Ross Poldark (31 page)

“Jim. You’re going out with Nick Vigus again. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew you’d only make a fuss.”

“Well, you needn’t go.”

“Yes, I do. I promised Nick yesterday.”

“Tell ’im you’ve changed your mind.”

“I haven’t.”

“Cap’n Poldark wants you in the morning, Jim. Have you forgotten that?”

“I shall be back long afore morning.”

“Maybe he’ll want ee to take a pitch at the new mine.”

Jim said: “I couldn’t take it, Jinny. ’Tis a speculation, no more and no less. I couldn’t give up a good pitch for that.”

“A good pitch is no good if you’ve to wade to your chin in water going forth and back to it. No manner of wonder you cough.”

“Well, when I go out to get a bit of extry, all you do is complain!”

“We can manage, Jim. Easy. I don’t want more. Not that way. It fair sticks in my throat when I think how you’ve come by it.”

“I aren’t all that Methody.”

“No more am I. ’Tis knowing the danger you’ve been in to get it.”

“There's no danger, Jinny,” he said in a softer tone. “Naught to fret about. Honest. I’ll be all right.”

A faint tapping was heard on the door again.

He said: “ ’Tis only while I’m not earning. You know that. I shan’t be up of nights when I’m back on my pitch. Good bye now.”

“Jim,” she said urgently, “I wisht you wouldn’t go tonight. Not tonight.”

“Hush, you’ll wake the babies. Think on them, and the other one coming. We got to keep you well fed, Jinny dear.”

“I’d rather starve—”

The three words floated down into the dark kitchen as he descended, but he heard no more. He unbolted the door and Nick Vigus slipped inside like a piece of rubber.

“You been some long time. Got the nets?”

“All ready now. Brrr… ’tis cold.”

Jim put on his coat and boots and they went out, Nick whispering to his dog. Their walk was to be a fairly long one, about five miles each way, and for some time they tramped in silence.

It was a perfect night, starlit and clear but cold, with a north-westerly breeze thrusting in from the sea. Jim shivered and coughed as he walked.

Their way lay southeast, skirting the hamlet of Marasanvose, climbing to the main coaching road and then dropping into the fertile valley beyond. They were entering Bodrugan land, profitable country but dangerous, and they began to move with the utmost caution. Nick Vigus led the way and the thin lurcher made a second shadow at his heels. Jim was a few paces behind carrying a stick about ten feet long and a homemade net.

They avoided a carriage drive and entered a small wood. In the shadow Nick stopped.

“They blasted stars are as sharp as a quarter moon. I misdoubt if we’ll have as fair a bag.”

“Well, we can’t go back wi’out a try. It ’pears to me—”

“Sst… Quiet.”

They crouched in the undergrowth and listened. Then they went on. The wood thinned out, and a hundred yards ahead the trees broke into a big clearing half a mile square. Fringing one side was a stream and about the stream a thicket of bushes and young trees. It was here that the pheasants roosted. Those in the lower branches were easy game for a quick man with a net. The danger was that at the other end of the clearing stood Werry House, the home of the Bodrugans.

Nick stopped again.

“What did ee hear?” Jim asked.

“Somethin’,” whispered Vigus. The starlight glistened on his bald pink head and made little shadows of the pits in his face. He had the look of a perverted cherub. “They keepers. On the prowl tonight.”

They waited for some minutes in silence. Jim sup pressed a cough and put his hand on the dog's head. It moved a moment and was still.

“Lurcher's all right,” said Nick. “Reckon twas a false alarm.”

They began to move again through the undergrowth. As they neared the edges of the clearing it became a question not so much of disturbing the keepers, who perhaps had not been there at all, but of not flushing the pheasants until it was too late for them to fly. The brightness of the night would make this difficult.

They whispered together and chose to separate, each man taking one net and closing in on the covey from an opposite direction. Vigus, who was the more practised, was to make the longer detour.

Jim had a gift for stealthy movement, and he went on very slowly until he could see the dark shapes of the birds, podlike among the branches and in the low forks of the tree just ahead. He unwound the net from his arm, but decided to give Nick another two minutes lest he should spring the trap half set.

As he stood there he could hear the wind soughing in the branches above him. In the distance Werry House was a dark alien bulk among the softer contours of the night. One light still burned. The time was after one, and he wondered about the people who lived there and why they were keeping such late hours.

He wondered what Captain Poldark would have to say to him. He owed a lot there, but that made him feel he couldn’t accept any more favours. That was, always supposing he could keep his health. It would be no benefit to Jinny to do as his father had done and die at twenty-six. Jinny made a to-do about him having to wade through water to his working pitch every day, but she didn’t realize that they were all wet and dry most of the time. If a man couldn’t put up with that, he wasn’t fitted to be a miner. At present he was free of the blasting powder, and that was something to be thankful for.

