Ross did not hear of the arrest until ten o’clock, when one of the Martin children brought the news to him at the mine. He at once went home, saddled Darkie, and rode over to Werry House.
The Bodrugans were one of the decaying families of Cornwall. The main stem, having scored a none-too-scrupulous trail across local history for nearly two hundred years, had given out in the middle of the century. The Werry Bodrugans were following suit. Sir Hugh, the present baronet, was fifty and a bachelor, undersized, vigorous, and stout. He claimed to have more hair on his body than any man living, a boast he was ready to prove for a fifty-guinea bet any evening with the port. He lived with his stepmother, the Dowager Lady Bodrugan, a hard-riding, hard-swearing woman of twenty-nine, who kept dogs all over the house and smelled of them.
Ross knew them both by sight, but he could have wished that Jim had found other preserves to poach on.
He wished it still more when he came to the house and saw that the Carnbarrow Hunt was meeting there. Conscious of the stares and whispers of the people in their red coats and shining boots, he got down and threaded a way among horses and yapping dogs and went up the steps of the house.
At the top a servant barred his way.
“What do you want?” he demanded, looking at Ross’s rough working clothes.
Ross stared back at him. “Sir Hugh Bodrugan, and none of your damned impudence.”
The manservant made the best of it. “Beg pardon, sir. Sir Hugh’s in the library. What name shall I say?”
Ross was shown into a room full of people drinking port and canary sack. Conditions could hardly be more difficult for what he had to ask. He knew many of the people. Young Whitworth was there, and George Warleggan and Dr. Choake, and Patience Teague and Joan Pascoe. And Ruth Teague with John Treneglos, eldest son of old Mr. Horace Treneglos. He looked over the heads of most of them and saw Sir Hugh’s squat form by the fireplace, legs astraddle and glass raised. He saw the manservant approach and whisper in Sir Hugh’s ear and heard Bodrugan’s impatient, “Who? What? What?” That much he was able to hear because there had been a temporary dropping off in conversation. Someday he might come to accept it as a natural event when he entered a room.
He nodded and half smiled to some of the guests as he walked through them toward Sir Hugh. There was a sudden outburst of barks and he saw that Lady Constance Bodrugan was on her knees on the hearth rug, tying up a dog’s paw, while six black spaniels licked and lurched about her.
“Blast me, I thought it was Francis,” said Sir Hugh. “Your servant, sir. The hunt starts in ten minutes.”
“Five is all I need,” Ross said pleasantly. “But those I should like in private.”
“There’s nowhere private in the house this morning unless it’s the Jericho. Speak up, for there’s too much noise for anyone to eavesdrop on your private affairs.”
“The man who left this bloody glass about,” said his stepmother. “I’d horsewhip him, by God.”
Ross took the wine offered him and explained his mission to the baronet. A poacher had been taken on Bodrugan land the previous night. A boy known personally to himself. Sir Hugh, being a magistrate, would no doubt have something to do with the hearing of the case. It was the boy’s first offense and there was strong reason to believe that he had been led away by an older and more hardened rogue. Ross would consider himself under an obligation to make good any loss if the boy could be dismissed with a severe warning. Moreover, he would be personally responsible…
At that stage Sir Hugh burst into a roar of laughter. Ross stopped.
“Blast me, but you come too late, sir. Too late by half. I had him up before me at eight o’clock this morning. He’s on his way to Truro now. I’ve committed him for trial at the next quarter sessions.”
Ross sipped his wine.
“You were in haste, Sir Hugh.”
“Well, I didn’t want to be delayed dealing with the fellow when it was the day of the meet. I knew by nine o’clock the house would be in a pandemonium.”
“The poacher,” said Lady Bodrugan, struck with the idea as she released the dog. “I suspicion it was he who dropped the glass. I’d have him flogged at the cart wheel, by God! The laws are too easy on the varmints.”
“Well, he’ll not be troubling my pheasants for a week or two,” said Sir Hugh, laughing heartily. “Not for a week or two. You must agree, Captain Poldark, it’s a standing disgrace the amount of good game that’s lost in a year.”
“I’m sorry to have intruded on your hunting time.”
“Sorry your mission ain’t a happier one. I’ve a nag to lend you if you’ve a mind to join the hunt.”
