.”

  “There's no danger, Jinny,” he said in a softer tone. “Naught to fret about. Honest. I’ll be all right.”

  A faint tapping was heard on the door again.

  He said: “ ’Tis only while I’m not earning. You know that. I shan’t be up of nights when I’m back on my pitch. Good bye now.”

  “Jim,” she said urgently, “I wisht you wouldn’t go tonight. Not tonight.”

  “Hush, you’ll wake the babies. Think on them, and the other one coming. We got to keep you well fed, Jinny dear.”

  “I’d rather starve—”

  The three words floated down into the dark kitchen as he descended, but he heard no more. He unbolted the door and Nick Vigus slipped inside like a piece of rubber.

  “You been some long time. Got the nets?”

  “All ready now. Brrr… ’tis cold.”

  Jim put on his coat and boots and they went out, Nick whispering to his dog. Their walk was to be a fairly long one, about five miles each way, and for some time they tramped in silence.

  It was a perfect night, starlit and clear but cold, with a north-westerly breeze thrusting in from the sea. Jim shivered and coughed as he walked.

  Their way lay southeast, skirting the hamlet of Marasanvose, climbing to the main coaching road and then dropping into the fertile valley beyond. They were entering Bodrugan land, profitable country but dangerous, and they began to move with the utmost caution. Nick Vigus led the way and the thin lurcher made a second shadow at his heels. Jim was a few paces behind carrying a stick about ten feet long and a homemade net.

  They avoided a carriage drive and entered a small wood. In the shadow Nick stopped.

  “They blasted stars are as sharp as a quarter moon. I misdoubt if we’ll have as fair a bag.”

  “Well, we can’t go back wi’out a try. It ’pears to me—”

  “Sst… Quiet.”

  They crouched in the undergrowth and listened. Then they went on. The wood thinned out, and a hundred yards ahead the trees broke into a big clearing half a mile square. Fringing one side was a stream and about the stream a thicket of bushes and young trees. It was here that the pheasants roosted. Those in the lower branches were easy game for a quick man with a net. The danger was that at the other end of the clearing stood Werry House, the home of the Bodrugans.

  Nick stopped again.

  “What did ee hear?” Jim asked.

  “Somethin’,” whispered Vigus. The starlight glistened on his bald pink head and made little shadows of the pits in his face. He had the look of a perverted cherub. “They keepers. On the prowl tonight.”

  They waited for some minutes in silence. Jim sup pressed a cough and put his hand on the dog's head. It moved a moment and was still.

  “Lurcher's all right,” said Nick. “Reckon twas a false alarm.”

  They began to move again through the undergrowth. As they neared the edges of the clearing it became a question not so much of disturbing the keepers, who perhaps had not been there at all, but of not flushing the pheasants until it was too late for them to fly. The brightness of the night would make this difficult.

  They whispered together and chose to separate, each man taking one net and closing in on the covey from an opposite direction. Vigus, who was the more practised, was to make the longer detour.

  Jim had a gift for stealthy movement, and he went on very slowly until he could see the dark shapes of the birds, podlike among the branches and in the low forks of the tree just ahead. He unwound the net from his arm, but decided to give Nick another two minutes lest he should spring the trap half set.

  As he stood there he could hear the wind soughing in the branches above him. In the distance Werry House was a dark alien bulk among the softer contours of the night. One light still burned. The time was after one, and he wondered about the people who lived there and why they were keeping such late hours.

  He wondered what Captain Poldark would have to say to him. He owed a lot there, but that made him feel he couldn’t accept any more favours. That was, always supposing he could keep his health. It would be no benefit to Jinny to do as his father had done and die at twenty-six. Jinny made a to-do about him having to wade through water to his working pitch every day, but she didn’t realize that they were all wet and dry most of the time. If a man couldn’t put up with that, he wasn’t fitted to be a miner. At present he was free of the blasting powder, and that was something to be thankful for.

