Joshua Poldark died in March 1783. In February of that year, feeling that his tenure was becoming short, he sent for his brother from Trenwith.
Charles came lolloping over on his great roan horse one cold gray afternoon, and Prudie Paynter, lank haired and dark faced and fat, showed him straight into the bedroom where Joshua lay propped up with pillows and cushions in the big box bed. Charles looked askance around the room with his small watery blue eyes at the disorder and the dirt, then lifted his coattails and subsided upon a wicker chair, which creaked under his weight.
“Well, Joshua.”
“Well, Charles.”
“This is a bad business.”
“Bad indeed.”
“When will you be about again, d’you think?”
“There’s no telling. I fancy the churchyard will have a strong pull.”
Charles thrust out his bottom lip. He would have discounted the remark if he had not had word to the contrary. He hiccupped a little—riding always gave him the wind—and was heartily reassuring.
“Nonsense, man. The gout in the legs never killed nobody. It is when it gets up to the head that it is dangerous.”
“Choake tells me different, that there is other cause for the swelling. For once I misdoubt if the old fool is not right. Though in God’s truth, by all appearance it is you that should be lying here, since I am but half your size.”
Charles glanced down at the landscape of black embroidered waistcoat spreading away from under his chin.
“Mine is healthy flesh. Every man puts on weight in his middle years. I would not wish to be a yard of pump water like Cousin William-Alfred.”
Joshua lifted an ironic eyebrow but said no more, and there was silence. The brothers had had little to say to each other for many years, and at that, their final meeting, small talk was not easy to find. Charles, the elder and more prosperous, who had come in for the family house and lands and most of the mining interests, head of the family and a respected figure in the county, had never quite been able to get away from a suspicion that his younger brother despised him. Joshua had always been a thorn in his flesh. Joshua had never been content to do the things expected of him: enter the Church or the army or marry properly and leave Charles to run the district himself.
Not that Charles minded a few lapses, but there were limits and Joshua had overstepped them. The fact that he had been behaving himself for the past few years did not score out old grievances.
As for Joshua, a man with a cynical mind and few illusions, he had no complaint against life or against his brother. He had lived one to the limit and ignored the other. There was some truth in his reply to Charles’s next comment of, “Why man, you’re young enough yet. Two years junior to me, and I’m fit and well. Aarf!”
Joshua said, “Two years in age, maybe, but you’ve only lived half as fast.”
Charles sucked the ebony tip of his cane and looked sidelong about the room from under heavy lids. “This damned war not settled yet. Prices soaring. Wheat seven and eight shillings a bushel. Butter ninepence a pound. Wish the copper price was the same. We’re thinking of cutting a new level at Grambler. Eighty fathom. Maybe it will defray the initial outlay, though I doubt it. Been doing much with your fields this year?”
“It was about the war that I wanted to see you,” said Joshua, struggling a little farther up the pillows and gasping for breath. “It must be only a matter of months now before the provisional peace is confirmed. Then Ross will be home and maybe I shall not be here to greet him. You’re me brother, though we’ve never hit it off so well. I want to tell you how things are and to leave you to look after things till he gets back.”
Charles took the cane from his mouth and smiled defensively. He looked as if he had been asked for a loan.
“I’ve not much time, y’know.”
“It won’t take much of your time. I’ve little or nothing to leave. There’s a copy of my will on the table beside you. Read it at your leisure. Pearce has the original.”
Charles groped with his clumsy swollen hand and picked up a piece of parchment from the rickety three-legged table behind him.
“When did you last hear from him?” he asked. “What’s to be done if he doesn’t come back?”
“The estate will go to Verity. Sell if there are any purchasers; it will fetch little. That’s down in the will. Verity will have my share in Grambler too, since she is the only one of your family who has been over since Ross left.”
Joshua wiped his nose on the soiled sheet. “But Ross will come back. I’ve heard from him since the fighting ceased.”
“There’s many hazards yet.”
“I’ve a feeling,” said Joshua. “A conviction. Care to take a wager? Settle when we meet. There’ll be some sort of currency in the next world.”
Charles stared again at the sallow lined face that had once been so handsome. He was a little relieved that Joshua’s request was no more than that but was slow to relax his caution. And irreverence on a deathbed struck him as reckless and uncalled for.
“Cousin William-Alfred was visiting us the other day. He inquired for you.”
Joshua pulled a face.
“I told him how ill you was,” Charles went on. “He suggested that though you might not wish to call in the Reverend Mr. Odgers, maybe you would like a spiritual consolation from one of your own family.”
“Meaning him.”
“Well, he’s the only one in orders now Betty’s husband’s gone.”
