Warleggan (30 page)

`You don't need to. I could tell that you expected him to
be in that secret cellar when we opened it. I knew ye had seen him that night.'

After a
moment she said:' 'Is, that
Sir Hugh in the trees
over there?'

`No,, he's on a chestnut horse. I thought it probable that
if
I
posted a
watch on your house long enough we should discover where he was hiding.'

'And did
you
post such a watch?'
‘
No.'

'Why not?' `'

`Because I had
too great a regard for you, ma'am.'

Demelza glanced quickly at him, expecting a
conventional
insincerity but not quite finding it.

MCNeil went' on: `Or that is the half of the truth, to be honest. Had I conceived it my duty to do so, I would have. But I am a soldier not a spy and was already sicke
ned of the affair: The men who w
ere caught
,
were caught and that was an end
on it.'' He
screwed up his moustache. `And now. Well, now it is all forgotten so far as I am concairned. I hold nothing against
' Captain Poldark except that he married so charming
a wife.'

Demelza said : `I don't
hold even that against him
-
so far as it is true.

'It is true.' McNeil stopped and she had to stop also: He smiled down at her. `So I trust you hold nothing against me for my part in the affair?'

She gave him
her very best smile in return. 'Far from it. I hold naught against you for what you did do, and
thank
you much for what you did not do.'

He bowed slightly. `Would ye take,
my arm,
ma'am? The good one, I mean. I think that is Sir Hugh in the distance now, and it would be more seemly to approach him in the proper manner.'

In the end Demelza got the information she wanted, though not without tactical manoeuvre:' She said she, had come to
see Sir Hugh about a new seed drill he had talked of on his last call. It was a poor story, but he was indulgent enough to break off his own work to show her the drill in operation. Fortunately it was to Sir Hugh's purpose as well as to Dem
elza's that they should get rid
of McNeil, so in the end
they managed it.

Sir; Hugh said; `Now you see the seed fed into the hoppers falls into the seed boves fixed on the bottoms of the 'hoppers just as in Tull's
old
drill; but,
here's where the
improvement is claimed Why d'you come in the morning, m'dear, when you interrupt my work, damme, when there's three evenings - a week free, eh? Wednesday's, no
t a good evening, for I'm often
bespoke; but Thursdays, Saturdays, and Mondays I'd entertain you in a fashion proper for a young woman of your trim. Come 'Saturday; Connie's often
away,
and--'

`I should have thought 'twould have been a poor time to see a seed drill, after dark.'

'Oh, pooh, yes; but if you stop the night, I'll show you the drill Sunday morning. ''Twould be an excuse to, stay from church.'

'And what do you suppose my husband would say?' l

`What? Well, what
would he say? Is he a spoilsport? Then come when he
's from home; and will not-know the difference. I have an idea
'

`You were going to tell ms, Sir Hugh, where the improvement in this seed drill was claimed.'

Sir Hugh grunted
impatiently and to
ld her. After a while she: said
: `Do you remember when, you called to see me last that you mentioned George Warleggan and Elizabeth Poldark, saying that, George
was paying her attentions? Do
you know if it is true? What made you say that to me?'

Sir Hugh paused with his hand over hers on the handle of the seed drill. His thick eyebrows crouched like furry caterpillars.

`Nay, rumour, that was all.'

`And what was the rumour?'

`What I told you. Now look ee -'

'What was the rumour exactly, Sir : Hugh?'

`That he was paving
her serious: attentions. No m
ore and no less. Indeed I was surprised you'd not heard it. Gossip is always a pleasant topic over tea, especially bawdy gossip, I'll tell you some when you come on Saturday!

"About Elizabeth and George?'

'Nay, I know nothing more of them and misremember where I heard that. But stay, there was one other thing. I was in to Truro on Monday ordering some n
ew cravats, and my tailor told
me in confidence he'd just
received
an order, for a wedding suit from George. 'Twas all secret at present, he said. So what G
eorge's relations are with your
cousin-in-law, I'd not pretend to say. Either he's going to be legal about it or he's keeping her for
the side door. I
hope for your sake it is the, first, for it would be a grand thing for the Poldarks to get George Warleggan in the family. I wish Connie would marry aga
in and marry someone like that.
We need the money. I'm always nagging her
to and she's always nagging
me to, but I say I am
no
t a marrying man; and then without fail she
says
; I'm a bedding man and, what's the difference except for a service, and a gold ring, and I say, ah, but the gold ring is just what I can't face, for you can't turn your wife out to grass like a prize mare. Now, m'dear, when you come on Saturday--'

'I'm sorry, Sir Hugh, but I can't manage Saturday. You
..’

