Jeremy Poldark Page 9

  At the end of the passage the crowd thinned a bit, and two special constables were guarding the door which led to the platform. They stared at him with suspicion as he came up.

  “Which way did Miss Penvenen go?”

  One of them nodded. “Down thur, sur.”

  Dwight saw a door in the opposite wall, and pushed his way through to it. It led into the back room of the shop next door and thence to the main street. When he came out he thought she had gone, for the crowds were shouting and dancing about the ale-houses opposite, and the porticoes made it hard to get a view down the street. Then he turned and saw her standing against the wall beside the shop door, watching him.

  She was hatless, evidently caring nothing for convention; her rich auburn hair, rather coarse in texture, curled to her shoulders. The pearls about her neck were worth any footpad’s risk.

  “Dr. Enys,” she said as he bowed. “Why are you following me?”

  Again he felt that prick of irritation. “I saw you leave and thought you might need my help.”

  “Should I be likely to?”

  “Election day is not the quietest of times.”

  “I found it all very dull.”

  “Naturally. But there are those who do not.”

  The shop door burst open and a servant came out. He stopped at sight of them and touched his forelock.

  “Oh, Mistress Penvenen, ma’am, the master asked me to see ee home safe. He couldn’t leave his self, not just now. Tis—”

  “I need no foster mother to escort me home,” she said impatiently. “Go back to Mr. Unwin and look after him. He’ll need it maybe. Go on! Go on!” she added as the man hesitated. “I don’t want you.”

  A section of the crowd was chanting the marching song again, but others were booing derisively. Someone aimed a brick at the Guildhall window, but it missed and broke to pieces on the wall, scattering a shower of smaller stones on the people underneath.

  “Rabble,” said Caroline. “Like the shirtless beggars and thieves who pretend to hold France. England would be happier for a few thousand less of them.”

  The shopkeeper behind them was busy putting up his shutters. There was a clatter of heels as someone clambered across his portico, and he pushed his way out into the street and began swearing and shouting at him to come down.

  “In a mass,” said Dwight, “a rabble, yes. And a drunken rabble’s a dangerous thing; I wouldn’t trust its behaviour a yard. But take each man to himself and he’s likeable enough. A weak creature, as we all are, liable to jealousies and petty spites, as we all are, selfish and afraid, as we all are. But often generous and kind and peaceable and hardworking and good to his family. At least as much all those things as the average gentleman.”

  Caroline looked at him. “Are you a Jacobin, like your friend Ross Poldark?”

  So she had been making inquiries about him. “It’s clear you don’t know Ross Poldark.”

  “No. I expect to see him tomorrow—and hope for better entertainment than I’ve had today.”

  Dwight said sharply: “No doubt you’re the sort of woman who takes a window at Tyburn—for the pleasure of seeing someone choked to death.”

  “Is it any business of yours if I am?”

  “No. I’m thankful not.”

  “I find you a little impertinent for one of your station, Dr. Enys.”

  “I don’t suppose my station to be that of a lackey, ma’am.”

  “You might establish your claim with some show of gentility then.”

  His flush didn’t fade. “This is a rough county, Miss Penvenen. As you’ll see if you look around you…Not that I’ve noticed any strict attention to the conventions on your part.”

  She lifted her head. “There are limits, don’t you think? And it seems only necessary for me to mention Poldark’s name for you to fly into a rage and overstep them. Is he your hero, Dr. Enys? Shall you be able to make a rabid speech tomorrow in his defence? Be careful that you don’t forget your manners then, or the judge will not give you a hearing.”

  “The judge is not a woman, ma’am.”

  “And what do you mean by that?”

  “I mean he’s not likely to be swayed by prejudice.”

  “Not even by an odious conceit such as some men suffer from?”

  “Oh, conceit. I shouldn’t put that as the special property of one sex…”

  As he spoke his attention was taken by an extra commotion across the road. Two men were fighting or struggling, it seemed for the possession of some papers.

