Ross Poldark (38 page)

She looked at him. “You have a strong will, Ross. I knew it once. What a man dislikes to hear from his—his wife he may accept from a cousin. You have a way of making your point. I think you could influence Francis very much if you chose.”

“Then I will choose.”

She rose. “Forgive me, I hadn’t intended to say so much. I can’t tell you how I appreciate the way you’ve welcomed me.”

Ross smiled. “Perhaps you’ll promise to come more often.”

“Gladly. I should have liked to come before but felt I had not the right to come.”

“Don’t feel that again.”

There was a footstep in the hall and Demelza came in carrying a great sheaf of fresh-picked bluebells.

She stopped dead when she saw she was intruding. She was in a plain blue linen dress, homemade, with open neck and a bit of embroidery to ornament the belt. She looked wild and unkempt, for all afternoon, shamefully neglecting Prudie and the turnips, she had been out lying in the grass of another hayfield on the high ground to the west of the house, staring down at Ross and the men working on the hill opposite. She had lain there sniffing at the earth and peering through the grass like a young dog, and finally had turned over and gone to sleep in the sweet warmth of the declining sun. Her hair was ruffled and there was grass and burrs on her frock.

She returned Ross's gaze and glanced with wide eyes at Elizabeth. Then she muttered an apology and turned to withdraw.

“This is Demelza of whom you’ve heard me speak,” Ross said. “This is Mistress Elizabeth Poldark.” Two women, he thought. Made of the same substance? Earthenware and porcelain.

Elizabeth thought: Oh, God, so there
is
something between them. “Ross has often mentioned you to me, my dear,” she said.

Demelza thought: She's one day too late, just one day. How beautiful she is; how I hate her. Then she glanced at Ross again, and for the first time like the stab of a treacherous knife it occurred to her that Ross's desire for her last night
was a flicker of empty passion. All day she had been too preoccupied with her own feelings to spare time for his. Now she could see so much in his eyes.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said with horror and hatred in her fingertips. “Can I get you anything, sur?”

Ross looked at Elizabeth. “Reconsider your decision and take tea. It would be made in a few minutes.”

“I must go. Thank you all the same. What pretty bluebells you’ve picked.”

“Would you like them?” said Demelza. “You can have ’em if you’d like.”

“That is kind of you!” Elizabeth's grey eyes flickered round the room just once more. This is her doing, she thought; those curtains. I thought Prudie wouldn’t have the idea to hang them so; and the velvet draping on the settle, Ross would never have thought of that. “I came by horse, though, and unhappily could not carry them. Keep them yourself, my dear, but thank you for the kind thought.”

“I’ll tie en up for you and loop them over the saddle,” Demelza said.

“I’m afraid they would droop. See, they’re drooping already. Bluebells are like that.” Elizabeth picked up her gloves and crop. I can’t come here again, she thought. After all this time, and now it's too late. Too late for me to come here. “You must call and see Uncle, Ross. He often asks for you. Hardly a day goes by.”

“I’ll be over next week,” he said.

They went to the door and Ross helped her to mount her horse, which she did with that peculiar grace of her own. Demelza had not followed them, but watched while seeming not to watch from the window.

She's slenderer than me, she thought, even though she's had a child. Skin like ivory; never done a day's work. She's a lady and Ross is a gentleman, and I am a slut. But not last night, not last night. (The memory of it swelled up in her.) I can’t be a slut: I’m Ross's woman. I hope she gets fat. I do hope and dearly pray she gets fat and catches the pox and her nose drips and her teeth fall out.

“Did you mean what you said about Francis?” Elizabeth said to Ross.

“Of course. I’ll do anything I can—little as it's likely to be.”

“Come to see Charles. For dinner, that would suit. Any day. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he said.

It was their first complete reconciliation since his return; and they were both aware, while not knowing that the other was aware, that the reconciliation had come just too late to count for what it might.

He watched her ride slowly up the valley. Once he saw the glint of her hair as it caught the light from the slanting sun. In this shadowed valley the birds were breaking out into their evening song.

He was tired, so tired, and wanted to rest. But his peace of mind, hardly bought during the day, was dissipated with her visit.

He turned on his heel and tramped into the house, through to the kitchen. Prudie was preparing the evening meal. He grunted at some complaint she made and went to the stables.

For some minutes he busied himself with the small tasks of the farm; these done he came back to the house and to the living-room.

Demelza was still there, standing by the window. She held the bluebells in her arms. He did not seem to notice her, but went slowly across to his favourite chair, took off his coat, and sat for some time staring with a little frown at the opposite wall. Presently he leaned back.

“I’m tired,” he said.

She turned from the window, and moving quietly, as if he were asleep, she came towards his chair. On the rug at his feet she sat down. She began idly, but half contentedly, to arrange and re-arrange the bluebells in heaps upon the floor.

R
OSS AND DEMELZA WERE MARRIED ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JUNE, 1787. The Revd Mr. Odgers performed the ceremony, which took place very quietly in the presence only of the necessary number of witnesses. The register shows that the bride gave her age as eighteen, which was an anticipation of fact by three-quarters of a year. Ross was twenty-seven.

