Dinner was in progress at Trenwith House.
It would normally have been over by that time; when Charles Poldark and his family dined alone, the meal seldom took more than two hours, but it was a special occasion. And because of the guests the meal was taking place in the hall in the center of the house, a room too large and drafty when the family had only itself to victual.
There were ten people sitting at the long narrow oak table. At the head was Charles himself, with his daughter Verity on his left. On his right was Elizabeth Chynoweth and next to her Francis, his son. Beyond them were Mr. and Mrs. Chynoweth, Elizabeth’s parents, and at the foot of the table Aunt Agatha crumbled soft food and munched it between her toothless jaws. Up the other side Cousin William-Alfred was in conversation with Dr. and Mrs. Choake.
The fish, the poultry, and the meat dishes were finished, and Charles had just called for the sweets. At all meals he was troubled with wind, which made female guests an embarrassment.
“Damn,” he said, in a silence of repletion that had fallen on the company. “I don’t know why you two doves don’t get married tomorrow instead of waiting for a month for more. Aarf! What d’you lack? Are you afraid you’ll change your minds?”
“For my part I would take your advice,” said Francis. “But it is Elizabeth’s day as well as mine.”
“One short month is little enough,” said Mrs. Chynoweth, fumbling at the locket on the handsome encrusted lace of her dress. Her fine looks were marred by a long and acquisitive nose; on first seeing her one felt a sense of shock at so much beauty spoiled.
“How can one expect me to prepare, let alone the poor child? In one’s daughter one lives one’s own wedding day over afresh. I only wish that our preparations could be more extensive.” She glanced at her husband.
“What did she say?” asked Aunt Agatha.
“Well, there it is,” said Charles Poldark. “There it is. I suppose we must be patient since they are. Well, I give you a toast. To the happy pair!”
“You’ve toasted that three times already,” objected Francis.
“No matter. Four is a luckier number.”
“But I cannot drink with you.”
“Hush, boy! That’s unimportant.”
Amid some laughter the toast was drunk. As the glasses clattered back upon the table, lights were brought. Then the housekeeper, Mrs. Tabb, arrived with the apple tarts, the plum cake, and the jellies.
“Now,” said Charles, flourishing his knife and fork over the largest apple tart. “I hope this will prove as tasty as it looks. Where’s the cream? Oh, there. Put it on for me, Verity, my dear.”
“I’m sorry,” said Elizabeth, breaking her silence. “But I’m quite unable to eat anything more.”
Elizabeth Chynoweth was slighter than her mother had ever been, and there was in her face the beauty her mother had missed. As the yellow light from the candles pushed the darkness back and up toward the high-raftered ceiling, the fine clear whiteness of her took one’s attention among the shadows of the room and against the somber wood of the high-backed chair.
“Nonsense, child,” said Charles. “You’re thin as a wraith. Must get some blood into you.”
“Indeed, I—”
“Dear Mr. Poldark,” said Mrs. Chynoweth mincingly. “To look at her you would not credit how obstinate she can be. For twenty years I have been trying to make her eat, but she just turns away from the choicest food. Perhaps you’ll be able to coax her, Francis.”
“I am very satisfied with her as she is,” said Francis.
“Yes yes,” said his father. “But a little food… Damn, that does no one any harm. A wife needs to be strong and well.”
“Oh, she is really very strong,” Mrs. Chynoweth hastened on. “You would be surprised at that too. It is the breed, nothing more than the breed. Was I not frail as a girl, Jonathan?”
“Yes, my pet,” said Jonathan.
“Hark, how the wind’s rising!” said Aunt Agatha, crumbling her cake.
“That is something I cannot understand,” said Dr. Choake. “How your aunt, though deaf, Mr. Poldark, is always sensible to the sounds of nature.”
“I believe she imagines it half the time.”
“That I do not!” said Aunt Agatha. “How dare you, Charles!”
“Was that someone at the door?” Verity interposed.
Tabb was out of the room, but Mrs. Tabb had heard nothing. The candles flickered in the draft, and the red damask curtains over the long windows moved as if a hand were stirring them.
“Expecting someone, my dear?” asked Mrs. Chynoweth.