`Saturday sennight then. This army feller is
accompanying Connie
-'

'I'm sorry, Sir Hugh'

He bent his eyebrows at her{ again. `You're a damned unaccomm
odating minx, ma'am, if you'll
excuse the familiarity. If I didn't like you so well, I'd like you not
at all.’

Demelza sti
ll had her, hand in captivity.
`I'm glad you like me so well, Sir Hugh, for I like you well too and I should be grieved to think I displeased you. But you've told me
you
look on women as prize mares which can be turned out to grass just whenever you think. Then can
you not forgive
a woman
f
or wanting to gallop off as she pleases
with
no hand to
bridle her and no man to order
her where or how she shall go? Isn't it, good to have the exception as well as the rule? Must all women be just what you say so's to win your approval?'

He stared at the V of her collar, not bothering to follow her argument but liking the paling colour and, gentle swell
of
her skin there.

'I'll tell you what,
miss,' he said. `It will be my birthday in a. few weeks
time, and Connie and I' are thinking of, giving
a party and a dance. Just a few friend
s - forty or fifty maybe
-, We get asked out here and asked out there, and I say to Connie it would be
a good thing to push it through while
the war's on. We'll do it in
very good style, though; not
like that fellow Trevaunance who's too mean to spit. A band and what not. Now if I sat down and
wrote
a formal invitation to your stiff-necked husband, d'you think the two of you would come? Would that be right enough for you, eh?'

Demelza stared into his beady eyes, trying to read what ulterior purposes mig
ht
be there.

`Thank you, Sir Hugh. You're being that kind to me now. Much kinder than I deserve.!

'Yo
u can't judge what you deserve,
ma'am. Leave that to me, and one of these days I b'lieve you will get it'

She reached home
without the necessity of having
to tell Ross where she had been. She had discovered what she had gone to discover, but was unrelieved for knowing it. She knew at once that she could not break the news
to Ross, she found
she could not e
ven hint at it:
What his response would be, how he would act, she had no, idea. All she knew was that she did not want to be the one to tell him or to be present when he was told:

Weeks passed, and the primroses flowered and the first bluebells.
Dwight's physician friend went
home and Dwight made inquiries, about joining the Navy as a surgeon. But he took, no further action because the war was coming to an end. The optimists had been right and France was breaking up. Defeated by the Austrians, who had at last moved, General Dumouriez followed Lafayette into the enemy's camp. Two thirds of the provinces were in revolt against Paris. The invasion of Holland had failed, and the British had taken Pondicherry and Tobago. For the second year running, Paris lay open to any army wi
th the enterprise to take it.
Obviously
this time someone would, even
if it
had to be the grand old Duke of York.

Among the results of a gen
eral rise in spirits was a fall
in the price of copper and tin; Bu
t the fall
was not enough to make the di
fference. Success or failure at Wheal Grace
still depended on their ability to eke out, their finances during the chan
ge-over, to preserve a delicate
balance between earnings and outgoings. Henshawe's hundred pounds was already gone, but they were existing on credit provided for them by
Pascoe's bank against the next
coinage. Trains of mules carried the black tin into Truro,
where the bank issued its
tin cheques on the quality and value of the white .tin which would be extracted; and on the credit of these cheques the mine was able to continue.

Most of the economies they could make were eaten up aboveground, where a rearrangement and extension of the dressing
floors
had to be undertaken. Not only did it mean more dressers and spallers, it often meant new ones, for, a good copper worker often, did not understand how to treat tin. Much of the ore was sent out to the tin stamps of Sawle Combe.

On the second of May, Charlie Kempthorne's body was found float
ing in the sea off
Basset's Cove. Dwight went to identify him.

The man had been in the water several days. There were no signs of violence, but the sea had not been kind to him. Dwight stared for a while at the remains of this person he had cured of miner's phthisis, one of his few real medical successes.

Traitor, informer, bridegroom for Rosina, sail-maker, father, decaying eyeless flotsam; no ready-made dece
itful smile now, only the black
gape of corruption. Familiarity with death had not lessened Dwight's essential distaste. The more he saw of it, the less he understood it. The instant disappearance of personality, light from
a
candle, leaving nothing of value or interest except to the surgeon with his scalpel able to probe now at will. - And it was not in his temperament to want to do that. All his preoccupation was with the living, even when the living lied and cheated and sold their friends.