Ross thanked him but refused. After a moment he made his excuses and left. There was no more he could do.
As he moved away from them he heard Lady Bodrugan say, “You don’t mean you’d have let me varmint go free, Hughie?”
He couldn’t hear her stepson’s reply, but there was a ripple of laughter among those who did.
The attitude of the Bodrugans to his idea of letting a poacher off with a warning was, he knew, the attitude all society would adopt, though they might dress it in politer phrases. Even Cornish society, which looked with such tolerance on the smuggler. The smuggler was a clever fellow who knew how to cheat the government of its revenues and bring them brandy at half price. The poacher not only trespassed literally upon someone’s land, he trespassed metaphorically upon all the inalienable rights of personal property. He was an outlaw and a felon. Hanging was barely good enough.
Ross came up against the same attitude a few days later when he spoke to Dr. Choake. Jim was not likely to be brought up for trial before the final week in May. He knew that Choake, in his capacity of mine surgeon, had treated Jim as recently as February and he asked him his opinion of the boy.
Choake said, well, what could you expect with phthisis in the family? By auscultation he had detected a certain morbid condition in one lung, but how far it had developed it was not possible to say. Of course the complaint had various forms; mortification of the lung might set in early or late; he might even live to be forty, which was a fair age for a miner. One couldn’t tell.
Ross suggested that the information would be of use at the quarter sessions. Evidence of serious ill health, together with a plea from himself, might possibly get the charge dismissed. If Choake would give evidence at the trial…
Choake knit his brows in a perplexed stare. Did he mean…
Ross did mean. Choake shook his head incredulously.
“My dear sir, we’d do much for a friend, but don’t ask us to testify on behalf of a young vagrant who’s been caught poaching. We couldn’t do it. ’Twould come unnatural to us, like mothering a Frenchie.”
Ross pressed, but Choake would not budge.
“To tell the truth, I haven’t a deal of sympathy for your aims,” he said at length. “No good will come of being sentimental about such folk. But I’ll set you out a note of what I’ve said about the boy. Signed with my own hand and sealed like a writ. That will be just as good as going there and standing in the box like a felon. We couldn’t do that.”
Ross grudgingly accepted.
The following day Wheal Leisure had its first official visit from Mr. Treneglos. He stumped over from Mingoose with a volume of Livy under his arm and a dusty three-cornered hat stuck on top of his wig. There was mining blood in the Treneglos family.
He saw what there was to be seen. Three shafts were being sunk, but it was hard going. They had struck ironstone almost at once. That in places meant working with steel borers and then blowing with gunpowder. The layer ran east to west and seemed to be of some size, so the next few weeks were likely to be tedious for all.
Mr. Treneglos said, well, that would mean more expense, but the circumstance was not discouraging. Rich lodes of copper were often found in ironstone. “Nature’s safe,” he said. “She keeps her treasures under lock and key.”
They approached the cliff and stared over the edge, to the flimsy wooden platform halfway down from which eight men in twelve-hour cores of four had begun driving an adit into the cliff. They had long since gone from view; all that could be seen from the cliff top was a boy of twelve who appeared from time to time with a barrow whose contents, the refuse of the four tunneling beetles, he emptied onto the sand below. They too, Ross said, had met ironstone and were trying to find a way around it.
Mr. Treneglos grunted and said he hoped those two old women Choake and Pearce wouldn’t start whinnying about the expense at the next meeting. How long had they reckoned on it taking them to bring home that adit to the mine, eh?
“Three months,” Ross said.
“It will take all of six,” said Mr. Treneglos to himself. “It will take all of six,” he assured Ross. “By the by, have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“My son John and Ruth Teague. They’ve made it up together. They are going to be wed, y’know.”
Ross didn’t know. Mrs. Teague would be in transports.
“She’s done well for herself,” the old man said, as if for once he spoke Ross’s thoughts instead of his own. “She’s done well for herself getting John, even though he is a small matter boisterous in his cups. I could have wished for some maid with money to her name, for we’re none too easy set for our position. Still, she takes a fence well and she’s suitable enough other ways. I heard of a fellow the other day who was carrying on with his kitchen wench. I can’t remember who ’twas. Serious, I mean, not for a lark. It all depends how you treat a thing like that. I well remember John put one of our serving girls in the straw before ever he was seventeen.”
