It was fortunate that Verity had arranged to spend the night with Joan Pascoe, for Ross saw no more of the ball. From the cottage of the woman Margaret he rode straight home, reaching Nampara as the first threads of daylight were unpicking the clustered clouds of the night.
It was Tuesday, the day of the Redruth Fair. He stripped off his clothes, went down to the beach and ran out into the surf. The cold boisterous water washed away some of the miasmas of the night; it was biting and tonic and impersonal. As he left the water, the cliffs at the far end of the beach were losing their darkness and the east sky had brightened to a brilliant cadmium yellow. He dried himself and dressed and woke Jud and they had breakfast with the first sun slanting through the windows.
They came to Redruth just before ten, slid down the steep greasy lane into the town, reached the chapel, crossed the river, and climbed the other hill to the fields where the fair was being held. The business of the day was already in progress with the buying and selling of livestock and farm and dairy produce.
It took Ross some time to find what he wanted, for he had no money to throw about, and by the time the various purchases had been made it was afternoon. In the second field every tradesman in the district had put up a stall. The better-class and larger tradesmen, with their saddlery and clothing and boots and shoes, clung to the upper part of the field; as the slope increased, one came to the gingerbread and sweetmeat stalls, the rope maker, the chair mender, the knife sharpener, the miscellaneous tents offering lanterns and brimstone matches, sealing wax and silver buckles, bracelets of braided hair, secondhand wigs and snuffboxes, bed mats and chamber pots.
It would take Jud some hours to drive home the new oxen, so with time to spare Ross wandered around to see all there was to be seen. From the third field the substantial tradespeople were absent: it was the province of the professional rat catchers, the pedlars, the ha’penny peep shows. One corner of the field belonged to the apothecaries and the herbalists. Men squatted on the ground and shouted before ill-spelled notices advertising their wares, which were the latest and most infallible cures for all the diseases of the flesh. Pectoral drops, Eau de Charm, nervous drops, spirit of benjamin, pomatum, fever powder, Jesuit drops. You could buy plantain and salad oil, angel water, hemlock for scrofulous tumors, and burdock burs for scurvy.
In the last field, which was the noisiest of all, were the sideshows and the hurdy-gurdies, the lilly-banger stall, where you cast dice for an Easter cake. In some sort of reaction from the bitterness and excesses of the previous night he found a relief in mingling with his fellow men, in accepting the simplicity of their pleasures. He paid his ha’penny and saw the fattest woman on earth, who, the man next to him was complaining, was not as fat as the one the year before. For another ha’penny she offered to take you behind a screen and put your hand on a soft spot, but the man next to him said it was once bitten twice shy, because all she did was put your hand on your own forehead.
He stood for fifteen minutes in a darkened booth watching a company of guise players performing a mime about St. George and the Dragon. He paid a ha’penny to see a man who in infancy had had his hands and feet eaten off by a pig and who sketched quite amazingly with a chalk in his mouth. He paid another ha’penny to see a mad woman in a cage tormented by her audience.
After he had seen the sights he sat down at a drinking booth and sipped a glass of rum and water. The words of Jack Tripp the agitator came to him as he watched the people pass by. For the most part they were weakly, stinking, rachitic, pockmarked, in rags—far less well found than the farm animals that were being bought and sold. Was it surprising that the upper classes looked on themselves as a race apart?
Yet the signs he had seen of a new way of life in America made him impatient of those distinctions. Jack Tripp was right. All men were born in the same way: no privilege existed that was not of man’s own contriving.
He had chosen the last of the drinking booths at the extreme end of the ground. The noise and smell was less overpowering, but just as he was ordering another drink, an uproar broke out behind the shop, and a number of people crowded to the corner to see what was going on. Some of them began to laugh. The uproar of squeals and barks went on. He rose to his feet and peered over the heads of the people standing near.