  “It’s very gracious of you to instruct me,” Caroline said. “I wonder you’re so solicitous for one you so greatly despise.”

  “You quite misunderstand what I…” He broke off.

  “Naturally.”

  There were cries and shouts and laughter from across the street, and some papers flew high in the air and scattered over the crowd. Other men had joined in the struggle now. Dwight muttered his excuses to Caroline and ran across the road. He tried to force his way through the ring of spectators.

  It was hard going, for no one would move an inch for another, but at last he got through and found Francis struggling with three men who were apparently trying to restrain his violence towards a fourth who cringed among a heap of papers in the gutter.

  “Mangy moulting carrion crow,” Francis was saying, in quite a quiet voice considering his struggles. “Let me pluck a few more feathers. You wanted to distribute ’em, did you not, and I’ll do it for you. This way…” He half broke free, but they grabbed him again.

  “Hold hard, sur,” said one. “Ye’ve plucked ’im near to the bone, I bla’.”

  There was a laugh. Francis had had a good deal to drink. The man in the gutter, a tattered black-coated fellow, was holding his head and groaning, but with an eye on the sympathy of the crowd. Scattered about in the mud were dozens of broadsheets, and Dwight picked up one which lay at his feet. The leaflet was entitled True and Sensational Facts in the life of Captain R-s- P—d—k.

  “Things that grow in dunghills breed pestilence,” said Francis. “They should be trod back before they move from their middens. Let me go, fellow. Take your scabby hands off me.”

  “Mr. Poldark…are these men annoying you? What has gone wrong?”

  France raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Enys. Well, it would be a mistake to imagine that by clinging to me like blowflies they’re amusing me at all.” He wrenched himself free, the men having slightly relaxed their grasp at the sight of Dwight’s sober bearing. “God damn it, there’s no respect for quality in this town! One cannot squash—ah, there he goes!”

  Seeing his attacker free again, the tattered man in the gutter had turned, like one of the worms Francis had compared him to, and wriggled his way between the legs of the spectators. Francis threw his stick after him but it only caught a fat man on the shins.

  “And now he goes free, to lay his eggs elsewhere. Well, I fancy these he has left are well addled.” Francis ground the papers in the mud. Then he pulled his cravat round to the front and tried to adjust it. “Go on, go on!” he said to the gaping crowd. “There’s no more entertainment for you. Back to your spawning.”

  Dwight said: “These scurrilous sheets. But it won’t help to take the law into one’s own hands.”

  “What are they doing but taking the law into their own hands trying to poison the public’s mind before the trial? It’s a monstrous encroachment on individual rights. I’ll wreck every one of ’em I come across.”

  Dwight made a noncommittal reply and turned to go.

  “As for you,” said Francis to the man who had held him, “when the constables of this flea-ridden town want your help no doubt they’ll enlist it. Until then restrain your interfering humours or they may lead you into trouble.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Come and drink with me, Enys.”

  “I’m s
orry…I was engaged when I heard the commotion and—broke off a conversation.” Dwight peered back over the crowding people but could see no sign of Caroline.

  “Conversation,” said Francis, “is what I require. Intelligent conversation. I have spent the day in the company of rogues and thieves and bawds, beginning with the biggest blackguard of them all. Now I crave an hour’s respectability. Suitably primed, I think you could dispense it.”

  Dwight smiled. “Another time I’d be honoured. But at the moment, if you’ll excuse me…”

  He pushed his way back to the Guildhall and looked every way. But she was not to be seen. Evidently she had no fear at all and had gone off on her own.

  Unnoticed by him, a sudden silence had fallen on the crowds. Now he heard someone speaking, and knew it was the announcement of the election result. But he was too late to catch what was being said. All he heard was the roar of the crowd at the end—and that was a roar of frustration and annoyance.

  Whatever the result, rivalry hadn’t been appeased by it.