An animal stirred in the thicket near him. He turned his head and tried to see but could not. The tree beyond was gnarled and misshapen. A young oak, one would guess from the dead leaves on its branches. They hung there rustling in the breeze all the winter through. A peculiar swollen shape.

And then the shape changed slightly.

Jim screwed up his eyes and stared. A man was standing against the tree.

So their visit of Saturday had not gone unmarked. Perhaps every night since then there had been game keepers waiting patiently for the next visit. Perhaps he had already been seen. No. But if he moved forward, he was as good as caught. What of Nick coming round from the north?

Jim's mind was frozen by the need to make an instant choice. He began to move slowly away.

He had not taken two steps when there was the sound of a broken twig behind him. He twisted in time to avoid a grasp on his shoulder and plunged towards the pheasants, dropping his net as he ran. In the same second there was a scuffle at the other side and the discharge of a musket; suddenly the wood came to life—with the cry of cock pheasants and the beating of their startled wings as they rose, with the stirring of other game disturbed, with men's voices shouting directions for his capture.

He came to open ground and ran flatly, skirting the edge of the stream and keeping as much as possible in the deep shadow. He could hear running footsteps behind and knew that he was not outdistancing them; his heart pounded and his breath grew tight.

At a break in the trees he swerved and ran amongst them. He was not now far from the house, and he could see that this was a formal path he followed. In here it was darker, and the undergrowth between the trees was so dense that it would be hard to force a way through it without giving them time to catch up.

He came upon a small clearing; in the middle was a circular marble pavilion and a sundial. The path did not go beyond this point. He ran towards the pavilion, then changed his mind and made for the edge of the clearing where a big elm tree leaned out and away. He scrambled up the trunk, scratching his hands and breaking his nails on the bark. He had just reached the second branch when two gamekeepers pounded into the clearing. He lay still, drawing thinly at the air.

The two men hesitated and peered about the clearing, one with head bent forward listening.

“ … not gone fur… Hiding out…” floated across to the tree.

They walked furtively into the clearing. One went up the steps and tried the door of the pavilion. It was locked. The other stepped back and stared up at the circular domed roof. Then they divided and made a slow circuit of the open space.

As one of the men approached his tree Jim suddenly felt that peculiar stirring in his lung which he knew meant an attack of coughing. The sweat came out afresh on his forehead.

The gamekeeper slowly went past. Jim saw that he carried a gun. Just beyond the leaning elm the man stopped at a tree which looked more scalable than the rest and began to peer up through its branches.

Jim gasped at the air and choked and got a breath and held it. The second man had made his tour and was coming to rejoin his companion.

“Seen aught of ’im?”

“No. Bastard must’ve escaped.”

“Did they catch the other un?”

“No. Thought we’d got this un though.”

“Ais.”

Jim's lungs were expanding and contracting of their own accord. The itch welled up irresistibly in his throat and he choked.

“What's that?” said one of the men.

“Dunno. Over yur.”

They came sharply towards the elm but mistook the direction by twenty feet, frowning into the tangled under growth.

“Stay thur,” said one. “I’ll see what I can find.” He forced his way through the bushes and disappeared. The other stood against the bole of a tree with his gun at the cock.

Jim grasped at the branch above him in a frantic effort to hold his cough. He was soaked now with sweat, and even capture seemed little more fearful than this convulsive strain. His head was bursting. He would give the rest of his life to be able to cough.

There was a trampling and a cracking and the second gamekeeper came out, cursing his disappointment.

“He's gone, I reckon. Let's see what Johnson's done.”

“How ’bout getting the dogs?”

“They’ve nought to go on. Maybe we’ll catch ’em proper next week.”

The two men moved off. But they had not gone ten paces when they were stopped by a violent explosion of coughing just above and behind them.

For a moment it alarmed them, echoing and hollow about the trees. Then one recovered himself and ran back towards the elm.

“Come down!” he shouted. “Come down out of there at once, or I’ll shoot the life out of you.”

R
OSS 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, under-sized, vigorous and stout. He claimed to have more hair on his body than any man living, a boast he was ready to put to the proof 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 smelt 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 here 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?” This much he was able to hear because there had been a temporary dropping off in conversation. Someday he might come to accept this as a natural event when he entered a room.

He nodded and half smiled to some of the guests as he walked through them towards Sir Hugh. There was a sudden outburst of barks and he saw that Constance Lady Bodrugan was on her knees on the hearthrug 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.”