The Loving Cup

Dear Gurney,

I am writing to tell you that I have decided not to proceed with our collaboration on the steam road carriage – at least not for the present. Let me say right away that this is not for any personal reason which involves you. I have not taken this decision because of any feeling that we could not work together, fund the building of the machine together and launch it together. On the contrary.

Unhappily, for reasons that I prefer not to explain, my life in Cornwall is no longer acceptable to me. I must explain I have been struggling with this situation for much more than a year – so it all existed long before we met – and your interest helped to revive a prepossession with steam that I had almost abandoned. But the prepossession, I have now come to realize, is not quite enough to drive out this other prepossession, and for the time being I have to go away.

So – do not laugh! – I am joining the Army. With my cousin’s, Major Geoffrey Charles Poldark’s, somewhat reluctant cooperation, I have been to Plymouth and obtained for myself a commission in the 52nd Oxfordshires; and I leave to join them next week.

It will be a new experience, at least, and I trust I shall feel less squeamish about killing a Frenchie than I generally do about a mouse!

In the meantime, of course, please make all use you care to of any of the sketches and plans I left with you. There are a few more I still have at home if you should need them. What remains of my machine at Hayle is also yours for experimentation, if you choose to use it.

As I said to you when last we met, I am not convinced by your arguments that a machine needs struts or legs to propel it first into motion; and I urge you to consider further the problems of adhesion before you launch upon the construction of the vehicle. I know some modern scientific opinion is on your side; but if a machine may start on rails without extra propulsion I cannot believe it may not be persuaded to start on the much more uneven surface of a road. I would rather consider the use of grit or gravel which could be contained in canisters and shed in front of the driving wheels when the occasion needed.

This is the last letter you will be receiving from me for some time, but if you wish to answer it, or in due course have new information to impart, pray direct your letter to me at Nampara, and my parents will see it is forwarded on.

I trust that, contrary to your fears, Dr Avery will come well and thus leave you more time to devote to your many stimulating experiments.

Ever yours most sincerely,

Jeremy Poldark.

The night before he left he walked up to Wheal Leisure. By a wry coincidence there had been trouble with the engine last week. For eighteen months since the engine began to run it had been almost trouble-free – a testimony to Jeremy’s design and Harvey & Co.’s manufacture. They had occasionally stopped it for ten minutes to make some adjustment or minor repair – ten minutes being about the maximum a good engine would stand without the necessity of blowing afresh – but most of the ordinary maintenance could be done while the pump was in motion. However, last week the other Curnow, Dan, had come to the house and reported that he was not happy with the engine: the stroke, he thought, was erratic, the vacuum not good, everything was a bit sluggish. Jeremy had gone with him, found Peter Curnow there too, and Ben Carter.

They waited for him, though he was by years the youngest – not because he was the boss’s son, which would have counted for little – but because he was the expert; he had designed the engine; it was his creation, his baby. He went round, peering here and there, listening, up and down the stairs, probing, questing, shutting off this valve and that, half stopping the stroke and then allowing it to go through. After half an hour he said he thought there was a leak in the condenser; the engine was not making a proper vacuum; hot water was escaping in such a way as to suggest the eduction pipe; his guess was a fault in the actual air pump.

The Curnows nodded wisely as if they had been sure of this all along, but Ben groaned. It meant shutting down the engine, possibly for as long as a week, and at a wet time of year; the lowest levels would have to be evacuated.

The separate condenser – long ago invented and patented by Watt – was in a pit in the basement of the engine house, a masonry pit full to the brim with cold water, the condenser itself being inside the pit and containing a certain amount of water which originally had been hot steam and which condensed as it came into the cylinder and so created a vacuum.

Once the engine was stopped, the first task was to pump the water out of the masonry pit with a hand pump. The pit itself was about six feet deep by eight broad, and had bracing bars across it to support and keep rigid the condenser cistern; so even when this was empty the examination of the cistern was neither easy nor comfortable, especially as it had to be done in the almost total darkness of a cold, dripping cellar. Jeremy was lowered in first, with a miner’s candle in his hat and two lanterns to help.