His decision to marry her was taken within two days of their first sleeping together. It was not that he loved her but that such a course was the obvious way out. If one overlooked her beginnings she was a not unsuitable match for an impoverished farmer squire. She had already proved her worth about the house and farm, none better, and she had grown into his life in a way he had hardly realized.

With his ancient name, he could of course have gone into society and paid violent court to some daughter of the new rich and have settled down to a life of comfortable boredom on the marriage dowry. But he couldn’t see such an adventure seriously. He realized with a sense of half-bitter amusement that this marriage would finally damn him in the eyes of his own class. For while the man who slept with his kitchenmaid only aroused sly gossip, the man who married her made himself personally unacceptable in their sight.

He did not go to dinner at Trenwith as he had promised. He met Francis by design at Grambler the week before the wedding and told him the news. Francis seemed relieved rather than shocked; perhaps he had always lived with an underlying fear that his cousin would one day cast off the skin of civilization and come and take Elizabeth by force. Ross was a little gratified at this unhostile reception of the news and forgot almost until they were separating his promise to Elizabeth. He did, however, then fulfill it, and they parted in a less friendly manner than they might have done.

Out of his old friendship for Verity, Ross would much have liked her to be at the wedding, but he learned from Francis that the doctor had ordered her a fortnight in bed. So Ross held back his letter of invitation and instead sent her a longer one explaining the circumstances and inviting her to come and stay with them when she was better. Verity knew Demelza by sight, but had not seen her for the better part of two years, and Ross thought she would be unable to imagine what germ of senile decay had got into his brain.

If this were so, she did not say as much in her letter of reply.

Dearest Ross,

Thank you for writing me so fully and explaining about your marriage. I am the last one to be able to criticize your attachment. But I should like to be the first to wish you the happiness I pray will be yours. When I am well and Papa is better, I will come and see you both.

Love,

Verity

The visit to Sawle Church changed more than the name of the one-time kitchenmaid. Jud and Prudie were inclined to take it badly at first, resenting, so far as they dared show it, the fact that the child who had come here as a waif and stray, infinitely beneath themselves, should now be able to call herself their mistress. They might have sulked for a long time if it had been anybody but Demelza. But in the end she talked them or hypnotized them into the view that she was in part their protegee and so her advancement reflected a certain glory on them. And after all, as Prudie remarked privately to Jud, it was better than having to take orders from some fudgy-faced baggage with drop curls.

Demelza did not see her father again that year. A few days after the banns were called she persuaded Ross to send Jud to Illuggan with a verbal message that they were to be married in a fortnight. Carne was down the mine when Jud arrived, so he was able only to deliver the message to a fat little woman in black. Thereafter silence fell. Demelza was nervous that her father might turn up and create a scene at the wedding, but all passed quietly. Tom Carne had accepted his defeat.

On the tenth of July a man called Jope Ishbel, one of the oldest and foxiest miners in the district, struck a lode of red copper at Wheal Leisure. A great amount of water came with the discovery, and all work was held up while
pumping gear was brought. The adit from the cliff face was making fair progress, but some time must pass before it could unwater the workings. All this water was looked on as a good sign by those who professed to know.

When news of the find was brought to Ross, he opened an anker of brandy and had big jugs of it carried up to the mine. There was great excitement, and from the mine they could see people climbing the ground behind Mellin Cottages a mile away and staring across to see what the noise was about.

The find could not have been more opportune, for the second meeting of the venturers was due in a week's time, and Ross knew that he must ask for a further fifty pounds from each of them. Jope Ishbel's strike armed him with tangible results, for even from the poor quality of the ore that Ishbel had brought to the surface they could expect to get several pounds a ton more than from ordinary copper ore. The margin of profit was widened. If the lode was a reasonably big one, it meant the certainty of a fair return.

He did not fail to point this out when the meeting took place in Mr. Pearce's overheated offices in Truro, and the general effect was such that further drafts were voted without demur.

This was the first time Ross had seen Mr. Treneglos since the great day at Mingoose when his son married Ruth Teague, and the old man went out of his way to be agreeable and complimentary. Over dinner they sat together, and Ross was afraid that an apology was impending for the breach of manners between old neighbours in his not having been invited to the wedding. He knew the fault did not lie with Treneglos and steered conversation away from the subject.

Mr. Renfrew caused an awkward moment by getting above himself in his cups and following up a toast to the happy pair by proposing that they should not forget the bridegroom in their midst.

There was a constrained silence, and then Mr. Pearce said:

“Indeed, yes. We must certainly not forget that.” And Dr Choake said: “That would be most remiss.” And Mr. Treneglos, who fortunately had caught the trend of the conversation, immediately got to his feet and said: “My privilege, gentlemen. My pleasure and privilege. Our good friend, damme, recently embarked upon matrimony him self. I give you the toast: Captain Poldark and his young bride. May they be very happy.”

Everyone rose and drank.

“Twould have looked bad if nobody’d mentioned it,” said Mr. Treneglos, not quite to himself as they sat down.

Ross seemed the least embarrassed of them all.