Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  A sound in the next room alerted him; someone was moving about. The click, clink of metal, of the sort of metal that so easily broke and splintered. Butto had become able to recognize the footsteps of the human animals who lived in this place, and these sounded like the footsteps of the short fat white one who wore a cloth round its waist with a short split tail at the back. This was not one of the bigger ones who brought his food. This one was older and had a thinner voice, but was connected with food, though not his food. This one always stood and stared at him and was always unfriendly; it was afraid of him. He could smell the fear.

  Butto stirred. He stirred because usually behind this fat old white one with bushy hair were the two bigger ones with voices as deep as the master’s and carrying things which they used on him – though never when the master was there – to make him obey, to drive him back into his tunnel. He did not want to return to his tunnel. Or at least he did not want to meet them and be conquered by them. If the master put him to bed it was always quite different.

  He was enjoying his cigar. Just like his master, he was enjoying his cigar. He squatted for a minute or so and puffed away in great content.

  A clatter in the next room. Butto started up, grabbed another half-dozen cigars in his left hand and made his retreat. Back to the other door, into the darkness, down the stairs, feel your way past the nobbly black stuff; some of it crumbled under his feet; he stumbled but did not drop the cigars. He took a deep drag at the cigar in his mouth, and to his delight the end glowed brightly and showed him a way past the underground room where the big round casks were stored.

  Changing his mind, Butto decided that he would like to go back to his den after all. With the light of the glowing cigar he did not find this difficult. The end of the cigar had grown an inch tip of white on it, and when he stumbled it had all fallen off, and a sort of white dust floated down and stuck to his chest. He picked some of this off, but it did not taste of anything.

  He came to the broken door. He pulled it aside with a clatter and dropped three of the cigars. He picked them up and with the two he still held put them on the blanket beside his bed. He sank onto his bed in some triumph. Now, with leisure to spare, he stretched his fat legs and tried to copy what his master had done by drawing in breath and pushing the smoke out through his nose. He had succeeded twice before and everyone had laughed and smacked their paws together.

  Ross was late because Dwight at the last moment had been called away, and Ross had walked with him. Frowick Thomas, who was short-sighted, had stumbled in the fog down the old mine well at the back of their cottage and had possibly broken her arm.

  Dwight was taking a little extra trouble in binding up the arm and sending for a sling. Ross hung about until Dwight smiled up at him and said: ‘You go on, Ross. I’ll follow as soon as I can.’

  So it was half an hour after eleven when, picking his way precariously along the cliff path, he heard the beat of the Wheal Elizabeth engine and presently observed the buildings of the mine looming out of the fog. There were people moving about here, their voices curiously hollow and detached. By chance Ted Trebethick was in his path and, recognizing him, stayed him another five minutes giving him details of the progress of their find.

  ‘It d’look to me that thur’s an amplitude of tinstone available wi’ careful planning. Tis of modest grade, but twill more than pay for the working. It minds me of the opening of Wheal Bush, ten year gone when I was working as a tutman. Same sort of parcels to come ’pon unexpected like. Of course Bush were not near the sea, but I’ve a fancy we shall make a pretty penny hereabouts . . .’

  Ross excused himself, promising that he would be back in an hour and then be happy to spend some time with the manager. Then he went on his way, conscious that the message he had somehow to convey to Valentine took away from the importance of everything else – it even devalued the prospect of his, Ross’s, own conflict with his old enemy. It clearly reduced the importance of the tin find. Valentine might emerge triumphant in his contest to keep possession of his son. Money might come to him in unexpected quantity from the mine opened on his doorstep. But it seemed unlikely that he would be able to be there standing on his own doorstep to receive it.

  When he heard what was toward, would he run? It was not like him to run. He had an obstinacy, an almost suicidal obduracy, that stiffened him against the dictates of common sense. He could very well try to brazen it out, defy the constables when they came to arrest him, defy the court in which he would eventually have to appear.

  And what of Georgie in all this? Whatever happened today there would be no question but that the law would return Georgie to his mother if his father were a convicted felon. And so return the child to George Warleggan’s tutelage.

  Even if Valentine could be persuaded to flee – and the means found for him to do so – Ross was not sure he was willing to cooperate in any attempt to take Georgie with him. Valentine as a more or less penniless fugitive would not be an ideal father for so young a child.

  The cluster of horses by the front entrance told him that the meeting had begun. Pray Heaven it would now be near its end. When the heavy-browed man in the black coat came to take his horse and he was ushered into the house, he at once heard the raised voices and knew he was not too late for the fray.

  George was saying something in his most dogmatic voice when Ross was shown in, and at once he broke off his angry dissertation and asked: ‘What are you doing here?’

  Ross said: ‘Calling on a relative. What are you?’

  Valentine said: ‘Welcome, Cousin. Pray come in. Brandy?’

  George said to Valentine: ‘Is this some prior arrangement?’

  ‘Sir Ross comes and goes as he pleases. We are nearly neighbours. Did you call at the mine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good news, is it not.’

  ‘Good indeed.’

  ‘So perhaps Permewan’s prospectuses were not so far adrift after all,’ said Valentine, with a grin. ‘One could easily overlook that they were geographically misdirected.’