Rosina Hoblyn came
to
see him at the Gatehouse. Dwight had avoided her since the nig
ht of his fight
with Kempthorne.

`Is it true, sur,' she said, `was it Charlie that was washed up?'

`Had he been-done to
death -
killed, afore he was dropped in the water?'

`Not so far as I could tell, It's possible. But he may, well have fallen in.'

`Charlie wouldn't fall in, sur, 'Twasn't in his nature:'

Dwight knew in his heart
that
she was right. Ro
sina understood her man.

`Or
he may have committed suicide
-
have done himself, to death. He cannot have been happy the way things turned out.

`Nor me, sur.'

'You
are you very unhappy for him?'

She flushed sharply. `Yes,
sur. Or I don''t rightly know. He was always that kin
d to me.'. 'Tis part that and
part the disgrace. It don't seem right somehow, hard to believe; for it to have been the same man: him that was kind and him that played Judas. And I feel the disgrace so bad
-
as if I'd done it myself-like I
’
d known about'n all along.
And I didn't, sur; I didn't; I
never knowed a thing!'

`Of course not, Rosina; nobody could possibly suppose you did.'

`Sometimes folk look, so much as to say ... They d'think - if you're walking out with a man....'

'Be thankful at least that you didn't marry him. Has your knee been any trouble since that night?'

`No, sur. I'm that grateful; It seems funny, though, that if you'd never come t'help me ...

He would be married, living in a strange town, Ross
perhaps in prison or deported,
much, so much, hanging on a single thread; three, four, five, countless people's lives altered by a single wanton circumstance. Here the girl, at the centre of it all. Rosina's knee. Ludicrous. After Francis's death Ross had railed at the sudden changes of fortune that made nonsense of man's striving and contriving. So it had been once again
, more outrageously than ever.

When Rosina left, Dwight felt the urgent need to, talk to somebody. Other people discussed their troubles with him, but there was no outlet for himself. He repressed his own troubles and they festered and grew worse.

He knew now that he must get away. It was necess
ary to restore his self-respect
, For no reward he must give up the things he had been reluctant to give up for Caroline. That was
not the whole of
it: the
issue was not as simple as he sometimes tried
t
o believe;
but he knew he could not stay here with the memory of his failures.

There were only two people he could talk to, because they alone knew the truth
-
or part of it. But the opportunity had to be sought, the breaking of the ice. He decided to go at once, without more
thought,
before the old hesitations and the old embarrassments came. What mattered was the unburdening of his mind. Since his friend Wright went home, the long hours
alone had become more than
he could bear.

It was a rough, blustering evening for early May, with lowering cloud. The sea was as wild as winter, and between, the white lines of breake
rs' was a vivid oily green. In the distance the horizon
w
as hidden in a pale grey mist,
and he wisely waited a time in the porch:
Sure
enough the rain came, blin
ding in the stronger wind that
brought it. It lasted some minutes and then as abruptly ceased, leaving everything guttering and dripping, and the sun flung a single sabre of green across the sea;
As he topped the hill, he could see both people
he wanted.
Demelza was brushing the water from her steps with the energy of one whose time is limited and Garrick, nose on forepaws on the wet grass, was obviously waiting for some inner prompting or perhaps a fluttering jackdaw to set him galloping across the valley. Ross was just
leaving one of the sheds of the
mine.

Their tracks would not converge until near the house, and Dwight saw that Ross would be there well before him. He did not hurry. From this high ground he could survey the whole valley. Presently Demelza saw f Ross coming and waved
. Garrick, although through all
his years at Nampara he had remained obstinately Demelza's dog, got slowly up and went to meet his master.

At that moment Dwight felt a slight tremor in the ground and a consciousness of noise
-
which he could no
t specify and could not locate. It
might have been an explosion far out to sea, but somehow he knew it was not. By the time be sensation was a few seconds old, he had decided it was some trick of his ears or an extra gust of wind.

Ross had paused to whack Garrick on the flanks; this was what Garrick really
liked
pats were no use and he clearly
despised anyone who attempted them. Demelza came down to speak to. Ross and they were discussing something in the garden. Here Dwight went into the first ring of hawthorn trees, whose tops were bent at sharp angles by the prevailing wind. Between these a
nd the apple trees was a clear
gap; and as he came out into this, he saw a man running towards the house from the mine. He looked then at the mine and saw tha
t, in addition to the ordinary
coal smoke from the chimney, there had gathered about the engine house a sort of haze which gave the impression of being neither smoke nor s
team.
As he watched, the balance bob of the engine slowed and came to a stop.

