Ross Poldark (28 page)

A heavy squall buffeted against the shutter; it was as if an enormous man was leaning against the house and trying to push it over. She dozed for a minute, dreaming of a happy life when the food was plentiful for all and children grew up laughing, without the need to work as soon as they could walk. Then she started into wakefulness, aware that there was a light somewhere. She saw three or four nicks coming through the floor and felt a warm pleasure that Jim was home. She thought of going down to see what news he brought to be back so early, but the warmth of her bed and the draughtiness of the room robbed her of the will. She dozed again and then was wakened by the noise of something falling in the room below.

Jim had perhaps brought back some prize and was stacking it in a corner. That was why he had returned so soon. Strange there was no one with him, no voices of Nick or her father. Perhaps they had stayed on. But the best chance of salvage would come with the morning light. She hoped they had all been careful. It was less than two years since Bob Tregea had been drowned trying to get a line out to a ship—and left a widow and young children.

Jim did not call up to her. Of course he would think her asleep. She opened her mouth to call down, and as she did so suddenly wondered with an unpleasant prickly sensation round her heart if the man below really was Jim.

Some heavy movement had induced the doubt. Jim was so light on his feet. Now she sat up in bed and listened.

If it was Jim, then he was searching for something, clumsily, drunkenly. But Jim had touched no more than a mug of light ale since he was married. She waited, and an idea which had blown from somewhere into her mind suddenly germinated and grew.

There was only one man, it seemed to her, who would come in like this while Jim was away, who would move about so clumsily, who might at any moment come creeping up the ladder—and he had disappeared months ago, was thought dead. Nothing had been seen of him for so long that the cloud in her mind had gone.

She crouched there and listened to the gale and to the movements of the visitor. She didn’t move an inch for fear of making a noise. It was as if her stomach and her lungs were slowly becoming frozen. She waited. Perhaps if there was no sound he would go away. Perhaps he would not come up, to find her here alone. Perhaps very soon Jim would really be back.

Or perhaps he was still down there by the rocks watching the efforts made to save men he had never seen before, while at home his wife lay like a stone in bed and a half-starved lustful madman lumbered about the room below.

And the child began to cry.

The fumbling below stopped. Jinny tried to get out of bed, but she had lost every bone in her body; she couldn’t move and she couldn’t swallow. The child stopped, began again more confidently: a thin wail competing against the buffeting of the wind.

She was out of bed at last, had picked him up, almost dropping him from her fumbling hasty hands.

The light below quivered and winked. There was a creak on the ladder.

She no longer had words to pray, nor resources to turn and hide. She stood at the side of the bed, her back against the wall, the child stirring feebly in her tightened arms, while the trap door slowly lifted.

She knew then, as soon as she saw the hand grasping the knotted wood of the floor, that her instinct had not been mistaken, that now she had to face something she had never known before.

By the light of the candle he carried it was possible to see the changes that months of living in lonely caves had brought. The flesh had shrunk from face and arms. He was in rags and barefoot, his beard and hair straggling and wet as if he had come from some underwater cave. Yet it was the same Reuben Clemmow she had always known, with the pale self-centred eyes and the uncertain mouth and the white creases in the sun-reddened face.

She fought down a wave of illness and stared at him.

“Where's my fry pan?” he said. “Stole my fry pan.”

The child in her arms wriggled and gasped for breath and began to cry again.

Reuben climbed up the steps, and the trap door slammed back into place. For the first time he saw the bundle that she clutched. Recognition of her was slow in dawning. When it came, all the rest came with it, remembrance of the injury done him, of why he was forced to shun people and frequent his cottage only at night, of the ten-month-old wound still festering in his side, of his lust for her, of his hatred for the man that had got her this squealing infant, Ross Poldark.

“Lily,” he muttered. “White lily… sin—”

He had been so long apart from people that he had lost the faculty of making them understand. Speech was for him alone.

He straightened himself awkwardly, for the muscles had contracted about the wound.

Jinny was praying again.

He took a step forward. “Pure Lily—” he said, and then something in the girl's attitude sent his brain clicking over upon an old forgotten rhythm of his childhood. “Why standest thou so far off an’ hidest thy face in the needful time o’ trouble. The ungodly for ’is own lust doth persecute; let ’im be taken in the crafty wiliness that they ’ave imagined. For the ungodly’th made a boast of his heart's desire, an’ speaketh good of the covetous.” He took out his knife, an old trapper's knife, with the blade worn down to about four inches from years of sharpening and use. In the months of isolation desire for her had become con fused with revenge. In lust there is always conquest and destruction.

The candle began to tremble and he put it on the floor, where the draught blew the light in gusts about the room and sweated tallow on the boards. “He sittest lurkin’ in the thievish corners o’ the streets, and privily in ’is lurkin’ dens doth ’e murder the innocent.”

Jinny lost her head and began to scream. Her voice went up and up.

As he took another step forward, she forced her legs to move; she was halfway across the bed when Reuben caught her and stabbed at the child; she partly parried the blow, but the knife came away red.

The girl's scream changed its note, became more animal in sound. Reuben stared at the knife with passion ate interest, then recovered himself as she reached the trap door. She turned as he came rushing up. He stabbed at her this time and felt the knife go into her. Then inside him all that had been tense and hard and burning suddenly ran away through his veins: he dropped the knife and watched her fall.

