That night about nine o’clock Jim Carter came back from visiting Jinny Martin. There had been some friendship between them before he went to work there, but it had ripened quickly during the winter.
He would normally have gone straight to his stable loft to sleep until dawn, but he came to the house and insisted on seeing Ross. Jud, already in the know, followed him unbidden into the parlor.
“It’s the Illogan miners,” the boy said without preliminary. “Zacky Martin’s heard tell from Will Nanfan that they’re a-coming tonight to pay you back for stealing Tom Carne’s girl.”
Ross put down his glass but kept a finger in his book.
“Well, if they come, we can deal with them.”
“I aren’t so sartin ’bout that,” said Jud. “When they’re in ones an’ twos ye can deal wi’ ’em as we dealt wi’ ’em today, but when they’re in ’undreds, they’re like a great roarin’ dragon. Get acrost of ’em and they’ll tear ’ee to shreds as easy as scratch.”
Ross considered. Shorn of its rhetoric, there was some truth in what Jud said. Law and order stood aside when a mob of miners ran amok. But it was unlikely that they would walk all that way on so small a matter. Unless they had been drinking. It was Easter week.
“How many guns have we in the house?”
“Three, I reckon.”
“One should be enough. See that they’re cleaned and ready. There’s nothing more to do beyond that.”
They left him, and he heard them whispering their dissatisfaction outside the door. Well, what else was there to do? He had not seen that his casual adoption of a child for a kitchen wench would produce such results, but it was done and all hell should crackle before he retracted. Two years abroad had led him to forget the parochial prejudices of his own people. To the tinners and small holders of the county someone from two or three miles away was a foreigner. To take a child from her home to a house ten miles away, a girl and under age, however gladly she might come, was enough to excite every form of passion and prejudice. He had given way to a humane impulse and was called an abductor. Well, let the dogs yap.
He pulled the bell for Prudie. She shuffled in ponderously.
“Go to bed, Prudie, and see that the girl goes also. And tell Jud that I want him.”
“He’s just went out, just this minute. Went off wi’ Jim Carter, the pair of ’em, he did.”
“Never mind, then.” He would soon be back, having probably gone no farther than to light the boy to his loft. Ross got up and went for his own gun. It was a French flintlock breechloader, one his father had bought in Cherbourg ten years before, and it showed a greater reliability and accuracy than any other gun he had used.
He broke the barrel and squinted up it, saw that the flint and hammer were working, put powder carefully in the flashpan, loaded the charge, and then set the gun on the window seat. There was no more to do, so he sat down to read again and refilled his glass.
Time went on and he grew impatient for Jud’s return. There was little wind that night and the house was very silent. A rat occasionally moved behind the wainscoting; occasionally Tabitha Bethia, the mangy cat, mewed and stretched before the fire, or a billet of wood shifted and dropped away to ashes.
At ten thirty he went to the door and peered up the valley. The night was cloudy and the stream whispered and stirred; an owl flitted from a tree on furtive wings.
He left the door open and went around the house to the stables. The sea was very dark. A long black swell was riding quietly in. A wave would occasionally topple over and break in the silence with a crack like thunder, its white lip vivid in the dark.
His ankle was very painful after the horseplay of that afternoon; his whole body was stiff, his back aching as if he had cracked a rib. He entered the stables and went up to the loft. Jim Carter was not there.
He came down, patted Darkie, heard Garrick scuffle in the box they had made for him, returned the way he had come. Devil take Jud and his notions. He surely had sense enough not to leave the property after the boy’s warning. Surely he had not ratted.
Ross went into the downstairs bedroom. The box bed was empty, for Demelza had been moved to her new quarters. He mounted the stairs and quietly opened the door of her bedroom. It was pitch-black, but he could hear a sharp excited breath. At least she was there, but she was not asleep. In some manner she had come to know of the danger. He did not speak but went out again.
From the room next door came a sound like a very old man cutting timber with a rusty saw, so he had no need to locate Prudie. Downstairs again, and an attempt to settle with his book. He did not drink any more. If Jud returned, they would take it in two-hour watches through the night; if he did not, then the vigil must be kept single-handed.
At eleven thirty he finished the chapter, shut the book, and went to the door of the house again. The lilac tree moved its branches with an errant breeze and then was still. Tabitha Bethia followed him out and rubbed her head in companionate fashion against his boots. The stream was muttering its unending litany. From the clump of elms came the rough thin churring of a nightjar. In the direction of Grambler the moon was rising.
But Grambler lay southwest. And the faint glow in the sky was not pale enough to reflect either a rising or a setting moon. Fire.
He started from the house and then checked himself. The defection of Jud and Carter meant that he alone was left to guard his property and the safety of the two women. If in truth the Illogan miners were on the warpath, it would be anything but wise to leave the house unprotected. Assuming the fire to have some connection with those events, he would surely meet the miners if he went to look and they were on their way there. But some might slip around him and gain the house. Better to stay than risk its being set afire.
He chewed his bottom lip and cursed Jud for a useless scoundrel. He’d teach him to rat at the first alarm. The desertion somehow loomed larger than all the neglect before he came home.
He limped up as far as the Long Field behind the house and from there fancied he could make out the flicker of the fire. He returned and thought of waking Prudie and telling her she must care for herself. But the house was as silent as ever and dark, except for the yellow candlelight showing behind the curtains of the parlor; it seemed a pity to add needlessly to anyone’s alarm. He wondered what the child’s feelings were, sitting up there in the dark.
Indecision was one of the things he most hated. After another five minutes he cursed himself and snatched up his gun, and set off hastily up the valley.
