The Stranger From The Sea (30 page)

Letter from Captain Geoffrey Charles Poldark of the
43rd
Monmouthshires to Captain Ross Poldark, Nampara, Cornwall.

Before Almeida, 18th April 1811.

My dear Uncle Ross,

It was only during a lull in the fighting, when we were standing side by side among the bullets on that misty hillside of Bussaco that it occurred to me formally that you were not really my uncle at all but my cousin - or cousin once removed, I conject, to be quite Accurate. However, uncle it first was and uncle it must now remain.

D'you remember how we stood that September morning, after the Charge? I believe it was disobedience of orders amounting almost to mutiny when you joined in, biting at your cartridges, leaping like a boy over boulders and dead Frenchmen alike and firing and stabbing with the best. I was lucky that I found you a Regimental Jacket - tight though it was on you, and split at the shoulder seams, I discovered later - else you might have been spitted from behind by one of our excited lads! I thought to myself that day, 'two Poldark
cousins
are fighting together in this battle, and I'm damned if I know which is the more out of breath!' Killing and being killed is not a pretty business, but I estimate there was an element of Inspiration in us all that day!

I have been re-reading your letter from London and am happy you reached home safe; and ashamed I am not to have written in Reply. It has been a hard Winter for us all, with many of our best officers sick or wounded and some of our Worst applying for - and receiving! - leave to return home. The inactivity - for a time - and the sickness were equally Tedious, but since early March we have been advancing and fighting, advancing and fighting day after day in the most arduous, brilliant and bitter Fashion.

Alas, it has not been a happy time; for our continuing victories have been poisoned by the horrors we have found in the Villages and Towns we have been repossessing. Do you know, Cousin - there I've called you that for a change! - do you know until now I have always felt myself fighting a ferocious but a brave and chivalrous Enemy? I have come across numerous instances of respect and friendship shown between English and French. Often it has been difficult to prevent the ordinary soldiers fraternizing before and after battle. Like pugilists in a boxing ring, once the bout is over
...
And among the generals. Soult putting up the monument to Moore at Corunna is but a case in point. But
here
-
towards the Portuguese! We have walked, marched, tramped for miles through a Charnel house, of putrid corpses, violated and tortured women, children hanged upside down, polluted churches, mutilated priests, men with their eyes gouged out
...
It has changed my feelings. Can a just war turn into a war of revenge? It certainly has for the Portuguese.

Now we are Encamped before Almeida. The French have left a Garrison behind, and it will be the devil's own job to winkle them out. And you will observe I am back on that River once again where I lost a chip of my jaw bone. So far I have survived this winter with all the luck of a bad egg, though I have lost my good friend Saunders;
and
Partridge, who was decapitated by a shell one morning shortly after we had finished breakfast. You met them both, you will remember. Partridge was the one with the long fair hair.

By the way, your War Office has slightly relaxed its grip on promotions, and Brevet Colonel Hector McNeil has been awarded his lieutenant-colonelcy! I have met him more than once since you left, and he is an Estimable man but full of stories about the bad old days when every Cornishman - in his view - was a smuggler!

My warmest love to Aunt Demelza, to Jeremy, Clowance and Isabella-Rose, to
Drake,
to Morwenna, to Sam, to Zacky Martin, to Ben Carter, Jacka Hoblyn, Jud and Prudie Paynter - if they are all still alive - and to any other friend of yours who you think will remember me and to whom I may be safely commended.

I too could obtain leave now if I so requested. I don't so request - partly because the war in the Peninsula is entering, I believe, a Victorious phase, partly because it somehow doesn't seem suitable - meet is the biblical word! - for me to return. I know I would have so many welcoming friends, but it is somehow not yet meet, right or my bounden duty.

All the same, may that time roll on!

As ever your affectionate nephew, (Cousin - Second Cousin?)

Geoffrey Charles.

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Royal
Co
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Gazette
for Saturday the 18th May, 1811.

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Letter from Lord Edward Fitzmauricc to Miss Clowance Poldark, 1
6th
June, 1811.

Dear Miss Poldark,

I venture to write to you again, having persuaded myself that my first letter may have gone astray, and to renew, if only in the formality of a letter, our friendship of February and to say I hope you reached home safely and have been enjoying the many and diverse pleasures of spring and summer there. Cornwall is so very far away, and though in a sense a West Countryman myself I was never in your county and only once as far west as Exeter.

By this post, or shortly to follow, will come a letter from my aunt inviting you to spend time with us in Bowood in late July. It is the custom of the family — to which so far I have willingly acceded - to see the greater part of the Season through in London, then to spend a few weeks in Wiltshire before going up to our lodge in Scotland for the grouse. This means a very delightful period at Bowood, where most of the Family foregather and where my aunt and I would be most Happy to welcome you. Although far distant from Cornwall, it is but half the Way to London and I trust we may be able to persuade you that the journey would be worth while.

Naturally my aunt's letter will be addressed to your Mother, and will include an invitation to her too, so that you may not feel unchaperoned.

Believe me, my dear Miss Poldark, it would give pleasure, if you were able to come, to Yours most sincerely, Edward Petty-Fitzmaurice.

^{Chapter Two}

On the last Friday in May Jeremy told his mother he proposed to ride over and call on Miss Trevanion.

Dcmelza had said: 'Have you heard from her?'

'No.'

'Did you write?'

'Yes, once. She hasn't replied.'

Dcmelza looked at her tall son. His eyes were blank in the way youth can make its eyes blank when it is in trouble.