Behind the gin booth was a clearing where earlier some sheep had been quartered. It was empty except for a group of ragged boys watching a confused bundle of fur rolling over on the ground. It resolved itself into a cat and a dog, which the boys had tied tail to tail. The two animals were not much different in size, and after a fight, during which neither had the advantage, they wanted to part company. First the dog pulled and the cat sprawled, spitting, then the cat, with difficulty, got to her feet, and with slow, convulsive movements, digging her claws into the earth, dragged the dog backward.
The spectators roared with laughter. Ross smiled briefly and was about to sit down when a smaller boy broke away from two others who were holding him and ran toward the animals. He dodged one of the other boys who tried to stop him and reached the creatures, knelt down, and tried to loosen the knotted twine about their tails, ignoring the scratches of the cat. When it was seen what he was about, there was a murmur from the crowd who perceived that they were to be robbed of a free entertainment. But the murmur was drowned in a howl of fury from the other boys, who at once rushed in and fell upon the spoilsport. He tried to put up a fight but soon went under.
Ross reached down for his drink but remained on his feet while he sipped it. A big man as tall as himself moved up and partly obscured the view.
“Sakes alive,” said someone. “They’ll maim the lad, a-kicking of him like that. ’Tis past a joke, the young varmints.”
“And who’s to say them nay?” queried a little merchant with a shade over one eye. “They’re wild as cats. ’Tis a disgrace to the town the way they roam.”
“Break your windows if you complain,” said another. “And glad of the excuse. Aunt Mary Treglown, her’s got a cottage over to Pool—”
“Ais, I knaw…”
Ross finished his drink and ordered another. Then he changed his mind and moved into the crowd.
“God preserve us!” said a housewife suddenly. “Is it a girl they’re bating up? Or I’m mistook. An’t any of ye going to stop ’em ?”
Ross took his riding crop from his boot and walked into the arena. Three of the urchins saw him coming; two fled, but the third stood his ground with bared teeth. Ross hit him across the face with the whip and the boy shrieked and fled. A stone flew through the air.
There were three other boys, two sitting on the figure while the third kicked it in the back. The latter youth did not see the approach of the enemy. Ross hit him on the side of the head and knocked him out. One of the others he lifted by the seat of his breeches and dropped into a neighboring pool of water. The third fled and left the figure of the spoilsport lying on its face.
The clothing was certainly that of a boy; a loose shirt and coat, trousers too big and falling loosely below the knee. A round black cap lay in the dust; the tousled hair seemed overlong. A stone hit Ross’s shoulder.
With the toe of his boot he pushed the figure on its back. Might be a girl. The child was conscious but too winded to speak; every intake of breath was half a groan.
A number of the townspeople had filtered into the clearing, but as the stones became more frequent they sheered off again.
“Have they hurt you, child?” Ross said.
With a convulsive wriggle she drew up her knees and pulled herself into a sitting position.
“Judas God!” she was at last able to get out. “Rot their dirty guts…”
The hail of stones was becoming more accurate and two more struck his back. He put his whip away and picked her up; she was no weight at all. As he carried her toward the gin shop, he saw that crofters had joined together and were going after the boys with sticks.
He set her down at the end of the trestle table he had recently left. Her head sank forward on the table. The danger from missiles having ended, people crowded around.
“What did they do to ’ee, my dear?”
“Scat un in the ribs, did they?”
“She’m fair davered, poor maid.”
“I’d lace ’em…”
He ordered two glasses of rum. “Give the child air,” he said impatiently. “Who is she and what is her name?”
“Never seed she afore,” said one.
“She do come from Roskear, I bla’,” said another.
“I know she,” said a woman, peering. “She’m Tom Carne’s daughter. They live over to Illogan.”
“Where is her father, then?”
“Down mine, I expect.”
“Drink this.” Ross put the glass against the girl’s elbow and she picked it up and gulped at it. She was a thin scarecrow of a child of eleven or twelve. Her shirt was dirty and torn; the mop of dark hair hid her face.
“Are you with someone?” Ross asked. “Where is your mother?”
“She an’t got one,” said the woman, breathing stale gin over his shoulders. “Been in ’er grave these six year.”
“Well, that edn my fault,” said the girl, finding her voice.