Verity did not blush. She had little of her brother’s good looks, being small and dark and sallow with the large mouth that came to some of the Poldarks.
“I expect it is the cowshed door,” said Charles, taking a swill of port. “Tabb was to have looked to it yesterday but he rode with me into St. Ann’s. I’ll thrash young Bartle for not attending to his work.”
“They do thay,” lisped Mrs. Choake to Mrs. Chynoweth, “ath how that the pwinthe ith living at an outwageouth wate. I wath weading in the Me’cuwy ath how Mr. Foxth had pwomithed him an income of one hundwed thouthand poundth a yeaw, and now that he ith in powew he ith hawd to put to it to wedeem hith pwomith.”
“It would seem unlikely,” said Mr. Chynoweth, “that that would worry Mr. Fox unduly.” A smallish man with a silky white beard, his was a defensive pomposity, adopted to hide the fact that he had never in his life made up his mind about anything. His wife had married him when she was eighteen and he thirty-one. Both Jonathan and his income had lost ground since then.
“And what’s wrong with Mr. Fox, I’m asking you?” Dr. Choake said deeply from under his eyebrows.
Mr. Chynoweth pursed his lips. “I should have considered that plain.”
“Opinions differ, sir. I may say, that if I—”
The surgeon broke off as his wife took the rare liberty of treading on his toe. It was the first time the Choakes and the Chynoweths had met socially; to her it seemed folly to begin a political wrangle with those still influential gentlefolk.
Thomas Choake was turning ungratefully to squash Polly with a look, but she was saved the worst of his spleen. There could be no mistake that someone was knocking on the outer door. Mrs. Tabb set down the tray of tarts and went to the door.
The wind made the curtains billow, and the candles dripped grease down their silver sconces.
“God help me!” said the housekeeper as if she had seen a ghost.
• • •
Ross came into a company quite unprepared for his arrival. When his figure showed in the doorway, one after another of those at the table broke into words of surprise. Elizabeth and Francis and Verity and Dr. Choake were on their feet; Charles lay back grunting and inert from shock. Cousin William-Alfred polished his steel spectacles, while Aunt Agatha plucked at his sleeve mumbling, “What is it? What’s to do? The meal isn’t over.”
Ross screwed up his eyes until they grew used to the light. Trenwith House was almost on his way home, and he had not thought to intrude on a party.
First to greet him was Verity. She ran across and put her arms around his neck. “Why, Ross dear! Fancy now!” was all she could find to say.
“Verity!” He gave her a hug. And then he saw Elizabeth.
“Stap me,” said Charles. “So you’re back at last, boy. You’re late for dinner, but we’ve some apple tart left.”
“Did they lame us, Ross?” said Dr. Choake. “A pox on the whole war. It was ill-starred. Thank God it’s over.”
Francis, after a short hesitation, came quickly around the table and grasped the other man’s hand. “It’s good to see you back, Ross! We’ve missed you.”
“It’s good to be back,” said Ross. “To see you all and—”
The color of the eyes under the same heavy lids was the only mark of cousinship. Francis was compact, slim, and neat, with the fresh complexion and clear features of handsome youth. He looked what he was: carefree, easygoing, self-confident, a young man who has never known what it was to be in danger or short of money, or to pit his strength against another man’s except in games or horseplay. Someone at school had christened them “the fair Poldark and the dark Poldark.” They had always been good friends, which was surprising, since their fathers had not.
“This is a solemn occasion,” said Cousin William-Alfred, his bony hands grasping the back of his chair. “A family reunion in more than name. I trust you’re not seriously wounded, Ross. That scar is a considerable disfigurement.”
“Oh, that,” said Ross. “That would be of no moment if I didn’t limp like Jago’s donkey.”
He went around the table greeting the others. Mrs. Chynoweth welcomed him coldly, extending a hand from a distance.
“Do tell uth,” lisped Polly Choake, “thome of youw exthpewiences, Captain Poldark: how we lotht the wa’, what theethe Amewicanth awe like, and—”
“Very like us, ma’am. That’s why we lost it.” He had reached Elizabeth.
“Well, Ross,” she said softly.
His eyes feasted on her face. “This is most opportune. I couldn’t have wished it different.”
