Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  ‘Oh, nothing important,’ Bella said, turning her dimples on him. ‘But this is all more than tolerably exciting.’

  Maurice sat back, satisfied, and hummed under his breath the theme of a tune called ‘Una voce poco fa’.

  Bella’s smile was of amusement at the recollection of a phrase Mrs Pelham had used at supper last night. She had said, apropos of some minor scandal among her friends: ‘After all, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’

  Bella thought, perhaps this adventure will be a fiasco, who knows? Perhaps I am being a silly goose. But at least it could be argued that in view of what had already been considered suitable sauce for the gander might be allowable to the goose too.

  Jane Heligan, when she was ‘meating’ the calves on the Zelah Hill farm, was told by Mrs Higgins, the farmer’s wife, that ‘thur was a gent to see ee.’

  Rubbing her hand hastily on her apron, Jane went into the kitchen, where Mrs Higgins with one expressive thumb indicated the parlour. Jane kicked off her sabots, knelt down and brushed her bare feet with a corner of the apron to make sure they carried no deleterious matter into the room in which she had only been twice in four years and which she regarded as the holy of holies.

  That there should be such a room showed that the Higginses were moderately prosperous farmers – also that they had no children to clutter up every inch of available space for sleeping.

  A tall youngish man, very upright, in a dark cloak. His riding hat and crop were on the table.

  ‘Miss Jane Heligan?’ he asked.

  ‘Sur?’

  ‘You are Jane Heligan? My name is Prideaux. Captain Prideaux. I’ll not keep you long from your work. I came to ask just a few questions.’

  ‘Sur?’

  ‘About the incident last Tuesday evening when I gather someone attacked you with a knife. Is that correct?’

  Jane blinked at the Bible placed on a small round table in the centre of the room.

  ‘Sur? Oh, ais, sur.’

  ‘I am making some enquiries on behalf of the Justices of the Peace. We are trying to discover who this man was. Would you care to sit down and tell me in your own words just what happened?’

  Jane glanced round and saw a horsehair armchair, but it did not look inviting. Indeed she had never sat down in this room before. She continued to stand, rubbing her hands nervously on her apron. She knew she should have taken the apron off before she came in.

  ‘Well?’

  She began the tale. There was not much to say, but every now and then he stopped her, asking her to repeat words or sentences that he had not been able to understand because of her rough accent.

  ‘Could you try to describe him a little better? Was he a tall man?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Tall. Was he as tall, do you think, as I am?’

  She considered this. ‘I’d ’ardly think so. Mebbe. Tes ’ard to tell in the dark.’

  ‘He – grappled with you?’

  ‘Oh, ais, sur. Some strong ’e was!’

  ‘Did he – smell of anything? Did his clothes smell of anything? His breath?’

  ‘I can’t rightly ’member. Notsino. Mebbe a bit smoky?’

  ‘Wood smoke? Tobacco smoke?’

  ‘I reckon it might’ve been tobacco.’

  ‘What was the knife like?’

  She shuddered. ‘Like – like one you d’use in the kitchen to slice bacon. But a bit shorter mebbe.’

  ‘And he spoke to you?’

  ‘Please? . . . Oh, ais. Two, three words like “sweetheart”.’

  ‘I thought you told Parson Williams “my sweet”.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t rightly remember.’ Jane looked tearful.

  ‘Pray do not distress yourself. You will perhaps remember several other solitary girls have been attacked in Cornwall in the last eighteen months, and it is not impossible that the same man is responsible. You are, it seems probable, the first – or second – of his victims to have escaped alive. Therefore anything – anything – you can recall of your encounter might be of great value in discovering who he is.’ Jane was looking at him wide-eyed. ‘Pray take your time. There is no hurry.’

  Jane racked her brains.

  Philip said: ‘Did he look like anyone you know?’

  ‘Oh, no, sur!’

  ‘Did he look like Farmer Higgins or Parson Williams?’

  ‘No, oh no, sur!’