He was down an hour, Ben with him part of the time. Then he came up for hot tea and Dan Curnow went down. About midday, on his second turn, Jeremy found what he was looking for. The air pump was made of cast iron and there had been a small flaw in the casting. At the time, this had been filled up with scale and so had been undetectable; but over the months the scale had been dissolved by the action of impurities in the outside water – which was water brought up from the mine and not the purer rain or stream water used directly for the engine. As a result the original hair-line crack had reappeared, and at one end of it a pin-prick of a hole through which the water had been seeping in. So the engine had been sucking up a mixture of air and water instead of air only.

They had cleaned and dried off the part, filled the crack and the hole with iron cement, tested it, and the engine had been restarted only two days after it was brought to a stop.

Of course the Curnows would probably have come to the same conclusion in the end, and made the same discovery and the same repair. It simply was that Jeremy with his intimate knowledge of the construction of the engine had been that much quicker off the mark. With him gone, timely repairs would be a little less frequent; a serious breakdown, if it was a complex one as well, would require another expert to be called in.

The same with Wheal Grace – so long as it continued to run. Nampara was to lose its chief engineer.

‘I don’t know. I’m told there’s a contingent leaving for Holland sometime this month to bring the regiment up to strength.’

‘So it seems. But I don’t know much except the name of the commanding officer and the depot I’m to report to in Chatham.’

‘Not yet. My father has given me his sword, which has saved something; but a spy glass and compass have cost me £55! The uniform and bedding and other equipment I shall get at Chatham. Also a horse. I would have taken Colley – but the cost and risk of transportation is too great.’

‘It is usual for an officer, if he can afford it . . . You know Geoffrey Charles is to be a major?’

‘Well, his new rank has enabled him to give me the recommendation I needed to get a commission. That at least cost me nothing, so long as I did not mind which regiment I was appointed to. I said I did not, rather expecting every recruit would go to Spain . . . In fact it is a good regiment, one of the Light Division. I think my cousin had some hand in the choice, though he would admit nothing.’

They had climbed to the third floor of the engine house and out on to the bob plat.

Jeremy said: ‘Even though I have spent nothing for my commission it is no inexpensive thing to be an officer. I am told that even after the initial costs I shall need about £100 a year above my pay to make ends meet.’

‘Five shillings and threepence a day, which after deductions will come down to about 4/-.’

‘You’d be better off at home, Jeremy. Looking after this mine engine like you did last week.’

They stared out over the beach which had meant so much to them both. It was an errantly windy day. Black clumsy clouds were driving up from the north-west, imposing themselves upon a sky of an unusual shamrock green. The surf reared itself and tumbled in disarray as the gusts caught it, throwing up sharp spirals of spume like the blowing of sperm whales.

‘Well . . . for one obvious thing at the moment. My father is a natural soldier and a brave man.’

‘We-ll. I don’t know as I’d say he ever became a soldier from the real wish to be.’

‘Then should I say he appears to take to it far more than I do. He seems not to have any conscious, physical fear – I mean for himself, such as I do.’

Jeremy pushed the hair out of his eyes. ‘To tell the truth, dear Ben, I’m a rank coward. I am sickened at the sight of pain being inflicted and I am more than a small matter concerned at the thought of pain being inflicted on me. I like to tend an animal when it is ill, but if it is finally decided that the animal will not recover, someone else has to put it out of its misery. Bella is made of far sterner stuff than I am; she can superintend the slaughter of mice; I absent myself quickly. Could there ever be a more unsuitable man to lead other men into battle?’

Ben leaned back against a sudden gust of wind that threatened to push him over the edge of the unrailed platform.

‘You say harder things ’bout yourself than is the honest truth. But – well . . .’