'Your father was annoyed at Mrs Bettesworth's letter.'

'I know. But I've left it nine weeks. I think I have a right to call.'

'Of course. Shall I tell your father?'

'When I'm gone.'

'I don't think he would object.'

'Would
be
have waited nine weeks?' Jeremy asked.

Demelza smiled obliquely. 'No.'

They walked to the stables. 'You had a horse called Caerhays once,' Jeremy said. 'That was before I was born, wasn't it?'

'Yes, and before our - prosperity. We sold him when we needed money.'

'How did he come b
y his name? Did you know the Tre
vanions then?'

'I think he was so named when we bought him. You must ask your father.'

'Sometime.' Jeremy began to saddle his best horse, a strawberry roan called Colley (short for Collingwood). He had been bought for Jeremy as a hunter, but Jeremy's distaste for the sport had grown with the years and the horse was now used mainly for a fast gallop over the moors. Demelza noticed how well Jeremy was dressed today, more smart than she had ever seen him before.

'Jeremy
.’

'Yes?'

She helped tighten one of the girths. 'I know you have been - greatly upset; and I cannot help you. It grieves me that I cannot help you. I cann't even give you
advice’

'Nobody can.'

'For you would not take it. Quite right. It is hopeless for older people to tell younger ones - particularly their own children - that they have been through the same thing. Such information is no use at
all.
It
bounces
off one's own grief - or jealousy or distress. If we are all born the same we are also all born unique - we all go through torments nobody else has ever had.'

Jeremy patted her hand.

Demelza said: 'But one thing, Jeremy. Never forget you are a Poldark.'

Colley was becoming restive at the prospect of exercise. Jeremy stroked his nose.

'Little likelihood of that.'

'I mean
-'
Demelza hesitated - 'think of your father's family in this matter, not of mine. It would be distressful to me if me being a miner's daughter should hinder your chances.' So now it was out.

Jeremy looked out of the stables, his eyes still blank. 'You take me to church now and again. We go as a family half a dozen times a year, don't we?'

'Well?'

'It says there "honour thy father and thy mother." That's a commandment I happen to obey. Understand? And no trouble. Not half of it but the whole of it. It gives me no trouble at all. If anyone should think to teach me different, it should not be you.'

'I only mean
...'

'I know what you only mean. Now go about your busi-

ness, Mama, and leave me to go about mine. No girl
...'
He stopped.

'It may not be her. It may be her parents.'

Jeremy looked at his mother and smiled wryly.

'That us'll see, shann't us.'

The castle swam in a sea of bluebells. Laced above the bluebells was an embroidery of young beech leaves and silver birch. A limpid sea winked in the bay.

The older footman, who always seemed to have wrinkled stockings, let him in.

'I'll go 'n see, sir. I'm not certain sure whereabout Miss Cuby is exactly at this moment, sir. Kindly take a seat, sir.'

Jeremy did not accept the invitation. Instead he walked about the big hall-like drawing-room where they had made music in March. Clemency's harpsichord was open, with some music splayed on the top. There were shoes in the fireplace, where a fire declared its will to live by sending up thin spirals of smoke. Four shotguns leaned against a wall. Two London newspapers,
The Times
and the
Morning Post,
lay open on a settle. Paintings of earlier Trevanions gazed absent-mindedly at each other across the room.

After a long wait a door opened and two spaniels came barking and romping round his feet and legs.

'My dear Poldark!' It was Major John Trevanion, his tight-lipped face arranged in the lineaments of welcome. 'Good of you to call. How are you? There's been a devilish lot of sickness about. Pray come in here. It's altogether more cosy.'

He led the way back into the study, a smaller, lighter room with a view over the terrace. As usual it was in a considerable litter. In a corner by the fire Mrs Bettesworth sat working at her sampler. She smiled, as tight-lipped as her son, and found time from her work to extend a hand, which Jeremy bowed over.

They exchanged conversation about the weather, about the influenza, about the shortage of horses because of the war, about the difficulty of getting good masons to work on the castle, about the forthcoming Bodmin races, of which the Major seemed to have an extensive knowledge. This was not a field of battle of Jeremy's choice. Indeed, he could not have devised a worse, but he refused to be either overawed or talked down.

Eventually he said: 'In fact I called to see how Miss Cuby was, as it is nine or ten weeks since we met.'

After a brief silence Trevanion said: 'Cuby's very well, but just for the moment is away. She's visiting cousins in Tregony. But I'll tell her you've called. I'll give her any -er — message you would like to leave.'

'Tell her,' said Jeremy, 'that I was disappointed she was not allowed to visit my family on the north coast at Easter.'

'Not
allowed?
Major Trevanion blinked in a bloodshot way at his mother, who took no nodce at all. 'I think she had previous engagements. Isn't that it? Well, well, I'm sorry about that, Poldark. We're all sorry. In fact, if the truth be known, my mother keeps a very firm hand on her children and does not allow them the freedom many modern girls crave.'

'Would she have the freedom to come on some other occasion - possibly with Augustus?'

'Augustus is in London,' said Major Trevanion. 'He has found himself a post in the Treasury where I think his talents will be well employed. He writes amusing letters.'

'Mr Poldark,' said Mrs Bettesworth. 'I wonder if you would be so kind as to pass me the green silk?' Jeremy hastened to oblige.

'He writes amusing letters,' said Trevanion, laughing before he had got to the joke. 'Travelled in a hackney coach, he said, in which there was straw on the floor in place of carpet. Went to service in Westminster Abbey, he said, at which there was only
one
other worshipper apart