“I hope they’ll be happy.”
“Eh? Oh yes. Well, I shall be glad to see him settled. I shan’t last forever, and there hasn’t been a bachelor master of Mingoose for eighty years.”
“You’re a magistrate,” Ross said. “What is the sentence for poaching?”
“Eh? Eh?” Mr. Treneglos clutched at his old hat just in time to save it from the wind. “For poaching? It all depends, dear boy. All depends. If a man is caught with a whippet and snare in his keeping, then if ’tis a first conviction he may be given three or six months. If he’s been convicted before or has been caught in the act, as the saying is, then no doubt he’ll be sent for transportation. You have to be strong on the rogues, else we’d have no game at all. How’s your uncle, boy?”
“I haven’t seen him this month.”
“I doubt if he will go magistrating again. I s’pose he takes it easy? Perhaps he pays too much heed to the physical profession. I mistrust ’em myself. Rhubarb’s my cure. As for the doctors: timeo Danaos et dona ferentes; that’s my motto. That’s my motto,” he added to himself. “Should be Charles’s.”
• • •
The trial took place on the thirtieth of May.
It had been a cold and unsettled spring with strong winds and days of chilly rain, but in the middle of the month the weather began to clear and the last week was quiet and suddenly very warm. Spring and midsummer were telescoped into one week. In six days of blazing sunshine the entire countryside grew and set into its richest green. The delayed spring blossoms came out overnight, bloomed as in a hothouse, and were gone.
The day of the trial was very warm, and Ross rode into Truro early with the songs of the birds all the way. The courtroom would have been gloomy and decrepit at the best of times. The tunnels of sunlight streaming in through the dirty windows fell on the gnarled old benches and showed up the big cobwebs in the corners of the room and hanging from the rafters. It picked out the emaciated clerk of the court bending over his papers with a pendulous drop glinting from his nose, and fell in patches on the ill-kempt spectators crowded together whispering and coughing at the back.
There were five magistrates, and Ross was pleased to find that he had some acquaintance with two of them. One, the chairman, was Mr. Nicholas Warleggan, George’s father. The other was the Reverend Dr. Edmund Halse, whom Ross had last met in the coach. A third he knew by sight: a fat elderly man named Hick, one of the gentry of the town, who was drinking himself to death. During most of the morning Dr. Halse kept his fine cambric handkerchief before his sharp thin nose. No doubt it was well soaked with extract of bergamot and rosemary, a not unwise precaution with so much fever about.
Two or three cases were gotten through quickly enough in the heavy airless atmosphere, and then James Carter was brought into the box. In the well of the court Jinny Carter, who had walked the nine miles with her father, tried to smile as her husband glanced toward her. During the period of his remand his skin had lost its tan and thick smudges below his dark eyes showed up.
As the case began the usher glanced up at the big clock on the wall, and Ross could see him deciding there would be just time for that case before the midday break.
The magistrates were of the same opinion. Sir Hugh Bodrugan’s gamekeeper had a tendency to wander in his evidence, and twice Mr. Warleggan sharply instructed him to keep to the point. That gave the witness stage fright, and he mumbled through to the end in a hurry. The other gamekeeper bore out the story, and that completed the evidence. Mr. Warleggan looked up.
“Is there any defense in this case?”
Jim Carter did not speak.
The clerk got up, pushing away a dew drop with his hand. “There’s no defense, Your Worship. There’s been no previous conviction. I have a letter ’ere from Sir Hugh Bodrugan complaining of how much game ’e’s lost this year and saying as how this is the first poacher they has been able to catch since January.”
The magistrates put their heads together. Ross cursed Sir Hugh.
Mr. Warleggan looked at Carter. “Have you anything to say before sentence of this court is passed?”
Jim moistened his lips. “No, sir.”
“Very well, then—”
Ross got up. “If I might ask the indulgence of the court—”
There was a stir and a mutter, and everyone turned to see who was disturbing the magisterial dust.
Mr. Warleggan peered through the shafts of sunlight and Ross nodded slightly by way of recognition.
“You have some evidence you wish to give in this man’s defense?”
“I wish to give evidence of his good character,” Ross said. “He has been my servant.”
