Warleggan by Winston Graham Read Free Book Online

Vercoe greeted Dwight. Hubert was not s o well, she said, had vomited after his latest bottle of physic and she'd given him no more. Hubert, looking papery and wasted, was brought forward into the sunlight falling through the open doorway, and Dwight cast a professional eye over him while pretending to admire his story book. It was a new kind, cheaply, printed in Plymouth on sheets of stiff paper with line pictures illustrating ‘ The Hist ory of Primrose Prettyface' and bound between covers of thin horn with a wooden handle. The first picture was of an angel, and Hubert had coloured the (wings red.
    Dwight wondered if this was another echo of the Ellery affair and if his draught was being blamed for some digestive upset.
    He said he would change the stuff, and poured some of it into a cup to examine and taste.
    While he was there Jim Vercoe came back into the cottage for a telescope, and Dwight followed the direction in which it was p ointed, towards a sail on the horizon.
    You could not but admire a man who persisted in his task in the face of bribes offered, occasional threats, avid the social ostracism that canoe his way. Something of the unpleasantness Vercoe often had to meet showed in his bearded f ace. Dwight would have admired him the more if there had been also a trace of that grim satisfaction about him which some men find in getting disliked in the course of their duty..
    The sky's very clear this morning,' Dwight remarked as the Customs Officer lowered his glass;
    `Sharp's a knife surgeon, There'll be more rain afo re nightfall.'
    'We be en watching for the revenue ship all week,' said Mrs. Vercoe with a nod. Jim's been asking for 'er for long enough,'
    "Twill be all over the village soon,' Vercoe said irritably. Women's tongues is too slipper in what don't concern 'em.'
    'Eh , Dr. Enys wouldn't say anything, would you, sir?'
    ' No more than I should if I saw a man with a cask of brandy''
    Vercoe stared at him resentfully for a moment - A man with the standin g of a physician had no right to be that impartial.'
    "Tis hard to, do a proper job when all the gentry are against ee, surgeon, and when there's scarcely a place for an honest boat to find safe h arbourage anywhere along this co ast. They just won't venture in when the weather's heavy; Even Padstow's no safe, refuge if a gale bl ow up. But ye can't keep a watch from Mount's Bay! '
    'I should have thought the disadvantage works both ways. The seas that keep away your revenue cutter will stop men from landing a cargo.
    'Ah, 'tis not so simple as that. The runners will take more risks, and they d'know every rock and eddy li ke the back of their hands. Wh at I need 'bove all is more men ashore. 'Tis fighting up-hill all the way, Aid the worst thing of all mebbe is knowing that after all if you catch y our men, as like as not they'll be brought before the local magistrates and acquitted and set f r ee.'
    Dwight said: I know it is hard, but I should not say th at all the gentry are against you, Or even all the people, I und erstand you have your in formers, and. they should be worth their weight in - well gold'
    Vercoe's face coloured with a dark, angry flush. 'That`s what you come down to, surgeon, when you're hard set. You're' not helped by the honest men, so then you've to use the rats.'
    A few minutes' later Dwight rode into the main street of the village and dismounted at the little shop where his medicines were made up. He stooped in and waited among the multicoloured bottles and the bundles of coloured straw for making bonnets and the green canisters of mixed tea until Irby, the druggist, squeezed himself out of the dungeon where he mixed his prescriptions. Irby was a little fat man with a stub of a nose and steel spectacles with lenses no bigger than the acquisitive eyes behind them.
    Dwight began by asking pleasa ntly to see the order he had made out and asking Mr. Irby to taste the draught and to note the amount of sediment in the bottom if the bottle.