An extra gust of wind blew the candle out.

He shouted and groped for the trap door. His foot slipped on something greasy and his hand touched a woman's hair. He recoiled and screamed, banged on the boarding of the room: but he was shut in here forever with the horror he had created.

He pulled himself upwards by the bed, blundered across the room, and found the shutters of the window. He fought, shouting, with these but could not find the bolt. Then he thrust forward his whole weight and the fastenings gave way before him. With a sense of breaking from a prison, he fell forward out of the window, out of the prison, out of life, upon the cobbles below.

R
OUND THE DINING TABLE OF THE PARLOUR OF NAMPARA HOUSE ONE WINDY afternoon in 1787 six gentlemen were seated.

They had dined and wined well, off part of a large cod, a chine of mutton, a chicken pie, some pigeons, and a fillet of veal with roasted sweetbreads; apricot tart, a dish of cream, and almonds and raisins. Mr. Horace Treneglos of Mingoose, Mr. Renfrew from St. Ann's, Dr. Choake from Sawle, Captain Henshawe from Grambler, Mr. Nathaniel Pearce the notary from Truro, and their host, Captain Poldark.

They had met to approve the preliminary work which had been undertaken at Wheal Leisure, and to decide whether good gold should be risked by them all with the aim of raising copper. It was an important occasion which had lured Mr. Treneglos from his Greek, Dr. Choake from the hunting field, and Mr. Pearce from his gouty fireside.

“Well,” said Mr. Treneglos, who from his position and seniority occupied the head of the table, “well, I’m not going to go against expert advice. We’ve been hummin’ and ha’ing for more’n two years; and if Captain Henshawe says we should begin, well, damme, it's his money being risked as well as mine, and he's the one as did ought to know!”

There was a murmur of assent and some qualifying grunts. Mr. Treneglos put a hand behind his ear to gather up the crumbs of comment.

Dr. Choake coughed. “Naturally we all defer to Captain Henshawe in his experience of working mines. But the success of this venture does not depend on the working of the lode; otherwise, we should have begun a twelvemonth since. It is conditions in the trade which must determine our course. Now only last week we had occasion to attend upon a patient in Redruth who was suffering with an imposthume. In fact he was not our patient but Dr. Pryce called us in for further advice. The poor fellow was far gone when I arrived at his considerable house, which had a fine drive and a marble staircase and other
evidences of good taste and the means to gratify it; but between us we were able to alleviate the condition.

“This gentleman was a shareholder in Dolly Koath Mine, and he let fall the information that it had been decided to close all the lower levels.”

There was silence.

Mr. Pearce, purple and smiling, said: “Well now, in fact I heard much the same thing; I heard it only last week.” He stopped a moment to scratch under his wig, and Dr. Choake said:

“If the largest copper mine in the world is reducing its work, what chance has our small venture?”

“That doesn’t follow if our overheads are smaller,” said Ross, who was at the other end of the table, his bony distinguished face a shade flushed with what he had eaten and drunk. By growing longer side pieces he had partly hidden his scar, but one end of it still showed as a paler brown line across his cheek.

“The price of copper may fall still lower,” said Dr. Choake.

“What's that you say? What's that?” asked Mr. Treneglos. “I couldn’t hear him,” he explained to himself. “I wish he’d speak up.”

Choake spoke up.

“Or it may equally well rise,” was the reply.

“I look at it this way, gentlemen,” said Ross. He drew at his long pipe. “The moment is, on the face of it, a bad one for the starting of ventures large or small. But there are points in our favour which must be borne in mind. Supply and demand rule the prices of ore. Now two large mines have closed this year, and any number of small ones. Dol Koath may soon follow Wheal Reath and Wheal Fortune. This will halve the output of the Cornish industry, so supply to the markets will be less and the price of copper should rise.”

“Hear, hear,” said Captain Henshawe.

“I agree wi’ Captain Poldark,” said Mr. Renfrew, speaking for the first time. Mr. Renfrew was a mine chandler from St. Ann's, and therefore had a double interest in this venture; but so far he had been overawed by the presence of so many gentlemen at the meeting.

The blue-eyed Henshawe had no such diffidence. “Our costs wouldn’t be one half what Wheal Reath's was, ton for ton.”

“What I should like to know,” said Mr. Pearce deprecatingly, “speaking of course for the parties I represent, Mrs. Jacqueline Trenwith and Mr. Aukett, as well as for myself, is what figure we should have to obtain for our crude ore in order to show a profit at all. What do you say to that?”

Captain Henshawe picked his teeth. “It is so much a lottery what the blocks do fetch. We all know that the copper companies are out to get the stuff dirt cheap.”

Ross said: “If we get nine pounds a ton, we shall come to no harm.”

“Well,” said Mr. Treneglos, “let's see your plan on paper. Where's the map of the old workings? We can follow better then.”

Henshawe rose and brought over a big roll of parchment, but Ross stopped him.

“We’ll have the table clear for this.” He rang a hand bell, and Prudie came in followed by Demelza.

This was Demelza's first appearance, and she was the object of a number of curious glances. Everyone, except Mr. Treneglos, who lived in his own private world, knew something of her history and of the rumours which surrounded her presence here. The talk was old talk now, but scandal died hard when its cause was not removed.