Jeremy Poldark

  The clerk rose and said: “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?”

  “We have,” said the foreman, swallowing nervously.

  “Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”

  “We find him…” The foreman stopped and started again. “We find him not guilty upon all three charges.”

  For a last moment the silence hung like a wave, and then broke. Someone at the back of the court started to cheer, and others took it up. It was answered almost at once by boos and cries of “shame!” Then it stopped, and a backwash in tiny rivulets of conversation lapped about the court. The clerk’s gavel hammered them out of existence.

  “If there is any further disturbance,” said his lordship, “the courtroom will be cleared and proceedings taken against offenders.”

  Ross remained where he was, not quite knowing whether to believe the verdict or whether there was some further malevolence the law might be capable of. After a moment his own self-contained blue eyes met the judge’s.

  “Prisoner at the bar,” said Mr. Justice Lister. “You have been tried on three charges by a jury of your fellow countrymen and found not guilty. It only remains for me, therefore, to order your discharge. But before you go I wish to offer you a word or two of advice. It would not be proper for me to comment on the verdict brought in by this jury—except that you should feel in your heart a gratitude towards God for a deliverance which owes much to mercy and little to logic. In a few moments you will be leaving this court a free man—free to rejoin your deserving wife, and to begin a new life with her. Your able defence—and your reputation in other fields—marks you as a man of talent and capacity. I urge you in your own interests to subdue those instincts to lawlessness which may from time to time come upon you. Take warning from today. May it bear fruit in your heart and in your life.”

  Tears were beginning to fall on Demelza’s hands.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They went home that same evening. He had a morbid distaste for the interest his presence aroused in the town, and his whole concern was to get away from staring eyes. There was no coach, so they hired horses and left at half past six.

  Demelza had wanted Verity to go with them and to stay for a few days at Nampara before returning to Falmouth, but she obdurately refused; instinct told her that at this stage they should be by themselves. Dwight, too, was to have ridden with them, but he was involved at the last moment in helping some injured man. The rest of them—Jud Paynter and Zacky Martin and Whitehead Scoble and the Gimletts—were coming on by stage wagon tomorrow and walking from St. Michael.

  So they left Bodmin quite alone; left the buzzing town, from which the crowds drawn by the election were already beginning to dribble away. By next week, when the judges and the counsel were posting on to Exeter, Bodmin would be back to normal.

  It was dusk before they passed Lanivet and dark by the time they were half across the moors. Mist had blown up again and once or twice they thought they had missed the way. They talked scarcely at all, and discussion as to the right road was a welcome topic when other words would not come. At Fraddon they rested for a while, but soon were in the saddle again. They reached Treneglos land about nine-thirty and later made a detour to avoid Mellin Cottages. This was another inducement to return early, to be home before the news spread so that there were no cheering cottagers to welcome them. The uncomplex Demelza would not have minded in the least—a triumphal procession was what the occasion deserved—but she knew how Ross would hate it.

  So they came upon their own property at last: the stone posts where the gate had once hung, the descending valley among the wild nut trees. As always fog made the land secretive and strange; it was not the familiar friendly countryside they knew and owned; it reverted to an earlier and less personal allegiance. Ross was reminded of that night seven years ago when he had come home from Winchester and America to find his house derelict and the Paynters drunk in bed. It had been raining then, but otherwise just such a night. There had only been the dogs and the chickens and the dripping of moisture from the trees. He had been numb with the blow of Elizabeth’s engagement to Francis, angry and resentful of a hurt only half realized, desperately alone.

  Tonight he was coming back to a house yet more empty because Julia was not there, but riding beside him was the woman whose love and companionship meant more than all the rest; and he was returning free of the cloud which had shadowed his life for six months. He should feel happy and free. During his time in prison he had thought of all the things he should have said to Demelza and would never have the opportunity of saying. Now with unexpected reprieve came the old cursed constriction on his tongue blocking up emotional expression.

  The mist was less thick in the valley, and presently they saw the black shape of their house and crossed the stream and reined in at the front door beside the big lilac tree.

  Ross said: “I’ll take the horses round if you’ll get down here.”

  Demelza said: “It seem funny without even Garrick to give a friendly bark. I wonder how he is, over to Mrs. Zacky’s.”

  “Likely to scent your return at any moment, I should think. A half mile is nothing to him.”

  She slipped down and stood a moment listening to the clatter and clop as the horses were led round to the stable. Then she opened the front door with its familiar friendly squeak and went in. The smell of home.

  She groped into the kitchen, found the tinderbox and scraped it. By the time Ross came in she had a fire flickering and a kettle perched precariously on the sticks. She had lit the candles in the parlour and was reaching up to draw the curtains.

  As he saw the stretch of her young body, the dark hair lank with the clammy night, the olive colour in her cheeks, an impulse of warmth and gratitude towards her came to him. She had never for a moment expected him to rejoice at his deliverance. She might not understand the causes, but some instinct told her that spiritually he was still—at the most—a convalescent. It would take time, perhaps a long time.