‘No one made me go, eh? Quite true. So why should I come dwaling to you at this late stage? Perhaps because these thoughts of mine are best hid from my own family, and yet I still have the wish to express them! However, that is now done . . . Let us go down into the warmth of the house. It grows cold here.’

Ben said: ‘Your father’s in London. Your cousin is on his way back to Spain. Nampara will lack a man.’

‘Even Trenwith is bereft. That Trewinnard boy, he’s a nice ’nough kind of man but he’s got no strength, no . . . authority.’

Ben said: ‘Wonder what Miss Clowance will do if that man come round again, that Stephen Carrington. I hear tell he’s somewhere about again.’

‘He’s at sea, and likely to remain so for some months. But I don’t think you need worry about one thing, Ben. He could never prevail upon Clowance to do anything by force. He’s not as bad as that. And if he tried to be as bad as that, can you imagine Clowance being – forced to do anything she was not willing to do?’

Ben smiled uneasily. He acknowledged – or was prepared to acknowledge – Clowance’s physical strength. It was her mental strength, her moral strength against the seductive persuasions of that carnal, cunning man that he had reason to doubt. A fine thing Ross Poldark and his son would have done if one came back from his parliament and the other from the wars to find that their daughter and sister had fallen again under the wiles of Stephen Carrington and had married him. Ben knew he had little or no hopes for himself. But he could have accepted that Lord Something, who had been interested, and whom, it was said, she had refused. He could have accepted the Guildford fellow – who had been conspicuous by his absence since January. All he could not tolerate, could not live with, was the thought of Stephen Carrington still succeeding in carrying her off.

Jeremy said: ‘I know you don’t like or trust Stephen, Ben – my own feelings are mixed about him. But you have to admit he has initiative. He has got these two vessels, both fast fishing vessels, one built in our yard in Looe, the other a French prize brought in at St Ives. He bought it at auction there and has been refitting it to suit his purposes. He’s persuaded my cousin, Andrew Blamey, to join him; did you know that?’

‘I seen him once. Ginger haired almost, wi’ big side chucks . . . Do it please your family, him going off wi’ Carrington?’

‘Of course not. Particularly his mother and father. They naturally think he has thrown away a secure position in a respected government service for this wild venture. They’re right. Any number of things may go wrong with Stephen’s plans. But according to Clowance, to whom Andrew spoke just before he left, Andrew had got into some difficulty with his debts, and it was only because he told Stephen of these that Stephen offered him the chance of sharing in his adventure. There seems to be no question of Stephen having lured him away.’

‘Stephen has crammed both his vessels full to the gunnels of pilchards, salted in their barrels – all of which he has bought cheap in Cornwall – and is going to run the French blockade and take them to Genoa. If all goes well you can see what he might gain. At any rate, as I have told you – even if he catches the Portuguese trades as he hopes on the way south, he will certainly not be back in England until March at the earliest. Clowance will be safe till then.’

Ben grunted. ‘He have made some money from what he put into this mine, but not near enough for what he must ’ve laid out. Where’s he gotten the rest of the money?’

There was a silence. Jeremy said: ‘He may have borrowed some of it. Also he tells people he has inherited from an uncle.’

‘I am only telling you that he has gone away for some months, so you do not need to worry on that score.’

They went down to the second floor. Here for a few minutes they watched in silence while the sword-coloured piston rod slid up and down, steam rising round it as it moved. Grunt, pause, breath; grunt, pause, breath; so for eighteen months it had been working, working all the time except for the occasional regular halts, and except for the stoppage last week. It had been well designed, and he had designed it, with some outside advice. This at least was something to be proud of. Thirty tons of rods to lift; then down, down, pushing the water so that it was forced up to the tanks to gush away down the surface adit. There were beads of sweat on the piston, like those on the brow of a working man.