  ‘Do you know anyone who owes you a grudge? I mean, who would wish to hurt you?’

  ‘Nay, sur, for sure not a one!’

  ‘His voice, now. Was it thin or deep? It was a man’s voice?’

  ‘Ais, I bla. Mebbe twas a bit ’igh pitch.’

  ‘Did it have a country accent?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Like yours, for instance.’

  She considered. ‘Nay, twas not like mine.’

  ‘Like whose, then?’

  ‘More like yourn, sur. If ee d’know what I mean.’

  ‘Educated?’

  ‘Er – ais, I s’pose.’

  ‘He sounded more like a gent than, say, a miner?’

  ‘Ais, sur.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Prideaux. ‘That is something a little fresh to go on. Thank you, Jane.’ He prepared to leave. ‘Nothing else? If you remember anything further I will come back.’

  ‘That cloak,’ said Jane, pointing. ‘That cloak you’m wearing. Twas like the one he was wearing. I think I tore it a small bit. Meaning no liberty to say so, sur. Beggin’ your pardon, sur.’

  ‘But my cloak,’ said Philip amiably, ‘is not torn. Well, thank you, Jane. You have been . . . helpful.’

  Chapter Six

  George Warleggan had been with three of his men, Garth and Trembath and Lander, to inspect an apparently nearly spent mine near Gwennap Pit. His three men were being given a tour of the workings while George drank coffee and brandy at grass level with the six active venturers.

  South Wheal Tolgus had been producing a good quality of copper for upwards of fifteen years, but the product was deteriorating and profits had been scanty since 1817. George had information (which he automatically distrusted) that there were excellent deposits in various parts of the Tolgus Valley, and he had a hunch that if he could get a footing in this area it might be ripe for expansion when the price of copper picked up again. His bank had advanced the adventurers of South Wheal Tolgus several large amounts of money to enable them to continue operating while the copper was being marketed. The venturers had paid back the earlier advances most promptly while times were good, but had lagged badly behind during the last eighteen months. The financial honeymoon, George felt, was now over and the venturers had to face the facts of life.

  The team he had brought over to examine the mine was, he knew, short on expertise so far as the physical extraction of minerals from the ground went, but long on knowledge of matters arising. Hector Trembath, under George’s tuition, possessed as good and as devious a legal mind as existed in Cornwall. Frederick Lander knew all there was to know about the financial promises and plights of mining, and indeed, as a consequence of Cary Warleggan’s continuing ill health, was beginning to take Cary’s place at the rock-hard centre of Warleggan’s Bank. Tom Garth was a good knowledgeable all-round sort of man, and, though he had never worked in a mine in his life, he had probably more experience of the blunt end of mining than any of the rest of the quartet.

  George talked to the venturers coolly and composedly, aware that his team, whatever they truly found, would see everything and report everything in the worst possible light. His bargaining position was strong and could only be reinforced by their report. He was prepared to save the mine from bankruptcy, but at a price. With Lander’s assistance he would be prepared to put forward a package which would enable the mine to continue trading, would allow the adventurers to remain partners in South Wheal Tolgus, but which would vest most of the rights of profit into a company that was itself entirely owned by Warleggan’s Bank.

  So it
proved. The investors, at their wits’ end how otherwise to pay the miners’ wages at the end of the month or to pay for the coal to keep the pumps working, signed away seven-eighths of their shares. They would remain as adventurers; they would in fact be puppets and do what they were told.

  There had been torrential rain over the last few days and on their way home the four horsemen picked their way with care over the greasy track, well satisfied with the day’s work.

  The land here was much dug over and misused, but gorse had found enough nourishment between the sheds and the ruined walls and the half-filled-in trenches, and had sprouted and was now flowering in a dazzling explosion of yellow, almost bright enough to make one shade one’s eyes. As the quartet rode on, hares and rabbits dipped and dodged away from the horses.