“Nor never said ’twas,” said the woman. “And what you doing in your brother’s clo’es? Young tomrigg! You’ll get the strap for this.”
“Go away, woman,” said Ross in irritation at being so much the focus of attention. “Go away, all of you. Have you nothing better to gape at?” He turned to the girl. “Is there no one with you? What were you about?”
She sat up. “Where’s Garrick? They was tormentin’ him.”
“Garrick?”
“My dog. Where’s Garrick? Garrick! Garrick!”
“Ere ’e be.”A crofter pushed his way through the others. “I got un for you. It was no easy job.”
She got to her feet to receive a wriggling black bundle and collapsed on the seat again with it in her lap. She bent over the puppy to see if it was hurt, getting her hands more bloody than they were. Suddenly she looked up with a wail, eyes blazing amid the dirt and hair.
“Judas God! The dirty nattlings! They’ve cut’n off his tail!”
“I done that,” the crofter told her composedly. “Think I was going to get me ’ands tored for a mongrel cur? Besides, ’twas ’alf off already, and he’ll be better placed without it.”
“Finish this,” Ross said to the girl. “Then if you can talk, tell me if you feel any bones broke in their handling.” He gave the crofter sixpence, and the crowd, aware that the show was over, began to disperse, though for some time a ring of them remained at a respectful distance, interested in the gentleman.
The dog was an emaciated mongrel puppy of a muddy black color, with a long thin neck and covered sparsely about the head and body with short black curls. Its parentage was unimaginable.
“Use this,” said Ross, holding out his handkerchief. “Wipe your arms and see if the scratches go deep.”
She looked up from fingering her body and stared at the linen square doubtfully.
“’Twill foul it,” she said.
“So I can see.”
“It mayn’t wash out.”
“Do as you’re bid and don’t argue.”
She used a corner of the kerchief on one bony elbow.
“How did you come here?” he asked.
“Walked.”
“With your father?”
“Father’s down mine.”
“You came alone?”
“Wi’ Garrick.”
“You can’t walk back like that. Have you friends here?”
“No.” She stopped suddenly in her perfunctory wiping. “Judas, I feel some queer.”
“Drink some more of this.”
“No…’tis that atop of nothin’…”
She got up and limped unsteadily to the corner of the gin shop. There, for the diversion and reward of the faithful spectators, she painfully lost the rum she had drunk. Then she fainted, so Ross lifted her back into the stall. When she recovered, he took her into the stall next door and gave her a square meal.
• • •
The shirt she was wearing had old tears in it as well as new, and the breeches were of faded brown corduroy. Her feet were bare, and she had lost the round cap. Her face was pinched and white, and her eyes, a very dark brown, were much too big for it.
“What is your name?” he said.
“Demelza.”
“Your Christian name, though?”
“Please?”
“Your first name.”
“Demelza.”
“A strange name.”
“Mother were called that too.”
“Demelza Carne. Is that it?”
She sighed and nodded, for she was well filled, and the dog under the table grunted with her.
“I come from Nampara. Beyond Sawle. Do you know where that is?”
“Past St. Ann’s?”
“I am going home now, child. If you cannot walk I’ll take you first to Illogan and leave you there.”
A shadow went across her eyes and she did not speak. He paid what he owed and sent word for his horse to be saddled.
Ten minutes later they were up and away. The girl sat silently astride in front of him. Garrick followed in desultory fashion, occasionally dragging his seat in the dust or peering suspiciously around to see what had become of the thing he had sometimes chased and often wagged but could not locate.
They cut across the moors by a mining track worn deep and hard and pitted by the passage of generations of mules. The countryside hereabout was entirely abandoned to the quest for minerals. All trees, except an occasional ragged pine, had been cut down for timber, every stream was discolored, patches of cultivated land struggled among acres of mine refuse and mountains of stone. Engine sheds, wooden derricks, wheel stamps, windlasses, and horse gins were its adornment. Trenches and adits grew in the back gardens of the tiny cottages and huts; potatoes were hoed and goats grazed among the steam and the refuse. There was no town, scarcely even a hamlet, only a wide and sparse distribution of working people.