  An animal stirred in the thicket near him. He turned his head and tried to see but could not. The tree beyond was gnarled and misshapen. A young oak, one would guess from the dead leaves on its branches. They hung there rustling in the breeze all the winter through. A peculiar swollen shape.

  And then the shape changed slightly.

  Jim screwed up his eyes and stared. A man was standing against the tree.

  So their visit of Saturday had not gone unmarked. Perhaps every night since then there had been game keepers waiting patiently for the next visit. Perhaps he had already been seen. No. But if he moved forward, he was as good as caught. What of Nick coming round from the north?

  Jim's mind was frozen by the need to make an instant choice. He began to move slowly away.

  He had not taken two steps when there was the sound of a broken twig behind him. He twisted in time to avoid a grasp on his shoulder and plunged towards the pheasants, dropping his net as he ran. In the same second there was a scuffle at the other side and the discharge of a musket; suddenly the wood came to life—with the cry of cock pheasants and the beating of their startled wings as they rose, with the stirring of other game disturbed, with men's voices shouting directions for his capture.

  He came to open ground and ran flatly, skirting the edge of the stream and keeping as much as possible in the deep shadow. He could hear running footsteps behind and knew that he was not outdistancing them; his heart pounded and his breath grew tight.

  At a break in the trees he swerved and ran amongst them. He was not now far from the house, and he could see that this was a formal path he followed. In here it was darker, and the undergrowth between the trees was so dense that it would be hard to force a way through it without giving them time to catch up.

  He came upon a small clearing; in the middle was a circular marble pavilion and a sundial. The path did not go beyond this point. He ran towards the pavilion, then changed his mind and made for the edge of the clearing where a big elm tree leaned out and away. He scrambled up the trunk, scratching his hands and breaking his nails on the bark. He had just reached the second branch when two gamekeepers pounded into the clearing. He lay still, drawing thinly at the air.

  The two men hesitated and peered about the clearing, one with head bent forward listening.

  “ … not gone fur… Hiding out…” floated across to the tree.

  They walked furtively into the clearing. One went up the steps and tried the door of the pavilion. It was locked. The other stepped back and stared up at the circular domed roof. Then they divided and made a slow circuit of the open space.

  As one of the men approached his tree Jim suddenly
felt that peculiar stirring in his lung which he knew meant an attack of coughing. The sweat came out afresh on his forehead.

  The gamekeeper slowly went past. Jim saw that he carried a gun. Just beyond the leaning elm the man stopped at a tree which looked more scalable than the rest and began to peer up through its branches.

  Jim gasped at the air and choked and got a breath and held it. The second man had made his tour and was coming to rejoin his companion.

  “Seen aught of ’im?”

  “No. Bastard must’ve escaped.”

  “Did they catch the other un?”

  “No. Thought we’d got this un though.”

  “Ais.”

  Jim's lungs were expanding and contracting of their own accord. The itch welled up irresistibly in his throat and he choked.

  “What's that?” said one of the men.

  “Dunno. Over yur.”

  They came sharply towards the elm but mistook the direction by twenty feet, frowning into the tangled under growth.

  “Stay thur,” said one. “I’ll see what I can find.” He forced his way through the bushes and disappeared. The other stood against the bole of a tree with his gun at the cock.

  Jim grasped at the branch above him in a frantic effort to hold his cough. He was soaked now with sweat, and even capture seemed little more fearful than this convulsive strain. His head was bursting. He would give the rest of his life to be able to cough.

  There was a trampling and a cracking and the second gamekeeper came out, cursing his disappointment.

  “He's gone, I reckon. Let's see what Johnson's done.”

  “How ’bout getting the dogs?”

  “They’ve nought to go on. Maybe we’ll catch ’em proper next week.”

  The two men moved off. But they had not gone ten paces when they were stopped by a violent explosion of coughing just above and behind them.

  For a moment it alarmed them, echoing and hollow about the trees. Then one recovered himself and ran back towards the elm.