  She looked round, met his gaze and smiled. “There was some water left in the pitcher. I thought we could brew a dish of tea.”

  He took off his hat, flung it in a corner, and ran a hand through his hair. “You must be tired,” he said.

  “No…Glad to be home.”

  He stretched and wandered slowly round the room, glancing at things he had virtually said goodbye to a week ago—now renewing their acquaintance as if after many years. The house was isolated and empty in a dark, still world. The pulse of living had died while they were away.

  “Shall I light up a fire in here?” she asked.

  “No…It must be late. My watch has stopped—and I see the clock has stopped. Did you forget to wind it?”

  “Could you expect me to remember that?”

  “I suppose not.” He smiled rather absently, went across to the clock Verity and Demelza had bought three years before. “What do you think the time is?”

  “About eleven.”

  He set the hands and began to wind up the weights. “I should have thought later than that.”

  “Well ask Jack Cobbledick in the morning.”

  “How will he know?”

  “By the cows.”

  Ross said: “Couldn’t we ask them tonight?”

  She laughed, but with a slight break in her voice. “I’ll go’n see if the kettle’s singing.”

  While she was gone he sat in a chair and tried to arrange his thoughts, to sort them out so that he knew what his own feelings were. But relief and relaxation were still so entangled with the old tensions that nothing clear would come. When she returned with cups and a steaming teapot he was wandering round the room again, as if after his week’s captivity even these confining walls were irksome.

  She said nothing but poured out the tea. “P’raps Jack half suspicioned someone would be back tonight, for he left a jug of m
ilk. Come and sit down, Ross.”

  He sat in the chair opposite her, accepted a cup, sipped it, his lean introspective face showing the strain more now than at any time. This side she could not see the scar. The tea was warm and grateful, soothed one’s stretched nerves, hinted at the old companionship.

  “So we’re to start life afresh,” he said at length.

  “Yes…”

  “Clymer said I was amazing lucky—that a Cornish jury was the most pigheaded in the world. He charged me thirty guineas; I thought it not unreasonable.”

  “I thought he did nothing at all.”

  “Oh yes…Again and again it was his guidance. And the speech I made—was partly his.” Ross’s face twitched “God, how I disliked that!”

  “Why? It was a handsome speech, I thought. I was so proud of you.”

  “Proud…Heaven forbid!”

  “And others thought the same. Dwight told me he’d heard that was what got you off.”

  “Which is worse. To have to go crawling for one’s freedom.”

  “Oh no, Ross! There was no crawling in that. Why should you not defend yourself—explain what you did?”

  “But it was not true! At least…if it was not false it was an evasion of the truth. I had no thought of saving life when I roused the neighbourhood. It was the Warleggans’ ship. That was all I cared about. When I found Sanson dead in the cabin I was glad! That was what I should have told the jury this afternoon—and would have but for Clymer and his counsels of expedience!”

  “And now tonight you would not be free, but perhaps sentenced to transportation. Do you think, Ross, that that would have been a good exchange—just for stretching a story so’s to put it in the best light? And if you’d said what you wanted, would it have been more than half the truth, more the truth than what you did say? Dwight was right, an’ you know it! You were crazed with grief—and the jury’s verdict was the only fair one.”

  Ross got up. “Whitewashing my neighbours too. We knew they were all on the beach for what they could get, and with little thought to the shipwrecked sailors. Who would blame them?”

  “Right enough. Who would blame them—or you?”

  Ross made an angry, disquieted movement. “Let’s talk of other things.”

  But instead they talked of nothing, and silence fell. The house seemed to hold itself together about them. She tried to bring up the election, but it didn’t make sense. Eventually he sat down again and she refilled his cup.

  “I’d dearly love to go on doing this for ever,” she said.

  “Drinking tea? You’d find it incommoding after a while…But why?”

  “It is the homely thing,” she said.

  One of the candles began to sputter, and she got up and snuffed it. The smoke it had made drifted upwards in a dark spreading curl.

  “It’s you and me,” she said, “in our own house; nothing between us—no interruption. Maybe it’s because I’m just of common stock, but I want the home about me: candles burning, curtains drawn, warmth, tea, friendship, love. Those are what d’matter to me. This morning—even a few hours ago—I thought it was all gone for ever.”

  “Common stock? Don’t believe it.” After a minute he added: “Nor was Julia of common stock, and she was like you.”

  “That is the other thing I want,” she said, taking the opening.

  “What?”

  “A fire—and perhaps a cat by the hearth…but mostly a child in the cot.”

  His jaw muscles tightened, but he didn’t speak.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. It’s time for bed. Tomorrow I am to become a farmer again—eh?”

  “No, tell me, Ross.”

  He stared at her. “Was not the last experience enough for you? I want no more fodder for the epidemics.”

  She stared back at him, horrified. “Not ever?”

  He shrugged, uncomfortable and a little surprised at her expression. He had thought she felt the same as himself.

