Jeremy Poldark Read Online Free PDF Page A

and unquestioning confidence
that their own method was infallible, a confidence that seemed in no way shaken
when one of their patients died. If a sick man collapsed under treatment that
was the fault of the sick man, not of the method.
    What
Dr. Thomas Choake believed Dwight was not sure. Since their early quarrel they
had seen little of each other; but as they practised over much the same
territory they were bound to have occasional contacts. Choake always had an
instant remedy to hand - sometimes he seemed even to have decided on a remedy
before he saw the patient. But whether these remedies sprang from a fixed
theory of medicine - or merely from the impulses of his own brain Dwight was
never able to tell. '
    This
noon Dwight had several patients to visit, the first: a call on Charlie
Kempthorne. Two years ago Kempthorne had had a consumption of both lungs, the
top, only of each affected, but enough to spell a death sentence. Now he was
apparently well, and had been all this year; was free of cough, had put on
weight and was working again, not as a miner but as a sailmaker. He was at
home, as Dwight had expected, and sitting at the door of his cottage busy with
a coarse needle and thread. He grinned all over his lean over-brown face when
he saw the physician, and got up to greet him.
    Come
inside, sur. Tis a pleasure to see you. I bin saving some eggs till you passed
by.
    I'm
not here to stay," said Enys pleasantly. "Just a visit, to see you're
following instructions. Thank you all the same."
    "
Tis no 'ardship to go on with the treatment. Here I sit in the dryth, day in
day out, stitching away and makin' more money than I did as a sumpman"
    "And
Lottie and May?" Kempthorne had two scrawny little daughters, of five and
seven. He had lost his wife in a drowning accident three years; ago.
    "
They'm down to Mrs. Load's. Though what they d'learn I'm vexed to think."
Kempthorne wet the thread in his mouth and paused with it between finger and
thumb to look at the other man slyly. I suppose you d'know there's more fever
abroad. Aunt Sarah Tregeagle asked for me to tell you."
    Dwight
did not comment, having a distaste for discussing diseases in general terms
with his patients.
    "The
Curnows have it, and Betty Coad and the Ishbels, she asked for me to tell you.
Of course, tis no more'n you've reason to expect in August month."
    "A
fine big sail, that."
    Charlie
grinned. "Aye, sur. For the One and All of St. Ann's. She need all her
canvas."
    Would
you make sails for the revenue boats as well?"
    Only
if so be as I could stitch in a flaw so that they ripped when giving
chase."
    From
here to the open square at the foot, of the hill it was not safe to ride a
horse, and Dwight walked thoughtfully down the steep rutted track of
Stippy-Stappy Lane. These cottages, the better ones of the village, occupied
one side of the lane; on the other, beyond the overgrown Cornish wall, the
valley fell steeply; into a gully where a part of the Mellingey River ran away
to the sea and worked the tin stamps. Each house was about six feet below its
neighbour, and at the last of them Dwight tethered his horse. As he knocked at
the door a shaft of brassy sunlight fell through the clouds on the clustered
cottages below, giving their roofs a wet gleam, anticipating the rain.
    Here
lived Jacka Hoblyn, who had his own tin stamp, Polly his wife, their daughter
Rosina, a semi-cripple, and their younger daughter Parthesia, a lively little
creature of eleven, who, opened the door. There were two small rooms downstairs,
with lime-ash floors, in one of which Rosina carried on her work as a
sempstress and patten maker. Parthesia said her mother was in bed-and hopped
ahead of him up the outside stone staircase to the raftered loft where they
all slept. Having seen him in, she skipped off again in search of Father, who
she said was sick too.
    Polly
Hoblyn, who was forty and looked fifty-eight, greeted him brightly; and Dwight
smiled back, taking in all the usual symptoms