He, Jeremy, had made this. He and the engineers and craftsmen working under him. He still felt as if he had created something alive, out of iron and brick and water and fire. Something of great power, of sentience, of mood and temperament, of character. He was leaving this behind.

He said: ‘I expect the war to be over within the year. Napoleon is tottering. Once he has gone I don’t believe the Americans will be unwilling to make peace. I should be back within two years – perhaps less than that. When I do come back, there are all sorts of improvements I would like to try. There is a roll-crusher I have seen written of. And there is a mechanical buddle for processing slimes. These and other things. And I’d like to make some experiments into why iron castings containing gunmetal inserts sometimes collapse. Is it because they have been in contact with impure water? There is much to do here . . . But, I suppose, for the moment there is much to do elsewhere. Peace of mind. Is that what I seek? Peace of mind? In war? It is an odd question.’

They went down to the ground floor where the grey-haired, balding Peter Curnow had the fire door open and was shovelling in coal. They watched in silence, as the ashes fell glowing and the new coal sent clouds of grey smoke up the chimney. Presently the door clanged shut and Peter picked up his oil can and began to drip oil on the levers which automatically opened and shut the valves. He grinned as he went up the stairs.

A great grey striped cat raised his head and looked at them from his chair, eyes narrowing to slits as if the light had become suddenly brighter; then turned luxuriously and tucked his head under his paws. Vlow, as he was called after an extinct mine further along the beach. Cats always appeared out of nowhere to adopt or be adopted by a working mine. They knew a warm place.

‘It’s passing odd,’ said Jeremy, ‘that when you and I first prospected this old mine and I persuaded my father and Mr Treneglos to put up the money, though we all knew about Trevorgie and the possibility of linking up with her, I never really believed we should – or if we did that the old ground would be much worth the working. But it’s Trevorgie now that is keeping us going and showing a profit. If you had not made that discovery that day the whole mine would have been shut down six months ago.’

‘I suppose. Though we might’ve gone deeper and found something. The beauty o’ the Trevorgie workings is that they’re more or less shallow and don’t impose extra strain on your engine.’

‘The beauty also of going into old tin workings and finding copper. D’you still get complaints?’

‘Yes. A dozen or more ’ve given up their better pitches and gone into the newer work. But there’s enough’ll brave the knockers for the sake of profit.’

‘Just noises. Tis a superstition. Knockers are supposed to be three feet tall with legs like sticks and big ugly heads and hook noses; but no one never sees ’em. They just ’ear ’em on the other side of the wall.’

Jeremy put a finger under Vlow’s chin and tickled him. The cat grunted and buried his chin deeper.

‘Zacky’ll know for sure, but eight or nine hundred, maybe. You know that black tin we sold from the east workings of the 40 fathom level? When twas put into the burning house a great part of what was thought to be tin turned out to be iron. So twas only half a ton ’stead of a ton.’

‘Your share’ll pay for your uniform no doubt,’ said Ben with a hint of bitterness.

‘You cannot suppose I leave you with a light heart. It has been – a hard decision for me to come by. For more than a year now . . . Oh, except for my cowardice I would have been away at the beginning of this year instead of the end of it. It leaves us, as you say, thin on the ground for men . . .’

‘Men who take responsibility,’ said Ben. ‘Men who make decisions. There’s plenty of others around.’

‘My father expects to be back from Westminster in a few weeks. Because of my not being here he will be home well before Christmas.’

‘Like? That is not the word. At least he has not stood in the way. We had a family council – with Geoffrey Charles before he left. It was not an easy meeting, but in the end we all agreed.’

‘Yes . . . he’s better. But he’s old, Jeremy. My grandfather, ye know.’

Peter Curnow trotted down again, can in hand; put it on the shelf, rubbed his hands on a rag. ‘She’s going proper now, Mr Jeremy.’

They talked mining for a while. All these good-byes, Jeremy thought; it would be better when they were over and he was at last away. Last night he had seen Paul Kellow . . .