Warleggan turned and held a whispered conference with Dr. Halse. They had both recognized him. Ross continued to stand up, while people shifted their positions and peered over each other’s shoulders to get a view of him. Among those just to his left he saw a face he recognized, one it was impossible to mistake: the moist, prominent mouth and slant eyes of Eli Clemmow. He had perhaps come to gloat over Carter’s downfall.
“Will you take the witness stand, sir,” Warleggan said in his deep careful voice. “Then you may say what you have to say.”
Ross left his seat and walked across the court to the witness box. He took the oath and made a pretense of kissing the greasy old Bible. Then he put his hands over the edge of the box and looked at the five magistrates. Hick was blowing as if asleep; Dr. Halse was dabbing lightly with his handkerchief, no trace of recognition in his eyes; Mr. Warleggan was looking through some papers.
“No doubt, gentlemen, on the evidence you have heard, you will see no reason to look for anything exceptional in this case. In your long experience there must be many cases, especially at a time of distress such as this, when there are circumstances—of hunger, of poverty, of sickness—that extenuate the offense in some degree. But naturally the laws must be administered, and I should be the last to ask of you that the ordinary poacher, who is a trouble and expense to all of us, should be allowed to go unpunished. I have, however, a close knowledge of the circumstances of this case that I should like to put before you.” Ross gave them a summary of Jim’s vicissitudes, with particular stress on his ill health and the brutal assault made upon his wife and child by Reuben Clemmow. “Living as he does in poverty, I have reason to believe that the prisoner fell into bad company and was persuaded away from certain promises he had made direct to me. I personally am sure of this boy’s honesty. It is not he who should be in court but the man who led him astray.”
He paused and felt that he had the interest of his listeners. He was about to go on when someone sniggered loudly in the well of the court. Several of the magistrates looked across, and Dr. Halse frowned severely. Ross had no doubt who it was.
“The man who led him astray,” he repeated, trying to regain the wandering attention of his listeners. “I repeat that Carter has been led astray by a man much older than himself who has so far escaped punishment. It is he who should bear the blame. As for the prisoner’s present health, you have only to look at him to see what it is today. In confirmation of that I have here a statement from Dr. Thomas Choake of Sawle, the distinguished mine surgeon, that he has examined James Carter and finds him to be suffering from a chronic and putrid inflammation of the lung that is likely to prove fatal. Now I am prepared to reengage him in my employment and to stand surety for his good behavior in the future. I ask for the consideration of these facts by the court, and that they should be taken into careful account before any sentence be passed.”
He handed to the clerk the piece of notepaper on which, in watery ink, Choake had scrawled his diagnosis. The clerk stood hesitantly with it in his hand until Mr. Warleggan impatiently beckoned him to pass it to the bench. The note was read and there was a brief consultation.
“Is it your contention that the prisoner is not in a fit state of health to be sent to prison?” Warleggan asked.
“He is very gravely ill.”
“When was this examination made?” Dr Halse asked coldly.
“About three months ago.”
“Then he was in this state when he went poaching?”
Ross hesitated, aware of the unfriendly nature of the question. “He has been ill for some time.”
Dr. Halse sniffed at his handkerchief. “Well, speaking for myself, I feel that if a man is—hm—well enough to go stealing pheasants, he is—hm—well enough to take the consequences.”
“Aye, true ’nough,” came a voice.
Mr. Warleggan tapped on the desk. “Any further disturbance—” He turned. “You know, Mr. Poldark, I’m of a mind to agree with my friend, Dr. Halse. It is no doubt a misfortune for the prisoner that he suffers these disabilities, but the law gives us no opportunity to draw fine distinctions. The degree of a man’s need should not determine the degree of his honesty. Else all beggars would be thieves. And if a man is well enough to err, he is surely also well enough to be punished.”
“Yet,” Ross said, “bearing in mind the fact that he has already suffered nearly four weeks’ imprisonment—and bearing in mind his good character and his great poverty, I cannot help but feel that in this case justice would be best served by clemency.”
