Ross Poldark (10 page)

F
OR 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.”

“Yes, 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.

“I remember the offer well,” he told Zacky. “I’ll see him on Sunday—see if I can get some sense into him. If not I’ll turn him out of his cottage.
They’re an unhealthy family, the Clemmows; we should be better without the last of them.”

Easter Monday came before Ross had faced up to his other promise. But on impulse he had undertaken to be Verity's escort at the ball, and out of affection for her he must go through with it.

The Assembly Rooms were full of people when Ross and Verity arrived. Many of the elite of Cornish society were present tonight. As Ross and Verity entered, the band was already tuning up for the first dance. The room was lit by scores of candles ranged along the walls. The murmur of voices met them, borne on a wave of warm air in which scents and perfumes were strongly mingled. They threaded their way across the room among talking groups and tapping heels and clicking snuffboxes and the rustle of silk gowns.

As was his custom when he went among the people of his own class, Ross had dressed with care; and Verity too, a little unexpectedly, had taken pains with herself. The bright colour of her crimson brocade frock lit up and softened the tan of her plain, pleasant face; she was far prettier than he had ever seen her. This was a different Verity from the one who in breeches and a smock ploughed about in the mud of Trenwith indifferent to rain and wind.

Mrs. Teague and her five daughters were here and were members of a party organized by Joan Pascoe, to which Ross and Verity were expected to attach themselves. While polite greetings were in progress, Ross turned his brooding gaze from one to the other of the five girls and wondered why none of them was married. Faith, the eldest, was fair and pretty, but the other four grew progressively darker and less attractive, as if the virtue and inspiration had gone out of Mrs. Teague as she produced them.

For once there were enough men, and Mrs. Teague, in a new frizzled wig and gold earrings, gazed over the scene with complacent eyes. There were half a dozen others to the party, and Ross was the senior among them. He felt it: they were so young with their artificial manners and parrot compliments. They called him Captain Poldark and treated him with a respect he did not look for—all, that is, except Whitworth, a swaggering beau who was doing nothing at Oxford with a view to entering the Church, and who was dressed in the extremity of fashion with a cutaway coat embroidered with silk thread flowers. He talked
in the loudest voice and clearly wished to take charge of the party, a privilege which Ross allowed him.

Since he was here to please Verity, he decided to enter into the spirit of the evening as much as possible, and he moved about from one girl to another, offering the expected compliments and receiving the expected replies.

He found himself talking to Ruth Teague, the youngest and least attractive of Mrs. Teague's quintet. She had been standing a little apart from her sisters and for the moment had drifted out of range of her overpowering mother. It was her first ball and she looked lonely and nervous. With an air of preoccupation Ross raised his head and counted the number of young men the Teagues had brought. There were, after all, only four.

“May I have the pleasure of the two second dances?” he said.

She went scarlet. “Thank you, sir. If Mama will permit me—”

“I shall look forward to it.” He smiled and moved off to pay his respects to Lady Whitworth, the beau's mother. A few moments later he glanced at Ruth and saw she had now gone white. Was he so fearsome with his scarred face? Or was it the reputation of his father which clung to his name like an odour of unsanctity?

He saw that another man had joined the party and was talking to Verity. There was something familiar in that stocky, quietly dressed figure with the hair done in an unpretentious pigtail. It was Captain Andrew Blamey, the Falmouth packet captain, whom he had met at the wedding.

“Well, Captain,” said Ross, “a surprise to see you here.”

“Captain Poldark.” Ross's hand was gripped, but the other man seemed tongue-tied. Eventually he got out: “No dancing man, really.”

They talked for some moment about ships, Captain Blamey mainly in monosyllables, looking at Verity. Then the band at last struck up and he excused himself. Ross was to partner his cousin. They formed up to begin, the tilted people in some order of precedence.

“Are you dancing the next with Captain Blamey?” he asked.

“Yes, Ross. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. I am promised to Miss Ruth Teague.”

“What, the littlest of them all? How considerate of you.”

“The duty of every Englishman,” said Ross. Then as they were about to separate he added in a gruff and very passable imitation: “No dancing man, really.” Verity met his eyes.

The formal dance went on. The soft yellow candlelight trembled over the colours of the dresses, the gold and cream, the salmon and the mulberry. It made
the graceful and the beautiful more charming, the graceless and the ungainly tolerable; it smoothed over the tawdry and cast soft creamy-grey shadows becoming to all. The band scraped away, the figures pirouetted, moving and bowing and stepping, turning on heels, holding hands, pointing toes; the shadows intermingled and changed, forming and reforming intricate designs of light and shade, like some gracious depictment of the warp and woof of life, sun and shadow, birth and death, a slow interweaving of the eternal pattern.

The time came for his dance with Ruth Teague. He found her hand cold through its pink lace glove; she was still nervous and he wondered how he could put her at her ease. A poor plain little creature, but on examination, for which she gave him every opportunity by keeping her eyes down, she had some features to merit attention, a willful turn to her uplifted chin, a glow of vitality under her sallow skin, an almond shape to the eyes, which gave a hint of the original to her looks. Except for his cousin she was the first woman he had talked with who had not relied on a strong scent to drown the odours of the body. In finding a girl who smelt as clean as Verity he felt an impulse of friendship.

He summoned such small talk as he had and was successful at once in making her smile; in this newfound interest he forgot the aching of his ankle. They danced the two third together, and Mrs. Teague's eyebrows went up. She had expected Ruth to spend most of the evening beside her, as a dutiful youngest was under every obligation to do.

“What a genteel assembly,” said Lady Whitworth, sitting beside Mrs. Teague. “I’m sure our dear children must be enjoying themselves. Who is the tall man distinguishing little Ruth? I missed his name.”

“Captain Poldark. A nephew of Mr. Charles.”

“What, a son of Mr. Joshua Poldark? And I never recognized him! Not at all like his father, is he? Not as handsome. Still… strikin’ in his way—scar an’ all. Is he taking an interest?”

“Well, that's how interest begins, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Teague, smiling sweetly at her friend.

“Of course, my dear. But how embarrassin’ for your two eldest if Ruth were to become attached before them. I always think it such a pity that the etiquette of comin’ out is not more strictly followed in this county. Now in Oxfordshire no girls would be permitted by their parents to make themselves so free as Patience and Joan and Ruth are doin’ until Faith and Hope were happily settled. I do think it makes for bitter feelin’ within the family. Well, imagine that bein’
Mr. Joshua's son and I never recognized him. I wonder if they are alike in their ways. I remember Mr. Joshua well.”