‘What I have will about see us through next year. That’s if I can continue to deceive my father as to how it is come by.’

Jeremy did not suppose Mr Kellow would bother to enquire too closely so long as the supply did not dry up. But he did not say so. Paul, apart from buying a few extravagant items of clothing, had behaved far the best of any of them by putting most of his ill-gotten gains towards the preservation of his family. Being the sort of young man he was, fond of display, it must have needed considerable restraint not to break out in some more obvious manner himself. Or fear . . .

Paul said: ‘And it was hard come by, by God! All the time in that coach I felt as if the rope was tightening around my neck. I dream still at night sometimes of the back of the coach broken open and the two strong boxes on the seats for any to see if the coach stopped, and none of us able to break into the cursed things! I wake up in a fever, sweat pouring off me as if I were taken with the ague! Then I am afraid to fall asleep again lest the nightmare shall re-start.’

‘I asked Stephen once if thoughts of it ever disturbed his sleep. He said, no, and he never dreamed, he said. Yet at the time I’ll swear he was just as worked upon, as anxious, yes, and as scared as we were! I recall him cursing and swearing with that crowbar, and his face all running with sweat.’

Paul said: ‘The success of the coaching business depends on the ending of the war. With luck we can survive another year. Then we are expecting an expansion of travel. Sooner or later it is bound to come. People scarcely stir in Cornwall from one place to the next unless driven by some dire necessity . . . Are you going to say good-bye to Daisy?’

(Early this morning, just before daybreak he had been out to Kellow’s Ladder and had taken the money he needed. It was all in his purse now, some of it paper, some of it clinking; in a purse about his waist where it must never leave him . . .)

After parting from Ben Carter, Jeremy went to take leave of Zacky Martin, who was the official purser to both mines but who now was mainly confined to his chair; and there were few easeful breaths he took in a day; then on to a few of his many other friends in and around Mellin and Grambler.

These preparations to go did not so much matter; it was leaving early tomorrow morning that was going to be emotionally charged. His mother, he knew, would be full up, but was unlikely to give way. Isabella-Rose, of course, looked on it all as a prime lark, only envious that she could not go with him, comically bitter that she could never be a soldier. Clowance he was not so sure of. She might unexpectedly burst into tears, and the awful, humiliating thing was that when they had been children he had never been able to keep his eyes dry if she once started crying. It had happened once when he was eighteen and she fifteen. It had been humiliating enough then. Tomorrow morning if it happened it would be quite intolerable. A soldier going to the wars in tears. Somehow he must get at Clowance tonight to warn her, even threaten her, that nothing must be emotional in the morning.

He had not written to Cuby since the party. There was no point. Let her find out in whatever way she would. At least he hoped to be far away at the time of her wedding. There was no risk of his being able to accept an invitation to attend.

Now that the time had come for him to leave, he welcomed it. Or a part of his complex nature welcomed it. All his life, he told himself, he had had it soft. All his life, except for the self-imposed dangers of the coach robbery, he had been cosseted and protected, a privileged member of the Poldark clan, of a Cornish county family, his only revolt against parental discipline being a daring decision to learn the principles of high pressure steam without their knowledge or consent. If he had slept rough or lived rough or gone hungry it had been with the sure knowledge of the open door of comfort awaiting his return. Well, now he was going out into the real world of hardship, privation and adventure. There were to be no easy escapes any more. Life – real life – was on his doorstep. So was death. His childhood and his youth were over. Now he was to come of age.