  Chapter Eight

  Verity sat on the low window seat watching the forty or fifty horses being driven by the hotel grooms down from the grazing fields above the town. Every evening about this time they came clattering and snorting past, forcing a dangerous way along the narrow street. Every morning they were driven up.

  She had spent much of her time at this window since she came, peering down on the heads of passers-by, just as in Falmouth when Andrew was away she would sit in the window above the porch working at her embroidery and gazing out over the harbour. There was no such view here, just a narrow hilly street and an endless movement of people to and fro.

  She had heard the results of the election an hour ago, a fiasco which would inevitably lead to more petitions and counter-petitions before Parliament and endless quarrels within the town. The two returning officers had shown different results. Mr. Lawson had returned a Whig and a Tory, Mr. Michell two Tories. The town was in a ferment.

  By now Andrew would be in Lisbon. Tomorrow, while Ross was standing his trial, he would be setting sail for home. His son James, at Gibraltar, was no great distance from him, but could as well be in another hemisphere. Sometimes she doubted whether she would ever meet his two children; in her heart, in spite of what she had told Demelza, she had grown to fear it more than desire it. James and Esther were the standing evidence of Andrew’s first tragic marriage. Perhaps they felt that themselves and so would not come. Perhaps they merely felt that the new wife had pushed them out. In any event Andrew Blamey’s second marriage so far was an unqualified success, and Verity was terrified that his children might endanger it.

  There was a knock at the door, and Joanna, the untidy serving maid, stood there, hair awry under a mobcap, and a streak of dirt across her cheek.

  “If ee plaise, ma’am, a gent to see ee. Name of Mr. Francis Poldark.”

  Verity’s heart lurched. “Mr—Francis Poldark?

  “Iss, I bla. He say you d’know he. Perhaps tis the other leddy—”

  “It is this lady,” said Francis, entering. “I am her brother, wench, so there’s no bawdy tattle for you when you go below. Get down to your taps and leave us be. And wipe your snotty nose.”

  Joanna, gaping, slid out, and brother and sister faced each other for the first time for fourteen months, since the day when, abetted by Demelza and in the face of his bitterest opposition, Verity had run away and married Andrew Blamey.

  Her heart sinking, she saw at once that he was drunk. And she knew how much that meant. Six or seven years ago their father had been known to complain that Francis would never have a head on him and slid under the table after the first bottle like any common clerk. But time and patience had cured all that. It needed real perseverance these days.

  “You alone?” he said.

  “Yes…I—didn’t know you were in the town, Francis.”

  “Everyone’s in the town. Apothecary, ploughboy, poor man, thief…I thought you were staying with Demelza.”

  “She’s gone out this evening. We’ve been together all day.”

  He frowned at her as if trying to see her with the unprejudiced eyes of a stranger. His shirt was torn at the neck and his coat stained with mud. Only she knew how passionately he had resented her marriage. Since they grew up his love for her had been selfish, possessive—a little more than brotherly. His distrust of Blamey’s bad record had been the centripetal force round which the other little resentments clung.

  “Mrs. Blamey,” he said contemptuously. “How does it feel to be called Mrs. Blamey?”

  “When you came…I hoped…”

  “What? That I was come for a reconcil—concilation?” He looked round for a seat and moved across the room to find one, sat carefully in it, putting his hat on the floor beside the chair and stretching out one muddy riding boot. His movements were too deliberately steady. “Who knows? But not with Mrs. Blamey. My sister—that’s different. A treacherous slut.” But he said it without conviction or venom.

  She said: “I’ve so wished to come back and see you all—I’ve been asking Demelza. All your sickness over Christmas—and Demelza’s loss. In Falmouth we’ve had our share, but…How is Elizabeth? Not with you, I suppose?”