  They passed Twelveheads and here there was a choice of tracks. Left they would turn and make their way towards Baldhu and then to Truro, which was the direction three of them should take. George, by going straight ahead, would make for Bissoe and thence across the Falmouth–Truro turnpike road on his way to Cardew. Both Garth and Trembath volunteered to accompany him on his way, which was much overgrown, but George refused. It was little more than half an hour’s ride to where he should cross the toll road, and he could manage well enough. The days were drawing out and he would be home long before dark.

  So the three not unwillingly accepted their dismissal and turned their horses towards the north-east. George rode home in the anaemic sunshine, counting his gains.

  Beside him on the right Carnon Stream presently appeared, yellow and in spate. It was a good twenty feet below the road and between them ran a drang or sloping ditch which drained the track, water trickling out of gullets along the road to form a deep water table alongside the stream proper. The stream was noisy as it bubbled among the stones on its banks; birds twittered and a lark sang. Out of the breeze the spring afternoon was very warm.

  A pity about Cary, George thought. A thin scarecrow like him; it was strange that he should become dropsical, with a swollen stomach showing through his gown. Water of course could be removed, had been removed, but it had filled up again, just like Carnon Stream, and about the same colour. He had said he would not have it done again, but Behenna was adamant – or else he would die.

  But he would die in any case. He’d be eighty-one later this year. We all came to it. Not yet for him, George: the Warleggans were healthy stock, not like some of those effete gentlefolk. He, George, had ailed little if anything in all his sixty years. He had always rather despised ill health, considered it more a mental than a physical weakness. Employees of his were not treated sympathetically when they pleaded illness. Of course people had to die, as Cary was no doubt preparing to do. The chief grief of the matter was that it left George so short-handed.

  His mother should have had more children so that there might be a nephew to slip into place.

  Lander was the man. Lander must clearly be made a partner as soon as Cary passed out of the picture. But George was becoming irritated with Lander, and not purely because of his bad breath. Lander tended to take too much on himself. He took decisions that Cary would and should have taken, and this often without consulting George. He had been slapped down twice and he had not liked it. He must be kept in his place. George had one or two ideas about this. Frederick Lander had little or no money of his own, so a proposition might be put to him – better if Humphry Willyams were to do it, not George – that in order to become a partner, he would have to put down a large sum to establish his place in the bank, and this he would have to borrow, preferably from the Willyams Bank in Plymouth. That way he would be a little hamstrung if he wished to kick up his heels too much.

  This thought coincided with his horse, Garry, lurching suddenly and almost unseating him. A very bloated water rat had run out of the straggling bushes right under the horse’s hooves.

  George tightened rein and over-corrected. The horse’s head came up and his right rear hoof slipped in the slimy mud. He staggered, half-corrected himself, then the other hoof slipped too; he panicked and tried to jump back to safety, but instead began to fall. With a total sense of disbelief that out of nowhere, for no good reason at all, he was going to fall, and fall badly, George was pitched down the bank, his horse rolling with him. He came up spitting from the deep water of the drang, clutched at the root of a fallen tree; it came away, and he found himself being carried along by the swirling water.

  He was in a pit, standing on a ledge and clinging to the greasy wall of the pit, up to his waist in water while water cascaded into the pit from above, swirled round and round, and sucked itself out on a lower level into some further cavern.

  Though he had never been in such a place before, George knew that he was in an old burrow, part of a disused mine, a deep pit dug by prospecting miners of long ago and long since abandoned. The stream when it was in flood overflowed into the old working, and if there had been no outlet this would have quickly filled up, like a giant well perhaps thirty feet deep. That it was not filling up meant that it was draining away further into the old mine, otherwise George could have swum round and round until he drowned. As it was, fortunate chance had provided a floor or a ledge on which he could just kneel and then stand, retching out the water he had swallowed, gasping for breath, pushing back his soaked, scanty grey hair, scrabbling a hand for reassurance against the wall behind him, but afraid to take a step away from it lest what he was marooned on was indeed a ledge and not a solid floor. Where was the water going?