Warleggan thrust out his long upper lip. “You may feel that, Mr. Poldark, but the decision rests with the bench. There has been a marked increase in lawlessness during the last two years. This, too, is a form of lawbreaking both difficult and expensive to detect, and those who are apprehended must be prepared to bear their full share of the blame. Nor can we apportion the guilt; we can only take cognizance of the facts.” He paused. “In view, however, of the medical testimony and of your own testimony as to Carter’s former good character, we are willing to take a more lenient view of the offense than we should otherwise have done. The prisoner is sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.”
There was a murmur in the court, and someone muttered a word of disgust.
Ross said, “I trust I may never have the misfortune to have the leniency of the court extended to me.”
Dr. Halse lowered his handkerchief. “Have a care, Mr. Poldark. Such remarks are not entirely outside our jurisdiction.”
Ross said, “Only mercy enjoys that privilege.”
Mr. Warleggan waved a hand. “Next case.”
“One moment,” said Dr. Halse. He leaned forward, putting his fingertips together and pursing his thin lips. He disliked the arrogant young squireen afresh every time they met: at school, in the coach, in court. He was particularly gratified at having been able to put that sharp little question about dates that had turned the other magistrates to his own way of thinking. But even so the young upstart was trying to have the last word. It would not do. “One moment, sir. We don’t come here and administer justice according to the statute book without a considerable sense of our privileges and responsibilities. As a member of the church, sir, I feel that responsibility with especial weight. God has given to those of his ministers who are magistrates the task of tempering justice with clemency. That task I discharge to the best of my poor ability, and I think it has been so discharged now. Your insinuations to the contrary are offensive to me. I do not think you have the least idea what you are talking about.”
“These savage laws,” Ross said, controlling his temper with the greatest difficulty. “These savage laws that you interpret without charity send a man to prison for feeding his children when they are hungry, for finding food where he can when it’s denied him to earn it. The book from which you take your teaching, Dr. Halse, says that man shall not live by bread alone. These days you’re asking men to live without even bread.”
A murmur of approval at the back of the court grew in volume.
Mr. Warleggan rapped angrily with his hammer. “The case is closed, Mr. Poldark. You will kindly step down.”
“Otherwise,” said Dr. Halse, “we will have you committed for contempt of court.”
Ross bowed slightly. “I can only assure you, sir, that such a committal would be a reading of my inmost thoughts.”
He left the box and pushed his way out of court amid much noise and the shouts of the usher for silence. In the narrow street outside he took a breath of the warm summer air. The deep gutter was choked with refuse and the smell was unsavory, but it seemed agreeable after the smell of the court. He took out a kerchief and mopped his forehead. His hand was not quite steady from the anger he was trying to control. He felt sick with disgust and disappointment.
A long mule train was coming down the street with the heavy panniers of tin slung on each side of the animals and with a number of travel-stained miners plodding slowly along by their side. They had walked miles since dawn from some outlying district with the tin for the coinage hall and would ride home on the backs of the weary mules.
He waited until they were past and then was about to cross the narrow street. A hand touched his arm.
It was Jinny, with her father, Zacky Martin, in the rear. There were pink flushes in her cheeks, showing up against the pale freckled skin.
“I want to thank ’ee, sur, for what you said. ’Twas more’n good of you to try so ’ard for Jim. And what you said—”
“It did no good,” Ross said. “Take her home, Zacky. She’ll be best with you.”
“Yes, sur.”
He left them abruptly and strode off up Coinagehall Street. To be thanked for his failure was the last straw. His disgust was partly leveled at himself for having lost his temper. Be as independent as you liked when it was your own freedom you were bartering, but at least have a greater restraint when it was someone else’s. His whole attitude, he told himself, had been wrong. A good beginning, and then it had gone awry. He was the last person to make a success of such a job. He should have been obsequious, flattering to the bench. He should have upheld and praised their authority, as he had begun by doing, and at the same time have brought it home to them that a lenient sentence might be passed out of the benevolence of their hearts.
Deep down he wondered if even the golden voice of Sheridan would have charmed them from their prey. An even better approach, he thought, would have been to see the magistrates before the court opened and have pointed out to them how inconvenient it would be for him to be deprived of his manservant. That was the way to get a man off, not by the testimony of doctors or sentimental appeals for clemency.
He was in Prince’s Street by that time, and he turned down into the Fighting Cock’s Inn. There he ordered a bottle of brandy and set about drinking it.