  “And how is Blamey?” said Francis. “Not with you, I suppose? Tell me, Verity, d’you find married life less of a snare than the rest of us? We plunge into it, poor deluded devils, convinced there is something within that we’re missing and must not miss. But it is a gin, is it not, with iron teeth—and once it fastens on us…How is Blamey; lashing his sailors, I conceit, in Biscay or the Baltic. You’ve got stouter, you was always such a thin kipes of a girl. Have you brandy or rum in the room?”

  “No…only port.”

  “Of course, Demelza’s drink. How she loves it. She should take care or she’ll become a tippler. I saw Ross in Truro, two weeks gone; he seemed very little put about by all the legal fuss and the lying scabby rumours. Like Ross, that. He’s a hard nut and they’ll not crack him with a mere assize, however much they count on it.” He stared at her with a pursed, angry face, but looking through rather than at her. “I wish I were Ross and going to stand before my judges tomorrow; I’d tell them a thing or two, I’d shock them. Francis Poldark of Trenwith, Esquire.”

  One more effort. “I’m glad you’ve come, Francis. I should be so relieved to feel all the heartburning was over. It has been my one unhappiness since I left.”

  He ripped a bit of torn lace off the edge of his cuff, idly rolled it between finger and thumb, and flipped it across the room in the direction of the fireplace. “Happiness—unhappiness: tags to tie upon the same mood! Pretty ribbons that mean no more than the flags of this cursed election. Aarf! as Father used to say. This morning I quarrelled violently with George Warleggan.”

  She got up. “I’ll order you some refreshment, my dear.” When she had pulled the bell: “We’re all praying for an acquittal tomorrow. They say it’s by no means hopeless. Demelza has been about some business of her own all week. It is something to do with the trial, but I don’t know what. She can’t rest.”

  “Acquittal! Nor would I in her shoes. This morning I went round to the counsel who’s defending Ross and said to him: ‘Tell me the truth now, I want no cuckoo-spit, but the truth: what are his chances for tomorrow?’ And he said: ‘As for the third charge, there’s a very fair chance; but I see no getting out of the first two—on his own admission and on his pig-headed attitude now. There is still time to change and make a fight of it, but he will not do so, so it is a lost cause to begin.’”

  The serving maid came to the door again but for a moment they were both too preoccupied to heed her. At length Francis sent her scurrying off for gin.

  He said: “I met George at the Garland Ox just after. He looked so damned opulent and self-satisfied that I couldn’t stomach him. My gorge rose and I vomited a good deal of spleen. It
did me a world of good.”

  They were silent for a long time. She had never seen him like this before. She didn’t know if the change had come in twelve months or only in tonight. Two things struggled in her mind, concern for him and concern for what he had said about Ross.

  “Was it wise to quarrel with George? Don’t you still owe him money?”

  “I greeted him by saying: ‘What, are the carrion gathering before the buck’s killed?’ When he showed signs of swallowing that outwardly but resenting it inwardly I thought it time to place my opinion of him beyond a doubt. His damned suaveness didn’t avail him. With a politeness to match his own, I dwelt on his looks, his clothes, his morals, his parentage, and his earlier ancestry. We quarrelled with a becoming vigour. The position between us had needed clearing up for some time.”

  “Clearing up,” said Verity restlessly. “It will be a very happy clearing up if he forecloses on you. He has been an old friend, I know, but I wouldn’t consider it beyond him to pay you out for an insult in whatever way he can.”

  Joanna came back with the gin. Francis tipped her and watched her go. He slopped some of the spirit into a glass and drank it. “Oh, no doubt he thinks he’ll take it out of me tomorrow. But he may be defrauded.” Francis stared with a peculiar expression at his empty glass. He might have been staring at the bitter procession of his life, ever dwindling in thought and achievement down a vista of days till it came to this desolate moment, when the dregs were all that remained. It was a moment when lunacy and unreason became part of the wider comity.

  “Tomorrow is still remote,” he said. “It may never happen.”

  ***

  “The whole procedure was cursed irregular,” said Sir John Trevaunance, dusting snuff off his sleeve. “Ecod, if I’d been there it would never have been allowed to happen.”