  There was no sign of Garry. Whether the horse had not fallen all the way and been able to scramble out, or it had drowned or just bolted he could not tell. It was not his usual horse, Albatross having damaged his fetlock yesterday. Garry was one of Harriet’s – he had taken it as it looked a likely beast, solid quarters, middle-aged, not likely to be skittish or unstable. What a mistake, the animal could hardly have behaved worse. When he got home, he would have it shot.

  When he got home. If he got home. The water, up to his waist, was cold, and soon he would begin to shiver. It wanted at most two hours to dark.

  He felt more carefully at the rock behind him. It was not natural rock, having been built to create and support the old mine burrow maybe fifty or sixty years ago on the principle of a Cornish wall. It was firm and solid, the years having helped to knit it together. He was what – twenty feet from the daylight? The water was rushing over the edge in a two-foot-wide flood that had just carried him to the edge and tipped him over. In thrashing and splashing about for his life he had luckily chosen to claw his way and stand up on the other side from the fall of water so that he was not drenched by it as it came down. But there was no way up. Twenty feet was nearly as bad as two hundred feet, if you could not fly.

  Would anyone hear him if he shouted? It was unlikely. The Carnon Valley had had a degree of traffic in its heyday, but that was long past. Nowadays there was just the odd cottage that was still lived in. Coming this way this morning he had seen a few miners panning the stream for tin.

  It was undignified to shout, but he shouted. The effort caught his breath and he brought up some more water from the stream. The shout ended in a fit of coughing. When his throat was clear he shouted again. In such circumstances one could not afford to stand on one’s dignity. The damned river with its fall of water in this pit would surely drown out any human cries.

  Was the water half an inch lower where it lapped against his belly? There had been a torrential shower while they were in the mine. A temporary flood. But even if it subsided altogether, what better chance had he of climbing out?

  He peered again at the wall and picked at it fastidiously with his fingers. It was heavy as Killas stone, the sort of thing used frequently for building houses. He felt in his pockets. There was nothing whatever in any of them that he could use as a tool. Then he put his wet finger into his fob pocket and pulled out one of the two guineas he always kept there. He looked at the wall and chose what he estimated was a vulnerabl
e crack. He began scraping with the gold coin.

  He was starting to shiver, and his left ankle was painful to stand on. It was a sprain, no doubt, and would make it more difficult for him to climb the wall. If the wall were even climbable. Could he, with the persistence of a man in peril of his life, make any footholds, any handholds that he could use?

  He worked for a long time, making some impression, but unless he could pull one of the smaller stones out there would be no way of lifting his considerable bulk even a few feet out of the water. He stopped for a rest now and then and cupped his hands to shout. The water was definitely subsiding. It was also going dark.

  Ross was in Truro for a meeting with his fellow partners in the Cornish Bank when he encountered his lawyer, Mr Barrington Burdett, who told him what had happened.

  As Burdett explained, there were rumours and counter-rumours, which he supposed was inevitable when the story related to so influential a member of the town as Mr George Warleggan, but as far as he could tell from the accounts he had heard and sifted through, what had occurred was as follows.

  On Tuesday – this was Thursday – Sir George had ridden out to Redruth to visit one of his mines, and when returning on the afternoon of that day along the Carnon Valley his horse had tripped and precipitated himself and his rider into a drang or deep water table bordering the cart track or former road. From there he was unable to climb out and, in view of the desolate area where the accident occurred, he was likely to have died of exposure or starved to death.

  Were it not for fortunate chance.

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘When he did not return to Cardew Lady Harriet sent out a search party, which found nothing. However, shortly before midnight his horse found its way home, and in the saddlebag were some documents showing that he had been visiting South Wheal Tolgus. So a further search party was sent out – some say with Lady Harriet leading the way with her two boar hounds. Sir George was discovered about two a.m. on Wednesday morning, and brought home on a stretcher.’ Barrington Burdett coughed politely into his fist. ‘Here is where the rumour is hard to verify. Some say he is at death’s door, some that he is just badly bruised, with a sprained ankle, and suffering from exhaustion.’