Ross Poldark Read Free

black hair.
    “Ad your physic, ’ave you?” she asked in a throaty whisper.
    Joshua turned irritably on the doctor. “I’ve told you before, Choake; pills I’ll swallow, God help me, but draughts and potions I’ll not face.”
    “I well remember,” Choake said ponderously, “when I was practising in Bodmin as a young man, one of my patients, an elderly gentleman who suffered much from strangury and stone—”
    “Don’t stand there, Prudie,” snapped Joshua to his servant. “Get out.”
    Prudie stopped scratching and reluctantly left the room.
    “So you think I’m on the mend, eh?” Joshua said before the physician could go on. “How long before I’m up and about?”
    “Hm, hm. A slight abatement, I said. Great care yet awhile. We’ll have you on your feet before Ross returns. Take my prescriptions regular and you will find they will set you up—”
    “How's your wife?” Joshua asked maliciously.
    Again interrupted, Choake frowned. “Well enough, thank you.” The fact that the fluffy lisping Polly, though only half his age, had added no family to the dowry she brought was a standing grievance against her. So long as she was unfruitful he had no influence to dissuade women from buying motherwort and other less respectable brews from travelling gypsies.
2
    The doctor had gone and Joshua was once more alone—alone this time until morning. He might, by pulling persistently on the bell cord, call a reluctant Jud or Prudie until such time as they went to bed, but after that there was no one, and before that they were showing signs of deafness as his illness became more clear. He knew they spent most of each evening drinking, and once they reached a certain stage, nothing at all would move them. But he hadn’t the energy to round on them as in the old days.
    It would have been different if Ross had been here. For once Charles was right but only partly right. It was he, Joshua, who had encouraged Ross to go away. He had no belief in keeping boys at home as additional lackeys. Let them find their own stirrups. Besides, it would have been undignified to have his son brought up in court for being party to an assault upon excise men, with its associated charges of brandy running and the rest. Not that Cornish magistrates would have convicted, but the question of gaming debts might have been raised.
    No, it was Grace who should have been here, Grace who had been snatched from him thirteen years back.
    Well, now he was alone and would soon be joining his wife. It did not occur to him to feel surprise that the other women in his life scarcely touched histhoughts. They had been creatures of a pleasant exciting game, the more mettlesome the better, but no sooner broken in than forgotten.
    The candles were guttering in the draught from under the door. The wind was rising. Jud had said there was a ground swell this morning; after a quiet cold spell they were returning to rain and storm.
    He felt he would like one more look at the sea, which even now was licking at the rocks behind the house. He had no sentimental notions about the sea; he had no regard for its dangers or its beauties; to him it was a close acquaintance whose every virtue and failing, every smile and tantrum he had come to understand.
    The land too. Was the Long Field ploughed? Whether Ross married or not there would be little enough to live on without the land.
    With a decent wife to manage things… Elizabeth was an only child; a rare virtue worth bearing in mind. The Chynoweths were a bit poverty-stricken, but there would be something. Must go and see Jonathan and fix things up. “Look here, Jonathan,” he would say. “Ross won’t have much money, but there's the land, and that always counts in the long run—”
    Joshua dozed. He thought he was out walking round the edge of the Long Field with the sea on his right and a strong wind pressing against his shoulder. A bright sun warmed his back and the air tasted like wine from a cold cellar. The