  George said: ‘When you arrived, Poldark, we were discussing an important family matter which requires immediate attention. If you wish to talk to Valentine about the mine, I suggest you leave us now and call at some later date.’

  Valentine said: ‘I thought you might be interested in this sudden find, Sir George. After all, your bank now owns half the property.’

  ‘We can talk of it later, when this other matter is settled.’

  ‘Selina.’ Ross took the glass of brandy offered him and sipped it. ‘I am glad to see you back.’

  ‘I am not back. As you should know.’

  ‘That is a matter we were discussing when you intruded yourself upon us,’ George said. ‘When you have withdrawn we shall hope to conclude the business quite soon.’

  Ross exchanged a glance with Valentine. ‘But you say this is a family matter. That is certainly of interest to me.’

  ‘Why? Valentine is no relation of yours. Selina is a stranger to you. You are just one of the ever-intrusive Poldarks, claiming some right to cause trouble.’

  Hector Trembath was still taking notes. Ross wondered what possible advantage could accrue from taking down pointless abuse.

  Valentine said: ‘Reverting to the mine for a moment. I have had my eye on the site since long before I married Selina. When we started it I christened it Wheal Elizabeth after my mother. Now it seems, not at all by design but by the purest coincidence, that we all own a part of the mine much in proportion to the amount we owned of my mother. Sir George forty-nine per cent, myself twenty-five per cent, and Sir Ross twenty-six per cent. Don’t you think that’s quaint, David?’

  ‘If you say so,’ David replied uneasily, flicking a glance from one to the other of the two formidable men confronting each other, and waiting for an explosion.

  But when the explosion came, it came from outside the room. The door flew open and Dawson burst in.

  ‘Mr Valentine, sur. I b’lieve
the ’ouse be afire.’

  Butto had managed very well until he had almost smoked the cigar. White powder drifted down from time to time as the cigar got shorter. When the butt end was beginning to singe his nose he sneezed a couple of times and put the cigar end down while he scrabbled away at the blanket for one of the others he had brought. They had rolled away into the straw, and by the time he fished one out and looked about for a way to smoke it, the smouldering end of the first cigar had connected itself to a deep pile of dry straw and what he saw was not a glowing end that he could bend over and make contact with the way he had done upstairs; all he was confronted with was the flame.

  He edged his way to the other end of the bed, but then something nipped his leg and the hair on his chest was singed with a horrible smell. He looked about, to see his den flickering at him.

  It was in Butto’s nature to be afraid of fire, but under his master’s tuition he had come to learn that if it was kept behind bars it did not bite at all. But this was not behind bars. It was beside him on his bed. It smoked and leapt and flickered.

  He grunted his alarm and stood up and beat his chest. His big voice trumpeted and roared, and he wanted to escape from what he had done. It would be safely dark in the other cellars and dark in the big room upstairs, where the fire burned behind bars and was not angry.

  He fled to the broken metal door, squeezed round it, glared back into his underground lair and saw it with bright hot lights leaping up and down all the way along the wall. And the black smoke made him cough.

  He went through the door and with many a grunt and snuffle fumbled his way towards the wine cellar.

  The first sign in the house itself had been oily-looking smoke curling idly round the open spaces of the dining room. But Mrs Craddock, who had been outside with one of the tweenies for ten minutes, did not notice it until she returned, when, after a little hesitation, she ran out into the long hall to give the alarm. By then the basement was alight.

  They streamed out of the big parlour to find the main house already half full of smoke and a sinister roaring from the direction of the kitchen. Wisps of smoke were curling up the stairs.

  Valentine shouted: ‘Ross, get everyone out! David, come with me.’ He took the first flight of stairs three at a time, coughed at the top and hesitated, and was joined by David.

  Three at a time they made the second flight. Polly Stevens opened the door. ‘I was just a-coming to see – my dear body!’

  Valentine ducked past her into the room, scooped Georgie under one arm and made back for the door. Polly had gone back for something, but David grabbed her and pushed her towards the door. She stumbled as he hustled her along the passage to the main staircase.

  As if the whole house had been primed to go up like a bonfire, the flames, fuelled by a cellar half full of straw, and helped by the strong breeze, followed on the heels of the smoke like a pack of wolves. Built in the main of sedimentary killas rock, much woodwork had been used in the interiors of the house and this was not oak but soft wood which in a hundred years had dried and shrunk and was quick to ignite.

  They brought Georgie and Polly into the hall, and joined the others in a moist fog outside the house. After the sudden heat the chill was welcome. The horses had taken fright at the outpouring of shouting people, and half of them had broken their reins or uprooted their tethering pegs and were stamping and whinnying in the misty distance.

  Ross said to Valentine: ‘Are they all out?’

  Valentine looked around, counting. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Ross glanced at George, who was sitting on the corner of a garden seat struggling into the coat that Blencowe had somehow managed to get him. Georgie, reunited at last, was holding his mother’s hand but was calling out: ‘Dodie, Dodie!’ Cook was patting sooty sparks out of Polly’s flimsy dress and telling her how it had all happened.

  ‘Water,’ Ross said.

