Jeremy Poldark (11 page)

No. I expect to see him tomorrow-and hope for
better entertainment than I've had to-day."

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 o
f 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?"

Francis 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. France 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 sorry 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 pruned, 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 bad 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.

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 result 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 Blarney'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 Blarney.

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 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 Blarney's bad record had been the
centripetal force 'round which the other little resentments clung.

"Mrs, Blarney, he said contemptuously.
"How does it feel to be called Mrs. Blarney?

"When you came . . I hoped ...”

What? That I was come for a reconcile - 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. Blarney. 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 Blarney?" 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
Blarney; 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 pigheaded 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.''

" Easy to talk," said Unwin, like a
sulky giant. " Neither would give way, and the crowd was howling outside.,
We had to give 'em some result or they would have wrecked the place. As it was,
when Michell and Lawson went to the window together I thought they would be
stoned."

"Michell's returns were sent straight
off?"

Yes, by post rider. But so were Lawson's."

“It's important which the sheriff has in his
hands first. There's no reason in it, but a greater regard is usually taken of
the first in."

They were at the reception following the
election dinner. It had been decided after hurried consultation to go ahead as
if there had been a full-scale Tory, victory. The Boscoigne faction was doing
the same and at the Guildhall reception which followed the dinners there was an
intermingling of the rival parties. Both judges were present and several people
of rank in the county who had not been concerned in the election.

"There'll be pressure on me to stand
aside," said Unwin viciously. "There's a smell of it already. Without
me, Chenhalls and Corrant can occupy the seats comfortably. If I have to go,
Basset will hear of it."

"There's no question of your stepping
aside." Sir John chewed his bottom lip. "In fact, since you're second
in both polls, you're really the only one who's fully elected."

A set dance was in progress, and Unwin watched
Caroline's tall graceful movements as she danced in a , square with Chenhalls
and some cousins of the Robartes. " Well, we are three members; for two
seats. That will not pass."

"It's only a question of time," said
Sir John, staring at a dark young-woman talking to one of His Majesty's judges.
" When the plea is heard before the Chancery Court Lawson's mayoralty will
be declared illegal, there's no doubt. That will automatically make his
election figures invalid. Anyway, they smack of fraud. Whoever heard of a Whig
mayor returning one candidate of the other colour when there are two of his
own?"

“It suggests impartiality."

"Nonsense,
it suggests fraud. But in any case, if this should not be thrashed out before
Parliament reassembles, don't hesitate to claim your seat.' There have been
similar occurrences in recent years at Helston and Saltash. Daniell reminds me
that at Saltash two rival electoral bodies have existed for a very long time,
and different committees of appeal have held first one body to be legal and
then the other. More than that, Unwin. In an election to fill a single seat
four or five years ago, the rival electoral bodies each elected a member - and
both have taken their places in the Commons." -

"Yes, I heard something of it in the
House."

"Well, that was in '85 or '86. And Daniell
assures me that in spite of petitions and counter-petitions both elected members
continue to sit. - If that can happen, there's no reason to be despondent about
the, present result. I believe it to be most important that you regard yourself
as reelected and act accordingly."

The
dance came to an end and was politely applauded. Without looking towards the
Trevaunances, Caroline drifted off with Chenhalls in the direction of the
supper room. - Relations between the lovers had not been of the sweetest
to-day. She had insisted on attending the hustings - much against all his
advice. Then, suddenly bored, she had, slipped out in the most obvious way when
Unwin couldn't possibly leave to accompany her, and had sent his servant
scuttling back when he told him to follow. After all that she'd, arrived back
in the hall just as the results were given, and had snapped his head off when
he asked the cause. When I am your husband, he thought, looking towards her as
she stood in the doorway. Her shoulders gleamed whitely even in this subdued
light. I f I am your husband; and that was a disturbing thought. This election
had been more expensive than ever. Doubts as to the results made his position
much more unstable - whatever John said. And there were mounting debts in
London. He started towards her, but Sir John clutched his arm.

He looked at his brother impatiently, expecting
more sage but unwelcome advice. But Sir John was staring the other way.

"
Tell me who's that with Wentworth Lister? That woman talking to him."

Unwin frowned his cleft
frown. "Demelza Poldark, it looks like."