Ross Poldark by Winston Graham Page A

grip upon an empire in the east; she had foughtsingle-handed against the Americans, the French, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and Hyder Ali of Mysore. Governments, fleets, and nations had grappled, had risen, and been overthrown. Balloons had ascended in France, the Royal George had turned on her beam ends at Spithead, and Chatham's son had taken his first Cabinet office. But for Joe Triggs nothing had changed. Except that this knee or that shoulder was more or less painful, each day was so like the last that they merged into an unchanging pattern and slipped away unmarked.
    While talking to the old man, Ross's eyes were straying over the rest of the cottages. The one next to this had been empty since the whole family had died of the smallpox, in ’79, and it had now lost part of its roof; the one beyond, the Clemmows’, looked little better. What could one expect? Eli the younger and brighter had gone off to some lackey's job in Truro, leaving only Reuben.
    The three cottages of the opposite angle were all in good repair. The Martins and the Daniels were his particular friends. And Nick Vìgus looked after his cottage, for all that he was a slippery rogue.
    At the Martin cottage Mrs. Zacky Martin, flat-faced and bespectacled and cheerful, showed him into the single dark room downstairs with its floor of well-trodden earth on which three naked babies rolled and crowed. There were two new faces since Ross left, making eleven in all, and Mrs. Martin was pregnant again. Four boys were already underground at Grambler, and the eldest daughter, Jinny, was a spaller at the mine. The three next youngest children, aged five and upwards, were just the sort of cheap labour Ross needed for clearing his fields.
    This sunny morning, with the sights and sounds and smells of his own land about him, the war of which he had been a part seemed unsubstantial and far off. He wondered if the real world was that one in which men fought for policies and principles and died or lived gloriously—or more often miserably—for the sake of an abstract word like patriotism or independence, or if reality belonged to the humble people and the common land.
    It seemed that nothing would stop Mrs. Zacky talking; but just then her daughter Jinny came back from her shift at the mine. She seemed out of breath and about to say something when she pushed open the half door of the cottage, but on seeing Ross she came forward and curtsied awkwardly and was tongue-tied.
    “My eldest,” said Mrs. Zacky, folding her arms across her wide bosom. “Seventeen a month gone. What's to do, child? Have ee forgotten Mister Ross?”
    “No, Mother. No, sur. Tedn’t that at all.” She went to the wall, untied her apron, and pulled off her big linen bonnet.
    “She's a fine girl,” said Ross, inspecting her absently. “You should be proud of her.”
    Jinny blushed.
    Mrs. Zacky was staring at her daughter. “Is it that Reuben that's been playing you up again?”
    A shadow fell across the door, and Ross saw the tall figure of Reuben Clemmow striding towards his cottage. He still wore his damp blue miner's drill coat and trousers, the old hard hat with its candle stuck to the front by clay, and he carried four excavating tools, one of them a heavy iron jumper used for boring.
    “He follow me every day,” said the girl with tears of annoyance in her eyes. “Bothering me to walk wi’ him; and when I walk he says nothing but only looks. Why don’t he leave me alone!”
    “There now, don’t take on so,” said her mother. “Go tell they three young imps to come in if they d’ want anything t’ eat.”
    Ross saw his opportunity to leave, and got up as the girl ran from the hut and called out in a shrill clear voice to three of the Martin children who were working in a potato patch.
    “He's a prime worry to we,” said Mrs. Martin. “He d’ follow her everywhere. Zacky's warned ’im twice.”
    “He keeps his cottage in an uncommon bad state. You must find the stench very