“I could,” she said. “Oh, Ross, I could.”
“And what are you going to do now, my lad?” asked Charles. “It’s high time you settled down. Property don’t look after itself, and you can’t trust hirelings. Your father could have done with you this last year and more—”
“I almost called to see you tonight,” Ross said to Elizabeth, “but left it for tomorrow. Self-restraint is rewarded.”
“I must explain. I wrote you, but—”
“Why,” said Aunt Agatha, “Lord damn me if it isn’t Ross! Come here, boy! I thought you was gone to make one of the blest above.”
Reluctantly Ross walked down the table to greet his great-aunt. Elizabeth stayed where she was, holding the back of her chair so that her knuckles were whiter even than her face.
Ross kissed Aunt Agatha’s whiskery cheek. Into her ear he said, “I’m glad to see, Aunt, that you’re still one of the blest below.”
She chuckled with delight, showing her pale brownish-pink gums. “Not so blest, maybe. But I wouldn’t want to be changing just yet.”
The conversation became general, everyone questioning Ross as to when he had landed, what he had done and seen while away.
“Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth, “fetch me my wrap from upstairs, will you? I am a little chilly.”
“Yes, Mother.” She turned and walked away, tall and virginal, groped with her hand for the oak banister.
“That fellow Paynter is a rogue,” said Charles, wiping his hands down the sides of his breeches. “If I was you I should throw him out and get a reliable man.”
Ross was watching Elizabeth going up the stairs. “He was my father’s friend.”
Charles shrugged in some annoyance. “You won’t find the house in a good state of repair.”
“It wasn’t when I left.”
“Well, it’s worse now. I haven’t been over for some time. You know what your father used to say about coming in the other direction: ‘It is too far to walk and not far enough to ride.’”
“Eat this, Ross,” said Verity, bringing a piled plate to him. “And sit here.”
Ross thanked her and took the seat offered him between Aunt Agatha and Mr. Chynoweth. He would have preferred to be beside Elizabeth, but that would have to wait. He was surprised to find Elizabeth there. She and her mother and father had never once been to Nampara in the two years he had known her. Two or three times he glanced up as he ate to see if she was returning.
Verity was helping Mrs. Tabb to carry out some of the used dishes. Francis stood plucking at his lip by the front door; the others were back in their chairs. A silence had fallen on the company.
“It is no easy countryside to which you return,” said Mr. Chynoweth, pulling at his beard. “Discontent is rife. Taxes are high, wages have fallen. The country is exhausted from its many wars, and now the Whigs are in. I can think of no worse a prospect.”
“Had the Whigs been in before,” said Dr. Choake, refusing to be tactful, “none of this need have happened.”
Ross looked across at Francis. “I’ve interrupted a party. Is it in celebration of the peace or in honor of the next war?”
Thus he forced the explanation they had hesitated to give.
“No,” said Francis. “I—er—the position is—”
“We are celebrating something far different,” said Charles, motioning for his glass to be filled again. “Francis is to be married. That is what we’re celebrating.”
“To be married,” said Ross, slicing his food. “Well, well, and who—”
“To Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth.
There was silence.
Ross put down his knife. “To—”
“To my daughter.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” Verity whispered to Elizabeth, who had just reached the bottom of the stairs.
“No, no… Please no.”
“Oh,” said Ross. “To…Elizabeth.”
“We are very happy,” said Mrs. Chynoweth, “that our two ancient families are to be united. Very happy and very proud. I am sure, Ross, that you will join with us in wishing Francis and Elizabeth all happiness in their union.”
Walking very carefully, Elizabeth came over to Mrs. Chynoweth.
“Your wrap, Mama.”
“Thank you, my dear.”
Ross went on with his meal.
“I don’t know what your opinion is,” said Charles heartily after a pause, “but for myself I am attached to this port. It was run over from Cherbourg in the autumn of ’79. When I tasted a sample I said to meself, it is too good to be repeated; I’ll buy the lot. Nor has it been repeated; nor has it.” He put down his hands to ease his great paunch against the table.
“I s’pose you’ll be settling down now, Ross, eh?” said Aunt Agatha, a wrinkled hand on his sleeve. “How about a little wife for you, eh? That’s what we’ve to find next!”
