The Stranger From The Sea Read Free Page A

Stepfather George to bail me out. All the same, your generosity, your forbearance, allowed me to escape the moneylenders without that humiliating experience.'
    'And now it seems you must have mended your ways -Captain Poldark.'
    'Why do you suppose that, Captain Poldark?'
    'Your preferment. Your grave appearance. Four years of very hard soldiering.'
    Geoffrey Charles stretched his legs. 'As for the first, that was easy, men do not make old bones in the Peninsula, so one is given a place as it becomes vacant. As to the second, my gravity, if you observe it as such, is largely due to the fact that I am wondering how to compose a letter to Aunt Demelza if her husband comes to hurt under my command. As to the third, four years of soldiering of any sort, as you should know, dear Uncle, does not breed mended ways of any sort. It encourages one in unseemly behaviour, whether with a woman, a bottle, or a pack of cards!'
    Ross sighed. 'Ah, well. I shall keep that from your relatives.'
    Geoffrey Charles laughed. 'But I'm not in debt, Captain. In the most singular way. Last month before this damned retreat began the regiment had a donkey race; there were high wagers on all sides, and I, fancying my moke, backed myself heavily and came in a neck ahead of young Parkinson of the 95 th! So for the first time for twenty-odd months I have paid off all my debts and am still a few guineas in pocket! No! ‘ Twas lucky I won, else I should have been gravelled how to pay!'
    Ross eased his aching ankle. 'I see someone has been chipping at your face.'
    'Ah yes, and not so engagingly as yours. Ma foi, I could not imagine you without your little love-token, it so becomes you. I lost my bit of jaw on the Coa in July; we had a set-to in front of the bridge. But it could have been worse. The surgeon gave me the piece of bone to keep as a lucky charm.'

Chapter Two
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    The night had worn on, but they dozed only now and then, still exchanging the occasional comment, the quip, the reminiscence. As dawn came nearer they talked more seriously about themselves, about Cornwall, about the Poldarks.
    Geoffrey Charles had taken the death of his mother hard. Ross remembered him as a pale-faced youth calling to see him in London one afternoon and saying that this happening, this loss, had changed his attitude towards his future. He was no longer content to go to Oxford, to be groomed pleasantly for the life of an impoverished squire in the extremest south-west of E ngland. To be under the tutelage of his stepfather, whom he disliked, for the sake of his mother, whom he deeply loved, might be acceptable. The former without the latter was not. He wanted to make his own way in the world and felt he could ask no more favours of Sir George Warleggan. His immediate wish was to leave Harrow as soon as he could and join the Royal Military College at Great Marlow as a cadet. Ross had tried to persuade him otherwise; he knew enough of the army himself to see the difficulties of a young man without personal money or influence; he also knew Geoffrey Charles's already expensive tastes and thought his nephew would rind the life too hard. Although three years at Harrow had toughened him, he had been much spoiled and cosseted by his mother when he was younger, and some of that influence still showed.
    But nothing would change his mind. It seemed to Ross that the real driving force was a wish to distance himself from Cornwall and all the memories that Cornwall would revive. He had to keep away, and distaste for his stepfather was only a partial reason. So the thing had gone ahead. It had meant a good deal of correspondence with George - which was difficult - but at least they had avoided a meeting. George had been quite generous, offering his stepson an income of £200 a year until he was twenty-one, thereafter to be raised to £500. Geoffrey Charles had wished to spurn it; Ross had bullied him into a grudging acceptance.
    ‘I’ m not thinking solely of myself in this,' Ross had