“I want none of them,” said Joshua. “Though no doubt it was kindly meant. But if he thought it would do me good to confess my sins, did he think I should rather tell secrets to one of my own blood? No, I’d rather talk to Odgers, half-starved little hornywink though he is. But I want none of them.”
“If you change your mind,” said Charles, “send Jud over with a message. Aarf!”
Joshua grunted. “I shall know soon enough. But even if there was something in it with all their pomp and praying, should I ask ’em in at this hour? I’ve lived my life, and by God I’ve enjoyed it! There’s no merit to go sniveling now. I’m not sorry for myself and I don’t want anyone else to be. What’s coming I’ll take. That’s all.”
There was silence in the room. Outside the wind thrust and stirred about the slate and stone.
“Time I was off,” said Charles. “These Paynters are letting your place get into a rare mess. Why don’t you get someone reliable?”
“I’m too old to swap donkeys. Leave that to Ross. He’ll soon put things to rights.”
Charles belched disbelievingly. He had no high opinion of Ross’s abilities.
“He’s in New York now,” said Joshua. “Tart of the garrison. He’s quite recovered from his wound. It was lucky he escaped the Yorktown siege. A captain now, you know. Still in the Sixty-Second Foot. I’ve mislaid his letter, else I’d show it to you.”
“Francis is a great help to me these days,” said Charles. “So would Ross have been to you if he was home instead of chasing around after Frenchmen and Colonials.”
“There was one other thing,” said Joshua. “D’you see or hear anything of Elizabeth Chynoweth these days?”
After a heavy meal questions took time to transmit themselves to Charles’s brain, and where his brother was concerned they needed an examination for hidden motives. “Who is that?” he said clumsily.
“Jonathan Chynoweth’s daughter. You know her. A thin, fair child.”
“Well, what of it?” said Charles.
“I was asking if you’d seen her. Ross always mentions her. A pretty little thing. He’s counting on her being here when he comes back, and I think it a suitable arrangement. An early marriage will steady him down, and she couldn’t find a decenter man, though I say it as shouldn’t, being his sire. Two good old families. If I’d been on my feet I should have gone over to see Jonathan at Christmas to fix it up. We did talk of it before, but he said wait till Ross came back.”
“Time I was going,” said Charles, creaking to his feet. “I hope the boy will settle down when he returns, whether he marries or no. He was keeping bad company that he should never have got into.”
“D’you see the Chynoweths now?” Joshua refused to be sidetracked by references to his own shortcomings. “I’m cut off from the world here, and Prudie has no ear for anything but scandal in Sawle.”
“Oh, we catch sight of ’em from time to time. Verity and Francis saw them at a party in Truro this summer—” Charles peered though the window. “Rot me if it isn’t Choake. Well, now you’ll have more company, and I thought you said no one ever came to see you. I must be on my way.”
“He’s only come quizzing to see how much faster his pills are finishing me off. That or his politics. As if I care whether Fox is in his earth or hunting Tory chickens.”
“Have it as you please.” For one of his bulk Charles moved quickly, picking up hat and gauntlet gloves and making ready to be gone. At the last he stood awkwardly by the bed, wondering how best to take his leave, while the clip-clop of a horse’s hoofs went past the window.
“Tell him I don’t want to see him,” said Joshua irritably. “Tell him to give his potions to his silly wife.”
“Calm yourself,” said Charles. “Aunt Agatha sent her love, mustn’s forget that, and she said you was to take hot beer and sugar and eggs. She says that will cure you.”
Joshua’s irritation lifted.
“Aunt Agatha’s a wise old turnip. Tell her I’ll do as she says. And—and tell her I’ll save her a place beside me.” He began to cough.
“God b’ w’ ye,” said Charles hurriedly, and sidled out of the room.
Joshua was left alone.
He had spent many hours alone since Ross went, but they had not seemed to matter until he took to his bed a month before. They were beginning to depress him and fill his mind with fancies. An out-of-doors man to whom impulse all his days had meant action, a painful, gloomy, bedridden life was no life at all. He had nothing to do with his time except think over the past, and the past was not always the most elegant subject matter.
He kept thinking of Grace, his long-dead wife. She had been his mascot. While she lived all had gone well. The mine he opened and named after her brought rich results; the house, begun in pride and hope, had been built; they’d had two strong sons. His own indiscretions behind him, he had settled down, promising to rival Charles in more ways than one; he had built the house with the idea that his own branch of the family of Poldark should become rooted no less securely than the main Trenwith tree.
With Grace had gone all his luck. The house half built, the mine had petered out, and with Grace’s death, his incentive to expend money and labor on either. The building had been finished off anyhow, though much remained unrealized. Then Wheal Vanity had closed down also and little Claude Anthony had died.