  ‘There’s a well at the back but only one bucket. Nearest is the mine. There’s water there, but—’

  ‘The miners,’ Ross said. ‘How many will be above ground, eight, ten? We could form a chain.’

  Valentine said: ‘Well, they’ve buckets enough, but—’. Ross was gone.

  Once he almost blundered down a side track, but a lift in the fog saved him. By luck the first man he saw was Trebethick, who was standing hand to eyes, peering. In a few words Ross told him, and Trebethick, with a voice that belonged to a male voice choir, was bellowing the alarm and calling on men by name who should be within earshot. Water was gushing out of the adit and there were buckets in the new engine house. Ross shouted that he would go on and pray would they follow, filled a bucket and started off.

  The mine had always been far too near the house for Selina’s pleasure, but even so it was not adjacent, and Ross soon realized his first idea of having a chain of men passing one bucket to the next would never do. It would need a hundred or more. The best device would be if perhaps thirty men each ran ten yards before passing the bucket and taking an empty one back. Then as he broke through the fog he saw that this was probably too late.

  There was no flame to be seen, but the thickest of sulphur-black smoke was pouring in great columns from every chimney, open window and cellar grid. There seemed to be fewer people about. Having tipped his water into the front hall, Ross went up to his old enemy, who was looking shrivelled and elderly.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  George jerked his head. ‘Round the side.’

  Ross ran round. Several men were grouped about a tall window, which he recognized as belonging to the side parlour where they had been meeting. There was a trickle of smoke from the top of this window, which had had the glass smashed. But compared to most of the house it was fairly clear. David Lake, the two male servants, Hector Trembath. As Ross came up they looked at him, but no one spoke.

  ‘What is it?’

  Lake shrugged his shoulders. ‘I tried to stop him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Valentine.’

  ‘What the devil—?’

  ‘He has gone in to find Butto.’

  David said: ‘I did my utmost to stop him. But you know what Valentine is like when he makes up his mind. This side of the house is not yet so bad – though personally I wouldn’t put a leg over the windowsill.’

  ‘When did he go?’

  ‘Oh, about three minutes ago.’

  ‘Five,’ said Hector Trembath.

  Ross went to the window and peered in. ‘Valentine!’ he shouted. ‘Valentine!’

  He could see to the other side of the room, could see the glasses on the side tables, and two trays upset where the linen cloths had been snatched to provide primitive breathing masks.

  ‘There’s a well at the back of the house somewhere,’ Ross said to David, who was just behind him.

  ‘Yes, just round that corner.’

  More glass tinkled as Ross stepped into the room.

  ‘Hey, come back!’ David shouted.

  Ross stepped out again. ‘Show me where this well is.’

  ‘Look, don’t throw good money after bad. Valentine may be back any time.’

  ‘The well, man! ’

  Ross had grabbed two more linen cloths from the trays. Then he followed Lake round the corner, found the well, worked the handle until the water gushed, soaked the cloths so that they were running with water.

  ‘If you go in,’ Lake said, ‘I shall have to follow.’

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool, man.’

  ‘Then don’t you be a damned fool! It’s suicide!’

  As they came round the corner Ross beckoned to the two menservants. ‘If I go into this room, as I shall if Mr Valentine does not show up, I order you to prevent Lieutenant Lake from following. Understood?’

  They hesitated. ‘Yes, sur . . .’

  ‘That is an order. See you obey it.’

  Compared to that part of the house over the kitchens, where the dining room had been rapidly involved, this side was yet troubled onl
y by thin spirals of choking fog, though a few ominous sparks seemed to flutter up through the floorboards. He had no knowledge of the design of the house. There must be cellars, but he hadn’t the least idea as to their location or extent.

  He looked at the moulded ceiling of this room, which still seemed sound, then walked cautiously across to the door, through which ten minutes ago they had all exited.

  He opened it and a great whoof of heat and smoke greeted him. Some of the wood on the other side of the door was smouldering, but a broken window allowed a wind to come in and temporarily, as well as fanning the flames, it was serving to clear the smoke.

  From this hall there was a passageway which led to the rear of the house and presumably the kitchens, and there were four other doors, only one of them ajar. He went towards this, stumbling across a piece of debris which apparently had fallen from the second-floor staircase.

  He shouted: ‘Valentine! Where are you?’

  There was such a noise in the house that a cry might not be heard. He thought he heard something in the room with the door ajar, and he pushed it open and peered in.

  It was the sewing room-cum-music room, where Selina had once berated Katie. A half-completed tapestry on a frame, four chairs around a table and a pack of cards, a harpsichord in the corner with a bowl of faded flowers.

  Dark in here from the darkness of the day. Outside you could just see a sapling sycamore bending in the wind. No human being.

  He came out, stared round the hall. His retreat would soon be cut off. He tried the next door and found a service room. A kettle was singing on a Cornish hob. Onions tied on a string a bit like washing on a clothes line. A bucket half full of potatoes. A Welsh dresser. A black cat stared at him from beside the hob with sleepy, startled eyes.

  He strode to the window, screeched it up, grabbed the cat, which scratched him. He put his head out and dropped the cat six feet to the safety of the gravel path.