It was the first time he had been to Illogan that way. With the improvement in the pumping engine and the new lodes of tin and copper available, Cornish mining had been going ahead until the slump of the previous few years. People had migrated to those fortunate districts where the veins were richest, and the home population had increased rapidly. In the growing depression of the early eighties, many of the breadwinners were out of work and the doubt arose as to whether the population could be maintained. The danger was not immediate but the specter was there.
The girl in front of him gave a wriggle.
“Could ’ee let me down ’ere?” she said.
“You’re but halfway to Illogan yet.”
“I know. I doubt I shall be going ’ome yet a while.”
“Why not?”
There was no answer.
“Does your father not know you’ve been out?”
“Yes, but I was lended my brother’s shirt and breeches. Father says I must go to fair whether or no, so he says I can borrow Luke’s Sunday fligs.”
“Well?”
“Well, I ain’t got what I went for. And Luke’s clothes is all muddy. So I reckon—”
“Why did you not go in your own clothes?”
“Father tored ’em last night when he give me a thrashing.”
They jogged on for some distance. She turned and peered back to be sure Garrick was following.
“Does your father often beat you?” Ross asked.
“Only when he’s bin takin’ too much.”
“How often is that?”
“Oh…mebbe twice a week. Less when he an’t got the money.”
There was silence. It was late afternoon and needed another two hours to dark. She began to fumble with the neck of her shirt and untied the string. “You can see,” she said. “’E used the strap last night. Pull me shirt back.”
He did so, and it slipped off one shoulder. Her back was marked with weals. On some the skin had been broken, and those were partly healed, with dirt smeared on them and lice at the edges. Ross pulled the shirt up again.
“And tonight?”
“Oh, he’d give me a banger tonight. But I’ll stay outdoors and not go ’ome till he’s below again.”
They rode on.
Ross was not oversensitive to the feelings of animals—it was not in his generation to be so, though he seldom hit one himself—but wanton cruelty to children offended him.
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen…sur.”
It was the first time she had sirred him. He might have known that those undersized, half-starved waifs were always older than they looked.
“What work do you do?”
“Looking after the ’ouse and plantin’ taties an’ feeding the pig.”
“How many brothers and sisters have you?”
“Six brothers.”
“All younger than you?”
“Es-s.” She turned her head and whistled piercingly to Garrick.
“Do you love your father?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Es-s—”
“Why?”
She wriggled. “Cos it says you must in the Bible.”
“You like living at home?”
“I runned away when I was twelve.”
“And what happened?”
“I was broft back.”
Darkie swerved as a stoat scuttered across the path, and Ross took a firmer grip on the reins.
“If you stay out of your father’s way for a time, no doubt he’ll forget what you have done wrong.”
She shook her head. “He’ll save un up.”
“Then what is the use of avoiding him?”
She smiled with an odd maturity. “’Twill put un off.”
They reached a break in the track. Ahead lay the way to Illogan; the right fork would bring him to skirt St. Ann’s whence he could join the usual lane to Sawle. He reined up the mare.
“I’ll get down ’ere,” she said.
He said, “I need a girl to work in my house. At Nampara, beyond St. Ann’s. You would get your food and better clothing than you have now. As you are under age I would pay your wages to your father.” He added, “I want someone strong, for the work is hard.”
She was looking up at him with her eyes wide and a startled expression in them as if he had suggested something wicked. Then the wind blew her hair over them and she blinked.
“The house is at Nampara,” he said. “But perhaps you do not wish to come.”
She pushed her hair back but said nothing.
“Well then, get down,” he continued with a sense of relief. “Or I will still take you into Illogan if you choose.”
“To live at your house?” she said. “Tonight? Yes, please.”
The appeal, of course, was obvious; the immediate appeal of missing a thrashing.
“I want a kitchen maid,” he said. “One who can work and scrub, and keep herself clean also. It would be by the year that I should hire you. You would be too far away to run home every week.”
“I don’t want to go home ever,” she said.
“It will be necessary to see your father and get his consent. That may be hard to come by.”