Ross looked across at Dr. Choake.
“You attended my father?”
Dr. Choake nodded.
“Did he suffer much?”
“At the end. But the time was short.”
“It was strange that he should fail so quickly.”
“Nothing could be done. It was a dropsical condition that was beyond the power of man to allay.”
“I rode over,” said Cousin William-Alfred, “to see him twice. But I regret that he was not—hm—in the mood to make the most of such spiritual comfort as I could offer. It was to me a personal sorrow that I could be of so little help to one of my own blood.”
“You must have some of this apple tart, Ross,” said Verity in an undertone behind him, glancing at the veins in his neck. “I made it myself this afternoon.”
“I mustn’t stop. I called here only for a few minutes and to rest my horse, which is lame.”
“Oh, but there’s no need to go tonight. I have told Mrs. Tabb to prepare a room. Your horse may stumble in the dark and throw you.”
Ross looked up at Verity and smiled. In that company no private word could pass between them.
Francis, and to a lesser degree his father, joined in the argument. But Francis was constrained, his father halfhearted, and Ross determined.
Charles said, “Well, have it as you wish, boy. I would not fancy arriving at Nampara tonight. It will be cold and wet and perhaps no welcome. Pour some more spirit into you to keep out the chill.”
Ross did as he was urged, drinking three glasses in succession. With the fourth he got to his feet.
“To Elizabeth,” he said slowly, “and to Francis… May they find happiness together.”
The toast was drunk more quietly than the others. Elizabeth was still standing behind her mother’s chair; Francis had at last moved from the door to put a hand beneath her arm.
In the silence that followed, Mrs. Choake said, “How nithe it mutht be to be home again. I nevew go away, even a little way, without feeling that gwatified to be back. What are the Amewican colonieth like, Captain Poldark? They thay ath how even the thun doeth not withe and thet in the thame way in foweign pawtth.”
Polly Choake’s inanity seemed to relieve the tension, and talk broke out again while Ross finished his meal. There was more than one there conscious of relief that he had taken the news so quietly.
Ross, however, was not staying, and presently took his leave.
“You’ll come over in a day or two, will you not?” said Francis, a rush of affection in his voice. “We’ve heard nothing so far, nothing but the barest details of your experiences or how you were wounded or of your journey home. Elizabeth will be returning home tomorrow. We plan to be married in a month. If you want my help at Nampara, send a message over; you know I shall be pleased to come. Why, it’s like old times seeing you back again! We feared for your life, did we not, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
Ross picked up his hat. They were standing together at the door, waiting for Tabb to bring around Ross’s mare. He had refused the loan of a fresh horse for the past three miles.
“He’ll be here now. That is, if he can handle her. I warned him to be careful.”
Francis opened the door, and the wind blew in a few spots of rain. He went out tactfully to see if Tabb had come.
Ross said, “I hope my mistimed resurrection hasn’t cast a cloud over your evening.”
The light from indoors threw a shaft across Elizabeth’s face, showed up the gray eyes. The shadows had spread to her face and she looked ill.
“I’m so happy you’re back, Ross. I had feared, we had all feared… What can you think of me?”
“Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Too long perhaps.”
“Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth. “Take care the night air does not catch you.”
“No, Mama.”
Ross took her hand. “Good-bye.”
Francis came back. “He’s here now. Did you buy the mare? She’s a handsome creature but very ill tempered.”
“Ill usage makes the sweetest of us vicious,” said Ross. “Has the rain stopped?”
“Not quite. You know your way?”
Ross showed his teeth. “Every stone. Has it changed?”
“Nothing to mislead you. Do not cross the Mellingey by the bridge: the middle plank is rotten.”
“So it was when I left.”
“Do not forget,” said Francis. “We expect you back here soon. Verity will want to see more of you. If she can spare the time, we will ride over tomorrow.”
But only the wind and the rain answered him and the clatter of hoofs as the mare sidestepped resentfully down the drive.
• • •
Darkness had fallen, though a patch of fading light glimmered in the west. The wind blew more strongly, and the soft rain beat in flurries about his head.