He could hear Dr. Choake and his brother talking at the front door, his brother’s dusky thickened tenor. Choake’s voice, deep and slow and pompous. Anger and impotence welled up in Joshua. What the devil did they mean droning away on his doorstep, no doubt discussing him and nodding their heads together and saying, well, after all, what else could one expect? He tugged at the bell beside his bed and waited, fuming, for the flip-flop of Prudie’s slippers.
She came at last, ungainly and indistinct in the doorway. Joshua peered at her shortsightedly in the fading light.
“Bring candles, woman. D’you want me to die in the dark? And tell those two old men to be gone.”
Prudie hunched herself like a bird of ill omen. “Dr. Choake and Mister Charles, you’re meaning, an?”
“Who else?”
She went out, and Joshua fumed again, while there was the sound of a muttered conversation not far from his door. He looked around for his stick, determined to make one more effort to get up and walk out to them. But then the voices were raised again in farewells, and a horse could be heard moving away across the cobbles and toward the stream.
That was Charles. Now, for Choake…
There was a loud rap of a riding crop on his door and the surgeon came in.
Thomas Choake was a Bodmin man who had practiced in London, had married a brewer’s daughter, and returned to his native county to buy a small estate near Sawle. He was a tall clumsy man with a booming voice, thatch-gray eyebrows, and an impatient mouth. Among the smaller gentry his London experience stood him in good stead; they felt he was abreast of up-to-date physical ideas. He was surgeon to several of the mines in the district, and with the knife had the same neck-or-nothing approach that he had on the hunting field.
Joshua thought him a humbug and had several times considered calling in Dr. Pryce from Redruth. Only the fact that he had no more faith in Dr. Pryce prevented him.
“Well, well,” said Dr. Choake. “So we’ve been having visitors, eh? We’ll feel better, no doubt, for our brother’s visit.”
“I’ve got some business off my hands,” said Joshua. “That was the purpose of inviting him.”
Dr. Choake felt for the invalid’s pulse with heavy fingers. “Cough,” he said.
Joshua grudgingly obeyed.
“Our condition is much the same,” said the surgeon. “The distemper has not increased. Have we been taking the pills?”
“Charles is twice my size. Why don’t you doctor him?”
“You are ill, Mr. Poldark. Your brother is not. I do not prescribe unless called upon to do so.” Choake lifted back the bedclothes and began to prod his patient’s swollen leg.
“Great mountain of a fellow,” grumbled Joshua. “He’ll never see his feet again.”
“Oh, come; your brother is not out of the common. I well remember when I was in London—”
“Uff!”
“Did that hurt?”
“No,” said Joshua.
Choake prodded again to make sure. “There is a distinct abatement in the condition of our left leg. There is still too much water in both. If we could get the heart to pump it away. I well remember when I was in London being called in to the victim of a tavern brawl in Westminster. He had quarreled with an Italian Jew, who drew a dagger and thrust it up to the hilt into my patient’s belly. But so thick was the protective fat that I found the knife point had not even pierced the bowel. A sizable fellow. Let me see, did I bleed you when I was last here?”
“You did.”
“I think we might leave it this time. Our heart is inclined to be excitable. Control the choler, Mr. Poldark. An even temper helps the body to secrete the proper juices.”
“Tell me,” said Joshua. “Do you see anything of the Chynoweths? The Chynoweths of Cusgarne, y’know. I asked my brother, but he returned an evasive answer.”
“The Chynoweths? I see them from time to time. I think they are in health. I am not, of course, their physician, and we do not call on each other socially.”
No, thought Joshua. Mrs. Chynoweth will have a care for that. “I smell something shifty in Charles,” he said shrewdly. “Do you see Elizabeth?”
“The daughter? She is about.”
“There was an understanding as to her between myself and her father.”
“Indeed. I had not heard of it.”
Joshua pushed himself up the pillows. His conscience had begun to prick him. It was late in the day for the growth of that long-dormant faculty, but he was fond of Ross, and in the long hours of his illness he had begun to wonder whether he should not have done more to keep his son’s interests warm.
“I think maybe I’ll send Jud over tomorrow,” he muttered. “I’ll ask Jonathan to come and see me.”
“I doubt if Mr. Chynoweth will be free; it’s the Quarter Sessions this week. Ah, that’s a welcome sight!”
Prudie Paynter came lumbering in with two candles. The yellow light showed up her sweaty red face with its draping of black hair.
“Ad your physic, ’ave you?” she asked in a throaty whisper.
Joshua turned irritably on the doctor. “I’ve told you before, Choake; pills I’ll swallow, God help me, but drafts and potions I’ll not face.”
“I well remember,” Choake said ponderously, “when I was practicing in Bodmin as a young man, one of my patients, an elderly gentleman who suffered much from strangury and stone—”
“Don’t stand there, Prudie,” snapped Joshua to his servant. “Get out.”