“I’m a good scrubber,” she said. “I can scrub…sur.”
Darkie was fidgeting at the continued check.
“We will go and see your father now. If he can be—”
“Not now. Take me with you. I can scrub. I’m a good scrubber.”
“There is a law to these things. I must hire you from your father.”
“Father don’t come up from ’is core till an hour after cockshut. Then he’ll go drink afore he do come ’ome.”
Ross wondered if the girl was lying. Impulse had prompted him that far. He needed extra help as much in the house as in the fields, and he disliked the idea of handing the child back to a drunken miner. But neither did he wish to cool his heels in some bug-ridden hovel until dark with naked children crawling over him, then to be confronted by a gin-sodden bully who would refuse his suggestion. Did the child really want to come?
“About Garrick. I might not be able to keep Garrick.”
There was silence. Watching her closely, he could plainly see the struggle that was going on behind the thin, anemic features. She looked at the dog, then looked up at him and her mouth gave a downward twist.
“Him an’ me’s friends,” she said.
“Well?”
She did not speak for a time. “Garrick an’ me’s done everything together. I couldn’t leave ’im to starve.”
“Well?”
“I couldn’t, mister. I couldn’t—”
In distress she began to slip off the mare.
He suddenly found that the thing he had set out to prove had proved something quite different. Human nature had outmaneuvered him. For if she would not desert a friend, neither could he.
• • •
They overtook Jud soon after passing the gibbet at Bargus, where four roads and four parishes met. The oxen were tired of the long trek and Jud was tired of driving them. He could not ride comfortably on blind Ramoth because four large baskets crammed with live chickens were slung across the saddle. Also he was deeply annoyed at having to leave the fair before he was drunk, a thing that had never happened to him since he was ten.
He looked around sourly at the approach of another horse and then pulled Ramoth off the track to let them pass. The oxen, being strung out in single file behind, followed suit quietly enough.
Ross explained the presence of the urchin in three sentences and left Jud to work it out for himself.
Jud raised his hairless eyebrows.
“He’s all very well to play uppity-snap with a lame ’orse,” he said in a grumbling voice. “But picking up brats is another matter. Picking up brats is all wrong. Picking up brats will get ’ee in trouble wi’ the law.”
“A fine one you are to talk of the law,” Ross said.
Jud had not been looking where he was going, and Ramoth stumbled in a rut.
Jud said a wicked word. “Rot ’im, there ’e go again. ’Ow d’you expect for a man for to ride a blind ’orse. Ton my Sam, ’ow d’you expect for a ’orse for to see where he’s going when he can’t see nothin’. Tedn’t in the nature o’ things. Tedn’t ’orse nature.”
“I’ve always found him very sure,” Ross said. “Use your own eyes, man. He’s uncommonly sensitive to the least touch. Don’t force him to hurry, that’s the secret.”
“Force ’im to ’urry! I should be forcin’ meself over ’is ’ead into the nearest ditch if I forced ’im to go faster than a bullhorn leaving ’is slime twixt one stone and the next. Tedn’t safe. One slip, one tumble, that’s all; over you go, over ’is ears, fall on your nuddick, and—phit!—ye’re dead.”
Ross touched Darkie and they moved on.
“And a dirty bitch of a mongrel.” Jud’s scandalized voice followed them as he caught sight of their escort. “Lord Almighty, tes fit to duff you, we’ll be adopting a blathering poorhouse next.”
Garrick lifted a whiskery eye at him and trotted past. There had been talk concerning himself, he felt, at the fork roads, but the matter had been amicably settled.
On one point Ross was decided: there should be no qualifying of his position in the lice and bug battle. Six months before, the house, and particularly Prudie, had been alive with most of the things that crawl. He was not fussy but he had put his foot down over Prudie’s condition. Finally the threat to hold her under the pump and give her a bath himself had had results, and the house was almost free—and even Prudie herself except for the homegrown colonies in her lank black hair. To bring the child into the house in her present state would knock the props away from the position he had taken up. Therefore both she and the dog must be given a bath and fresh clothes found for her before she entered the house. For such a duty Prudie would be useful.