His was not an easy face to read, and no one could have told that in the past half hour he had suffered the worst knock of his life. Except that he no longer whistled into the wind or talked to his irritable mare, there was nothing to show.
At an early age he had caught from his father a view of things that took very little for granted, but in his dealings with Elizabeth Chynoweth, he had fallen into the sort of trap such an outlook might have helped him to avoid. They had been in love since she was sixteen and he barely twenty. When his own high-spirited misadventures caught up with him, he had thought his father’s solution of a commission in the army a good idea while the trouble blew over. He had gone away eager for fresh experience and sure of the one circumstance of his return that would really matter.
No doubt was in his own mind, and he had looked for none in hers.
After he had been riding for a time, the lights of Grambler Mine showed up ahead. It was the mine around which the varying fortunes of the main Poldark family centered. On its vagaries depended not merely the prosperity of Charles Poldark and his family but the subsistence level of some three hundred miners and their families scattered in huts and cottages about the parish. To them the mine was a benevolent Moloch to whom they fed their children at an early age and from whom they took their daily bread.
He saw swinging lights approaching and drew into the side of the track to let a mule train pass, with the panniers of copper ore slung on either side of the animals’ backs. One of the men in charge peered up at him suspiciously, then shouted a greeting. It was Mark Daniel.
The main buildings of the mine were all about him, most of them huddled together and indeterminate, but here and there the sturdy scaffolding of headgear and the big stone-built engine houses stood out. Yellow lights showed in the arched upper windows of the engine houses, warm and mysterious against the low night sky. He passed close beside one of them and heard the rattle and clang of the great draft bob pumping water up from the lowest places of the earth.
There were miners in groups and a number of lanterns. Several men peered up at the figure on the horse, but although several said good night he thought none of them recognized him.
Then a bell rang in one of the engine houses, a mellow note. It was the time for changing “cores”; that was why there were so many men about. They were assembling to go down. Other men would be on their way up, climbing ant-like a hundred fathoms of rickety ladders, sweat-covered and stained with rusty markings of the mineral rock or the black fumes of blasting powder. It would take them half an hour or more to come to the surface carrying their tools, and all the way they would be splashed and drenched with water from the leaky pumps. On reaching grass many would have a three- or four-mile walk through the wind and rain.
He moved on. Occasionally the feeling within him was so strong that he could have been physically sick.
The Mellingey was forded, and horse and rider began wearily to climb the narrow track toward the last clump of fir trees. Ross took a deep breath of the air, which was heavy with rain and impregnated with the smell of the sea. He fancied he could hear the waves breaking. At the top of the rise the mare, all her ill nature gone, stumbled again and almost fell, so Ross awkwardly got down and began to walk. At first he could hardly put his foot to the ground, but he welcomed the pain in his ankle, which occupied thoughts that would have been elsewhere.
In the coppice it was pitch-black, and he had to feel his way along a path that had become partly overgrown. At the other side the ruined buildings of Wheal Maiden greeted him—a mine that had been played out for forty years. As a boy he had fought and scrambled about the derelict windlass and the horse whim, had explored the shallow adit that ran through the hill and came out near the stream.
He felt he was really home; in a moment he would be on his own land. That afternoon he had been filled with pleasure at the prospect, but suddenly nothing seemed to matter. He could only be glad that his journey was done and that he might lie down and rest.
In the cup of the valley the air was still. The trickle and bubble of Mellingey Stream had been lost, but it came to his ears again like the mutterings of a thin old woman. An owl hooted and swung silently before his face in the dark. Water dripped from the rim of his hat. There ahead in the soft and sighing darkness was the solid line of Nampara House.
It struck him as smaller than he remembered, lower and more squat; it straggled like a row of workmen’s cottages. There was no light to be seen. At the lilac tree, grown so big as to overshadow the windows behind it, he tethered the mare and rapped with his riding whip on the front door.
There had been heavy rain there; water was trickling from the roof in several places and forming pools on the sandy overgrown path. He thrust open the door; it went creaking back, pushing a heap of refuse before it, and he peered into the low, irregularly beamed hall.
Only the darkness greeted him, an intenser darkness that made the night seem gray.
“Jud!” he called. “Jud!”
