Read Ross Poldark for Free Online

Elizabeth?”
    “Yes,” said Elizabeth.
    Ross picked up his hat. They were standing together at the door, waiting for Tabb to bring round Ross's mare. He had refused the loan of a fresh horse for the last three miles.
    “He’ll be here now, that's if he can handle her. I warned him to be careful.”
    Francis opened the door. The wind blew in a few spots of rain. He went out tactfully to see if Tabb had come.
    Ross said: “I hope my mistimed resurrection hasn’t cast a cloud over your evening.”
    The light from indoors threw a shaft across her face, showed up the grey eyes. The shadows had spread to her face and she looked ill.
    “I’m so happy that you’re back, Ross. I had feared, we had all feared—What can you think of me?”
    “Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Too long perhaps.”
    “Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Chynoweth. “Take care the night air does not catch you.”
    “No, Mama.”
    “Goodbye.” He took her hand.
    Francis came back. “He's here now. Did you buy the mare? She's a handsome creature but very ill tempered.”
    “Ill usage makes the sweetest of us vicious,” said Ross. “Has the rain stopped?”
    “Not quite. You know your way?”
    Ross showed his teeth. “Every stone. Has it changed?”
    “Nothing to mislead you. Do not cross the Mellingey by the bridge: the middle plank is rotten.”
    “So it was when I left.”
    “Do not forget,” said Francis. “We expect you back here soon. Verity will want to see more of you. If she can spare the time, we will ride over tomorrow.”
    But only the wind and the rain answered him and the clatter of hoofs as the mare sidestepped resentfully down the drive.
3
    Darkness had fallen by now, though a patch of fading light glimmered in the west. The wind blew more strongly, and the soft rain beat in flurries about his head.
    His was not an easy face to read, and you couldn’t have told that in the last half hour he had suffered the worst knock of his life. Except that he no longer whistled into the wind or talked to his irritable mare, there was nothing to show.
    At an early age he had caught from his father a view of things which took very little for granted, but in his dealings with Elizabeth Chynoweth, he had fallen into the sort of trap such an outlook might have helped him to avoid. They had been in love since she was sixteen and he barely twenty. When his own high-spirited misadventures caught up with him, he had thought his father's solution of a commission in the Army a good idea while the trouble blew over. He had gone away eager for fresh experience and sure of the one circumstance of his return which would really matter.
    No doubt was in his own mind, and he had looked for none in hers.
    After he had been riding for a time, the lights of Grambler Mine showed up ahead. This was the mine round which the varying fortunes of the main Poldark family centred. On its vagaries depended not merely the prosperity of Charles Poldark and his family but the subsistence level of some three hundred miners and their families scattered in huts and cottages about the parish. To them themine was a benevolent Moloch to whom they fed their children at an early age and from whom they took their daily bread.
    He saw swinging lights approaching and drew into the side of the track to let a mule train pass, with the panniers of copper ore slung on either side of the animals’ backs. One of the men in charge peered up at him suspiciously, then shouted a greeting. It was Mark Daniel.
    The main buildings of the mine were all about him now, most of them huddled together and indeterminate, but here and there the sturdy scaffolding of headgear and the big stonebuilt engine houses stood out. Yellow lights showed in the arched upper windows of the engine houses, warm and mysterious against the low night sky. He passed close beside one of them and heard the rattle and clang of the great draught bob pumping water up from the lowest places of the earth.
    There were miners