Rain was wafting in his face as he reached the copse of fir trees beyond Wheal Maiden. At the other side he stopped and stared across to Grambler. Three fires could be seen. So far as he could make out they were not large, and he was thankful for that. Then he picked out two figures climbing the rising ground toward him, one carrying a lantern.
He waited. It was Jim Carter and Jud.
They were talking together, Carter excited and breathless. Behind them, emerging out of the shadows, were four other men: Zacky Martin, Nick Vigus, Mark and Paul Daniel, all from the cottages at Mellin. As they came abreast of him he stepped out.
“Why,” said Jud, showing his gums in surprise, “if tedn’t Cap’n Ross. Fancy you being yurabouts. I says to meself not five minutes gone: now, I says, I reckon Cap’n Ross’ll be just going off to sleep nice and piecemeal; he’ll be just stretching his feet down in the bed. I thought I wished I was abed too, ’stead of trampling through the misty wet, a mile from the nearest mug of toddy—”
“Where have you been?”
“Why, only down to Grambler. We thought we’d go visit a kiddlywink an’ pass the evening sociable—”
The other men came up and paused, seeing Ross. Nick Vigus seemed disposed to linger, his sly face catching the light from the lantern and creasing into a grin. But Zacky Martin tugged at Vigus’s sleeve.
“Come on, Nick. You’ll not be up for your core in the morning. Good night, sur.”
“Good night,” said Ross, and watched them tramp past. He could see more lanterns about the fires and figures moving. “Well, Jud?”
“Them fires? Well, now, if ye want to hear all about un, ’twas like this—”
“’Twas like this, sur,” said Jim Carter, unable to hold his impatience. “What with Will Nanfan saying he’d heard tell the Illogan miners was coming to break up your house—on account of you taking Tom Carne’s maid, we thought ’twould be a good thing if we could stop ’em. Will says there’s about a hundred of ’em carrying sticks and things. Well, now then, Grambler men owes Illogan men a thing or two since last Michaelmas Fair, so I runs along to Grambler and rouses ’em and says to ’em—”
“Oo’s telling this old yarn?” Jud said with dignity.
But in the excitement Jim had lost his usual shyness.
“—and says to ’em, ‘What d’you think? Illogan men are coming over ’ere bent on a spree.’ Didn’t need to say more’n that, see? ’Alf Grambler men was in the kiddlywinks, having a glass, and was fair dagging for a fight. While this, Jud runs down to Sawle and tells ’em same story. It didn’t work so well there, but he comes back wi’ twenty or thirty—”
“Thirty-six,” said Jud. “But seven o’ the skulks turned into Widow Tregothnan’s kiddlywink, and still there for all I’d know, drowning their guts. ’Twas Bob Mitchell’s fault. If he—”
“They was just there in time to help build three bonfires—”
“Three bonfires,” said Jud, “and then—”
“Let the boy tell his story,” said Ross.
“Well, now then, we builded three bonfires,” said Carter, “and they was just going pretty when we heard the Illogan men coming, four or five scores of ’em, headed by Remfrey Flamank, as drunk as a bee. When they come up, Mike Andrewartha mounts on the wall and belves out to ’em, ‘What d’you want, Illogan men? What business ’ave you hereabouts, Illogan men?’ And Remfrey Flamank pulls open his shirt to show all the hair on his chest and says, ‘What bloody consairn be that of yourn?’ Then Paul Daniel says, ’Tis our consairn, every man jack of us, for we don’t want Illogan men poking their nubbies about in our district.’ And a great growl goes up, like you was teasing a bear.”
Jim Carter stopped a moment to get his breath. “Then a little man with a wart on his cheek the size of a plum shouts out, ‘Our quarrel’s not wi’ you, friends. We’ve come to take back the Illogan maid your fancy gentleman stole and teach ’im a lesson he won’t forget, see? Our quarrel’s not wi’ you.’ Then Jud ’ere belves out, ‘Oo says there’s aught amiss wi’ hiring a maid, like anyone else. And he took her in fair fight, ye bastards. Which is more’n any of you could do back again. There never was an Illogan man what—’”
“All right, all right,” interrupted Jud in sudden irritation. “I knows what I says, don’t I! Think I can’t tell what I said meself—” In his annoyance he turned his head and showed that one eye was going black.
“He says, ‘There never was an Illogan man what wasn’t the dirty cross-eyed son of an unmarried bitch wi’ no chest and spavin shanks out of a knacker’s yard.’ I thought ’twas as good as the preacher. And then someone hits him a clunk in the eye.”
Ross said, “Then I suppose everyone started fighting.”
“Nigh on two hundred of us. Lors, ’twas a proper job. Did ’ee see that great fellow wi’ one eye, Jud? Mark Daniel was lacing into him, when Sam Roscollar came up. An’ Remfrey Flamank—”
“Quiet, boy,” said Jud.
Jim at last subsided. They reached home in a silence that was only once broken by his gurgling chuckle and the words “Remfrey Flamank, as drunk as a bee!”
“Impudence,” said Ross at the door. “To go off and involve yourselves in a brawl and leave me at home to look after the women. What d’you think I am?”
There was silence.
“Understand, quarrels of my own making I’ll settle in my own way.”
“Yes, sur.”
“Well, go on to bed, it’s done now. But don’t think I shall not remember it.”
Whether it was a threat of punishment or a promise of reward, Jud and his partner could not be sure, for the night was too dark to see the speaker’s face. There was a catch in his voice that might have been caused by a barely controlled anger.
Or it might have been laughter, but they did not think of that.