Dwight also stopped. Other figures were emerging from the engine house. The man running had not
yet reached Ross, but Demelza
had seen him. They were going to meet him. Dwight began to run towards the mine.

Casual accidents in Cornish mines were common enough - a man would, fall and break a leg; blasting work was unreliable and hazardous
-
but major accidents were rare. In the five years,
of his being mining
surgeon there had been none in these parts, Ross was running back now with the man. and with Demelzaa little behind him.

But Dwight wo
uld be there ahead of them. The
first person he met was Peter Curnow, who, grey-faced and dirty, had just come out of the engine house.

`What is it, man,
what is it?'

`A stull's run,
sur, and filled
all the bottom with deads! Jack Carter's just give the alarm., He d'say, there's four, five - trapped. The others is coming up now!'

'Some hurt?'

`Aye, half of 'em or more.'

`Look, will you do something for me? Run straight to the Gatehouse and fetch my bag and instruments. Tell Bone. He'll know what to bring'

`Aye
sur. I'll do
that!' He went off r
acing.

The stuff about the engine house was dust. The wind was clearing it now, but down below it would be still thick. Three or four more men had come out, but they waved Dwight away-nothing serious, scratches or bruises
-
and many had stayed below, some to tend t
he injured,. others
already beginning to dig.

As they spoke, Ross arrived, Dwight could see from his expression what he felt. Every day the great, cavity above them created by the hasty mining of the tin had grown larger. It had not looked too bad a risk. There
had
been some hasty, shoring up which might
well have sufficed. Other mines
had taken and were taking similar ri
sks. Often such gunnies existed for twenty years
without collapsing. But the luck had been against them and the work had caved in. With it had fallen thousands of tons of rock, burying the
lode
deep and the men as well.

Two men were killed by the fall and three seriously injured. All the work at the bottom of the mine had collapsed, carrying with it ladders, pumping gear, platforms; and nothing was to be seen in the flickering dusty light but a great pile of shattered rock, at
which a dozen subhuman figures w
ere frantically dig
ging. The death roll would have been five,
but the three who
were recovered alive had heard the
collapse begin and had run up part way and flattened themselves against the wall of rock as the stuff crashed down. The most seriously injured were Ellery and Joe Nanfan, who were
buried four hours
before they were rescued.

Dwight went down for
a time; but he soon realised that he could do more good above
ground, and he went up with the first seriously injured man to be recovered. The changing
-
shed had been turned into a sort of hospital, with six men lying in it, Someone in the first panic had sent for
Surgeon Choake, and he
temporarily overlooked his dislike of his young rival. One man had his arm broken, a
nd Choake had the arm off above
the elbow almost before a sickened Demelza could turn her head away. Knife in hand, he looked round f
or the next victim and knitted
his brows in disappointment when there,
seemed no more carving to be
done. When Dwight came up, he was binding a head injury, and the two men exchanged a few cold words before concentrating on their common task.

Midnight
was past before the last two survivors were brought up, and it was soon plain to Dwight that Joe Nanfan was near death. A beam had fallen on him; his right hip was crushed and a great bruise
was
spreading across the abdomen, which had suffered internal injury. He was wet with. sweat and
his breath came in agonised gasps. Dwight did what he could, administered laudanum, and bound up the abdomen to give
it
support.

Ellery was unconscious, with a deep wound in the temple. There was some prospect of a trepanning operation to remove bone pressing on the brain, and Choake said it was worth attempting anyway because he needed the practice but eventually it was decided to see how the man went on unmolested.

Ross did not come up all night, and Demelzaa was not unaware of the dangers of a further. fall. While others took it in turns to dig, he remained below. At four Demelza wanted to go down herself, but Dwight would not let her. Instead he sent Gimlett with a message asking, Ross to come up. Ross sent word back that he would come when there was no more to do.

Light began to grow soon after four, but the black dawn sky was as torn and ragged as a beggar's coat. The sun rose i
n another flurry of rain and a
rainbow arched its back across
the head of the valley. The secon
d vigil, Demelza thought, that
she had spent in this, engine house. But this time even the engine had stopped. In the cold morning light she shivered and stretched
-tried not to yawn, aware of fatigue and ashamed of it, Sitting on the steps above her Daniel Curnow was quite motionless, as if a part of the engine he had stopped. Six others. The wife and, sons of one of those buried, two sisters and a father of the other. Hoping for the impossible
-
or if the worst, then for a body to bear away.

At five
o'clock Jim Ellery, having been
wrapped. in