Prudie stopped scratching and reluctantly left the room.
“So you think I’m on the mend, eh?” Joshua said before the physician could go on. “How long before I’m up and about?”
“Hm, hm. A slight abatement, I said. Great care yet awhile. We’ll have you on your feet before Ross returns. Take my prescriptions regular and you will find they will set you up—”
“How’s your wife?” Joshua asked maliciously.
Again interrupted, Choake frowned. “Well enough, thank you.” The fact that the fluffy lisping Polly, though only half his age, had added no family to the dowry she brought was a standing grievance against her. So long as she was unfruitful he had no influence to dissuade women from buying motherwort and other less respectable brews from traveling gypsies.
• • •
The doctor had gone and Joshua was once more alone—alone until morning. He might, by pulling persistently on the bell cord, call a reluctant Jud or Prudie until such time as they went to bed, but after that there was no one, and before that they were showing signs of deafness as his illness became more clear. He knew they spent most of each evening drinking, and once they reached a certain stage, nothing at all would move them. But he hadn’t the energy to round on them as in the old days.
It would have been different if Ross had been there. For once Charles was right but only partly right. It was he, Joshua, who had encouraged Ross to go away. He had no belief in keeping boys at home as additional lackeys. Let them find their own stirrups. Besides, it would have been undignified to have his son brought up in court for being party to an assault upon excise men, with its associated charges of brandy running and the rest. Not that Cornish magistrates would have convicted, but the question of gaming debts might have been raised.
No, it was Grace who should have been there, Grace who had been snatched from him thirteen years back.
Well, he was alone and would soon be joining his wife. It did not occur to him to feel surprise that the other women in his life scarcely touched his thoughts. They had been creatures of a pleasant exciting game, the more mettlesome the better, but no sooner broken in than forgotten.
The candles were guttering in the draft from under the door. The wind was rising. Jud had said there was a groundswell that morning; after a quiet cold spell they were returning to rain and storm.
He felt he would like one more look at the sea, which was licking at the rocks behind the house. He had no sentimental notions about the sea; he had no regard for its dangers or its beauties. To him it was a close acquaintance whose every virtue and failing, every smile and tantrum he had come to understand.
The land too. Was the Long Field plowed? Whether Ross married or not there would be little enough to live on without the land.
With a decent wife to manage things… Elizabeth was an only child; a rare virtue worth bearing in mind. The Chynoweths were a bit poverty-stricken, but there would be something. Must go and see Jonathan and fix things up. “Look here, Jonathan,” he would say. “Ross won’t have much money, but there’s the land, and that always counts in the long run—”
Joshua dozed. He thought he was out walking around the edge of the Long Field with the sea on his right and a strong wind pressing against his shoulder. A bright sun warmed his back and the air tasted like wine from a cold cellar. The tide was out on Hendrawna Beach, and the sun drew streaky reflections in the wet sand. The Long Field had not only been plowed but was already sown and sprouting.
He skirted the field until he reached the furthest tip of Damsel Point where the low cliff climbed in ledges and boulders down to the sea. The water surged and eddied, changing color on the shelves of dripping rocks.
With some special purpose in mind he climbed down the rocks until the cold sea suddenly surged about his knees, sending pain through his legs unpleasantly like the pain he had felt from the swelling the previous few months. But it did not stop him, and he let himself slip into the water until it was up to his neck. Then he struck out from the shore. He was full of joy at being in the sea again after a lapse of two years. He breathed out his pleasure in long, cool gasps, allowed the water to lap close against his eyes. Lethargy crept up his limbs. With the sound of the waves in his ears and heart he allowed himself to drift and sink into cool, feathery darkness.
Joshua slept. Outside, the last trailing patterns of daylight moved quietly out of the sky and left the house and the trees and the stream and the cliffs in darkness. The wind freshened, blowing steadily and strongly from the west, searching among the ruined mine sheds on the hill, rustling the tops of the sheltered apple trees, lifting a corner of loose thatch on one of the barns, blowing a spatter of cold rain in through a broken shutter of the library where two rats nosed with cautious jerky scraping movements among the lumber and the dust. The stream hissed and bubbled in the darkness, and above it a long-unmended gate swung on its hangings. In the kitchen, Jud Paynter unstoppered a second jar of gin and Prudie threw a fresh log on the fire.
“Wind’s rising, blast it,” said Jud. “Always there’s wind. Always when you don’t want it there’s wind.”
“We’ll need more wood ’fore morning,” said Prudie.
“Use this stool,” said Jud. “The wood’s ’ard, ’twill smolder.”
“Give me a drink, you black worm,” said Prudie.
“Wait on yourself,” said Jud.
Joshua slept.