They reached Nampara at sunset—a good half hour ahead of Jud, he reckoned—and Jim Carter came running out to take Darkie. The boy’s health and physique had improved a lot during the winter. His dark Spanish eyes widened at the sight of the cargo his master brought. But in a manner refreshingly different from the Paynters, he said no word and prepared to lead the horse away. The girl stared at him with eyes already wide with interest, then turned again and gazed at the house, at the valley and the apple trees and the stream, at the sunset, which was a single vermilion scar above the dark of the sea.
“Where’s Prudie?” said Ross. “Tell her I want her.”
“She’s not here, sur,” said Jim Carter. “She left so soon as you left. She did say she was walking over to Marasanvose to see ’er cousin.”
Ross swore under his breath. The Paynters had a unique gift for not being there when wanted.
“Leave Darkie,” he said. “I’ll attend to her. Jud is two miles away with some oxen I’ve bought. Go now and help him with them. If you hurry, you will meet him before he reaches the Mellingey ford.”
The boy dropped the reins, glanced again at the girl, then went off at a rapid walk up the valley.
Ross stared a moment at the piece of flotsam he had brought home and hoped to salvage. She was standing there in her ragged shirt and three-quarter-length breeches, her matted hair over her face and the dirty half-starved puppy at her feet. She stood with one toe turned in and both hands loosely behind her back, staring across at the library. He hardened his heart. Tomorrow would not do.
“Come this way,” he said.
She followed him, and the dog followed her, to the back of the house where between the stillroom and the first barn the pump was set.
“Now,” he said, “if you are to work for me, you must first be clean. D’you understand that?”
“Yes…sur.”
“I cannot allow anyone dirty into the house. No one works for me if they are not clean and don’t wash. So take off your clothing and stand under the pump. I will work the pump for you.”
“Yes…sur.” She obediently began to untie the string at the neck of her shirt. That done, she stopped and looked slowly up at him.
“And don’t put those things on again,” he said. “I’ll find you something clean.”
“P’r’aps,” she said, “I could work the ’andle meself.”
“And stand under at the same time?” he said brusquely. “Nonsense. And hurry. I have not all evening to waste over you.” He went to the pump handle and gave it a preliminary jerk.
She looked at him earnestly for a moment, then began to wriggle out of her shirt. That done, a faint pink tinge was visible under the dirt on her face. Then she slipped out of her breeches and jumped beneath the pump.
He worked the handle with vigor. The first rinsing would not get rid of everything but would at least be a beginning. It would leave his position uncompromised. She had an emaciated little body, on which womanhood had only just begun to fashion its design. As well as the marks of her thrashings he could see blue bruises on her back and ribs where the boys had kicked her that afternoon. Fortunately, like her, they had been barefoot.
She had never had such a washing before. She gasped and choked as the water poured in spurts and volumes upon her head, coursed over her body, and ran away to the draining trough. Garrick yelped but refused to move, so took a good deal of the water at secondhand.
At length, fearing he would drown her, he stopped, and while the stream of water thinned to a trickle he went into the stillroom and picked up the first cloth he could find.
“Dry yourself on this,” he said. “I will fetch you something to put on.”
As he reentered the house he wondered what that something was to be. Prudie’s things, even if they were clean enough, would smother the child like a tent. Jim Carter would have been the nearest choice for size if he had owned any other clothes but those he was wearing.
Ross went up to his own room and ransacked the drawers, cursing himself for never thinking more than one move ahead. One could not keep the child shivering there in the yard forever. Finally he picked out a Holland shirt of his own, a girdle, and a short morning gown of his father’s.
When he went out he found her trying to cover herself with the cloth he had given her, while her hair still lay in wet black streaks on her face and shoulders. He did not give her the things at once but beckoned her to follow him into the kitchen, where there was a fire. Having just succeeded in shutting Garrick out of the house, he poked up the fire and told her to stand in front of it until she was dry and to put on the makeshift garments in what manner she chose. She blinked at him wetly, then looked away and nodded to show she understood.
He went out again to unsaddle Darkie.