In the week that Jeremy left Sir George Warleggan sent his lawyer, Hector Trembath, to call on another lawyer, Mr Arthur Williams Rose, who lived and practised in Liskeard. Always a man to proceed with circumspection – and careful never to allow any one of his employees to see the whole of his mind – George had engaged two of his other clerkly servants to make the preliminary inquiries on another front. These had been slow in coming in. Now they were complete. Of the seven young men playing Faro with Harriet on the significant date, two had satisfactory alibis for Monday the 25th January. Of the remaining five, it seemed improbable that Andrew Blamey should have been involved. His packet ship was indeed in Falmouth on the 25th but had left on the dawn tide of Tuesday. This made his physical presence possible on the coach, but the Countess of Leicester had only arrived on the Saturday afternoon, and it seemed unlikely that young Blamey could ever have got to Plymouth and played his part as Lieutenant Morgan Lean in an enterprise that must have needed careful planning in advance of the robbery. Still, George was reluctant to strike him off altogether, for it would be so gratifying to accuse a Poldark.

In January Stephen Carrington had been in employment as an assistant to Wilf Jonas, the miller, of Bargus Crosslanes, not very far from Nampara, and had still been more or less officially living at an old Tudor cottage called the Gatehouse on the edge of Poldark land. But inquiries showed that Carrington had taken a day off from the mill whenever he fancied. Jonas, even when offered money for the information, had said gruffly he had no idea and no record of Carrington’s attendances in January. All that was known was that three weeks afterwards Carrington had left for his home town, Bristol, and had not returned until July, when he had spoken of an inheritance and spent money freely.

Anthony Trefusis had been living at home at Trefusis with his parents and elder brother at the time, but his appearances and his departures were always so erratic that he could well have absented himself for a couple of days and scarcely any remark made on it. Nothing could be obtained from the servants. But the week following he had been to the races at Newton Abbot, and apparently had been lucky. Although not paying all his debts, he had seemed more flush than usual.

George Trevethan, whose father ran a gunpowder mill in Penryn, was seldom short of money, and therefore not a likely suspect. But he had been away visiting friends in Exeter in late January, so he could not be altogether excluded. The remaining suspect was Michael Smith who came of a wealthy but drunken family near Kea. A witty young man, with a fine voice when sober, he readily volunteered, when asked, that he had been indoors for the last two weeks in January with a severe attack of influenza. Too readily volunteered? But there seemed no later special access of affluence to make him a prime suspect.

George, of course, never lost sight of the fact that this at present was all supposition, that the note might have passed through half a dozen hands before coming to light in Harriet’s winnings. That was why he sent Mr Trembath to see Mr Rose.

He had been, Mr Trembath reported in his effeminate, high-pitched voice, to call on Mr Rose at his office in Liskeard, but Mr Rose was confined to his room with an attack of gout, and only consented to see him after some insistence and after mentioning his client’s name.

Mr Rose, Mr Trembath explained, was a very stout elderly man who distinctly reminded him of drawings he had seen of Dr Samuel Johnson; with a high colour and thick white hair, all his own—

‘Yes, yes,’ said George testily. ‘What was the outcome?’ Hector Trembath, although a good and serviceable friend in law, was not George’s ideal of a grave and laconic solicitor. He always wished to embroider his conversation with inessentials.

‘The outcome, Sir George? Why, very different from when we put the questions to the coachmen, Marshall and Stevens. Mr Rose says he remembers his fellow passengers perfectly. He says that the lady wore a veil the whole time and he would be in some difficulty in recognizing her instantly again. He says he did notice that she had a small mole on her chin and that she was left handed; but little more. However, as to the clergyman and the naval lieutenant, he declares he would know them anywhere.’

‘At first he seemed to have the wrong impression, that some suspects had been arrested and needed identifying. I explained that such was not the case. But I did put to him the fact, significantly, if I may say so, that you would like him to visit you at Cardew in the not too distant future, and to spend a few days there as your guest. He pulled a face at the thought of travelling so far in the bad weather; but when I explained it would likely not be until the early spring he brightened up. I also said you would like him to do some business for you.’

‘Did you mention that the reward of £400 would be paid instantly for the identification of one or more of the criminals?’

‘I did, sir. I fancy I left him in a much more cheerful mood than when I called.’

Chapter Seventeen