  “Oh, it may be they will come in due course. We cannot help that. But not yet, pray heaven. And they can never take Julia’s place. I should not want them to. I should not want them at all yet.”

  She was about to say something more but checked herself. She had known in court today that she was with child again, and since the moment of his acquittal had been keeping the knowledge to herself like some secret to be betrayed in due time, when it would perhaps help him in the struggle back to normal life again, give a new interest, a renewed purpose. Now the gold had suddenly peeled off and revealed something tawdry and inferior—and unwanted. She went round snuffing the other candles, getting the smoke in her eyes, thankful that he was staring into the fire. The triumph of the day gone. She was as desolate as he.

  Just then there came a tentative knock on the front door. At first they thought they had mistaken it, but it came again. In surprise Ross went out and across the hall and flung it open. The flickering light of a horn lantern showed up half a dozen people standing in the mist.

  There was Paul Daniel and Jack Cobbledick, and Mrs. Zacky Martin and Beth Daniel and Jinny Scoble and Prudie Paynter.

  “We seen the light,” said Mrs. Zacky. “We thought to come’n see if twas you back, my son.”

  “Praise the Lord,” said Beth Daniel.

  “Es it all right?” asked Paul Daniel. “Are ee free and it all over?”

  “You’re early for carols,” said Ross, “but come in and take a glass of wine.”

  “Aw, no, we’d no thought t’intrude, my dear. Twas only wanting to know, and seeing the window alight…”

  “Of course you must come in,” said Ross. “Aren’t you all my good friends?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Later that night a coach drew up outside the largest of the town houses in Princes Street, Truro, and a chilled and yawning postilion got down to open the carriage door for George Warleggan. George got out, ignoring his servants, and walked slowly up the steps. Finding the door bolted, he pulled irritably at the bell. Another sleepy footman let him in, took his hat and cloak, and stared after him as he mounted the handsome staircase. There was no look of sleep in George’s eyes.

  At the top of the first flight he hesitated, saw a light under his uncle’s door, and went across. Cary was in a shabby old dressing gown and a nightcap but was working over his accounts by the light of two candles. When he saw who had come in he took off his steel spectacles and put down his pen. Then he blew out one of the candles, since less light would be needed for talking.

  “We expected you yesterday. Did you have to lie there the night?”

  “The trial did not come on until today—and was not over until four. Then one had to eat.”

  Cary breathed through his nose and eyed George. “I should have stayed another night. A wonder you did not break your axles in the dark or flounder in a bog.”

  “We did once, but came out with some effort. I was not prepared to spend another night in a dirty noisy inn, with indifferent service and no curtains to the bed.” George went over to a decanter on the table and poured himself a drink. He sipped it, aware that Cary was still watching him.

  “Well,” said Cary, “I assume you are not here at this time of night for the pleasure of my company?”

  “He got off,” George said. “The accursed ignorant jury disregarded all the evidence and found him not guilty—because they liked the colour of his eyes.”

  “On all counts?”

  “On all counts. So the judge gave him a lecture, telling him to be a good boy in future, and then he was discharged.”

  Cary sat perfectly still. His little brown bright eyes were fixed on the single unwavering candle fame. “Was it not even suggested that he had murdered Matthew? I tell you, that should have been the charge!”

  “And I tell you, my dear uncle, it would not have held
for a moment. Matthew was found drowned. There was not an atom of proof and we could not have manufactured it. As it was, the evidence we tried to strengthen in our own way was of little value. Some of it, even, was of advantage to the other side. That man Paynter. I must see Garth in the morning…”

  “And what of the other things?” said Cary. “His misdeeds in the past. It is little more than twelve months since he broke in Launceston gaol and took out a prisoner—and nothing done about it. And then soon after he was helping that murderer Daniel to escape. Does all that count for nothing?”

  George took his glass over to a chair and sat down. He studied the colour of the wine. “The law, as you should know, deals in one thing at a time. It also deals only in past convictions, not past suspicions. The judge had the facts before him, but he had no chance of using them. We are thwarted, dear Cary, and must accept our defeat.” It was as if George was salving his own frustration by taunting the other man.

  There was a rap at the door and Nicholas Warleggan came in. He was more properly ready for the night in a flowing gown and a black skullcap.

  “Well, Father,” said George in ironical surprise, “I thought you were at Cardew.”

  “Your mother went alone. I heard the carriage stop. Well, what was the result?”

  “He was acquitted of all charges and now no doubt is back at Nampara sleeping the sleep of a free man.”

  “The man responsible for Matthew’s disgrace,” Cary said, “and later for his death.”

  Nicholas Warleggan glanced sharply at his brother. “There is always the danger of a suspicion becoming an obsession.” To George he said: “So your efforts have been useless. I have been most uncomfortable about it all through.”

  George still twirled his glass round by its stem. “Your conscience gets ever more restive on our account. My dear uncle, why do you buy cheap wine? I call that economy very unsuitable.”