The mare outside whinnied and stamped; something scuttled beside the wainscot. Then he saw eyes. They were lambent, green-gold, stared at him unwinkingly from the back of the hall.
He limped into the house, feeling leaves and dirt underfoot. He fingered his way around the panels to the right until he came to the door leading into the parlor. He lifted the latch and went in.
At once there was a scuffling and rustling and the sound of animals disturbed. His foot slid on something slimy on the floor, and in putting out his hand he knocked over a candlestick. He retrieved it, set the candle back in its socket, groped for his flint and steel. After two or three attempts, the spark caught and he lit the candle.
It was the largest room in the house. It was half paneled with dark mahogany, and in the far corner was a great broad fireplace half the width of the room, recessed and built around with low settles. It was the room the family had always lived in, large enough and airy enough for the rowdiest company on the hottest days, yet with warm corners and cozy furniture to cheat the drafts of winter. But all that was changed. The fireplace was empty and hens roosted on the settles. The floor was filthy with old straw and droppings. From the bracket of a candle sconce a cockerel viewed him with a liverish eye. On one of the window seats were two dead chickens.
Opening out of the hall on the left was Joshua’s bedroom, and he next tried that. Signs of life: clothing that had never belonged to his father, filthy old petticoats, a battered three-cornered hat, a jar without stopper from which he sniffed gin. But the box bed was closed and the three captive thrushes in the cage before the shuttered window could tell him nothing of the couple he looked for.
At the farther end of the room was another door leading into that part of the house that had never been finished, but he did not go in. The place to look was in the bedroom upstairs at the back of the house where Jud and Prudie always slept.
He turned back to the door, and there stopped and listened. A peculiar sound had come to his ears. The fowls had settled down, and silence, like a parted curtain, was falling back upon the house. He thought he heard a creak on the shallow stairs, but when he peered out with the candle held high, he could see nothing.
It was not the sound he was listening for, nor the movement of rats, nor the faint hissing of the stream outside, nor the crackle of charred paper under his boot.
He looked up at the ceiling, but the beams and floorboards were sound. Something rubbed itself against his leg. It was the cat whose bright eyes he had seen earlier: his father’s kitten, Tabitha Bethia, but grown into a big gray animal and leprously patched with mange. She seemed to recognize him, and he put down his hand gratefully to her inquiring whiskers.
Then the sound came again, and that time he caught its direction. He strode over to the box bed and slid back the doors. A powerful smell of stale sweat and gin; he thrust in the candle. Dead drunk and locked in each other’s arms were Jud and Prudie Paynter. The woman was in a long flannel nightgown, her mouth was open and her varicosed legs asprawl. Jud had not succeeded in getting properly undressed, but snored by her side in his breeches and leggings.
Ross stared at them for some moments.
Then he withdrew and put the candlestick on the great low chest near the bed. He walked out of the room and made his way around to the stables at the east end of the house. He found a wooden pail and took it to the pump. He filled it and carried it around the house, through the hall, and into the bedroom. He tipped the water into the bed.
He went out again. A few stars were showing in the west, but the wind was freshening. In the stables, he noted, there were only two half-starved horses. Ramoth; yes, one was still Ramoth. The horse had been twelve years old and half blind from cataract when he left.
He carried the second bucket around, through the hall, across the bedroom, and tipped it into the bed.
The mare whinnied at his second passing. She preferred even his company to the darkness and unfamiliarity of the garden.
When he brought the third bucket, Jud was groaning and muttering and his bald head was in the opening of the box door. Ross allowed him that bucket to himself.
By the time he returned with the fourth, the man had climbed out of the bed and was trying to shake the streaming water from his clothing. Prudie was only just stirring, so Ross devoted the water to her. Jud began to curse and groped for his jack knife. Ross hit him on the side of the head and knocked him down. Then he went for another supply.
At his fifth appearance there was more intelligence in the eyes of the servant, though he was still on the ground. At the sight of him Jud began to curse and sweat and threaten. But after a moment a look of puzzlement crept across his face.
“Dear life! Is it you, Mister Ross?”
“From the grave,” said Ross. “And there’s a horse to be seen to. Up, before I kill you.” By the collar of his shirt he lifted the man to his feet and thrust him forward toward the door.