Ross Poldark (46 page)

The first few minutes were trying for them all, but the trial passed. Happily both Demelza and the Trenwith house hold were on their best behaviour. Francis had a natural charm when he chose to exercise it, and Aunt Agatha, warmed by a tot of Jamaica rum and crowned with her second-best wig, was affable and coy. Elizabeth was smiling, her flower-like face more lovely for its delicate flush. Geoffrey Charles, aged three, came stumping forward in his velvet suit, to stand finger in mouth staring at the strangers.

Aunt Agatha caused some extra trouble at the outset by denying that she had ever been told of Ross's marriage and by demanding a full explanation. Then she wanted to know Demelza's maiden name.

“What?” she said. “Carkeek? Cardew? Carne? Carne, did you say? Where does she come from? Where do you come from, child?”

“Illuggan,” said Demelza.

“Where? Oh, that's near the Bassetts’ place, is it not? You’ll know Sir Francis. Intelligent young fellow, they say, but overconcerned with social problems.” Aunt Agatha stroked the whiskers on her chin. “Come here, bud. I don’t bite. How old are you?”

Demelza allowed her hand to be taken. “Eighteen.” She glanced at Ross.

“Hm. Nice age. Nice and sweet at that age.” Aunt Agatha also glanced at Ross, her small eyes wicked among their sheaf of wrinkles. “Know how old I am?”

Demelza shook her head.

“I’m ninety-one. Last Thursday sennight.”

“I didn’t know you were as old as that,” Francis said.

“It's not everything you know, my boy. Ninety-one last Thursday sennight. What d’you say to that, Ross?”

“Sweet at any age,” Ross said in her ear.

Aunt Agatha grinned with pleasure. “You was always a bad boy. Like your father. Five generations of Poldarks I’ve seen. Nay, six. There was old Grannie Trenwith. I remember her well. She was a Rowe. Great Presbyterians they was. Her father, Owen, was a friend of Cromwell's; they say he was one of the fifty-nine that signed King Charles's death paper. They lost all their land at the Restoration. I remember her well. She died when I was ten. She used to tell me stories of the Plague. Not as she was ever in it.”

“We had the Plague at Illuggan once, ma’am,” Demelza said.

“Then there was Anna-Maria, my mother, who became a Poldark. She was an only child. I was old when she died. Charles Vivian Poldark she married. He was a roamer. An invalid out of the Navy from the battle of La Hogue before ever he met Mama, and he but five and twenty. That's his portrait, bud. The one with the little beard.”

Demelza gazed.

“Then there was Claude Henry, my brother, who married Matilda Ellen Peter of Treviles. He died ten years before his mama. Vomiting and looseness was his trouble. That was your grandfather, Ross. You and Francis makes five, and little Geoffrey makes six. Six generations, and I’ve scarce been alive any time yet.”

Demelza was at last allowed her hand back, and passed on to greet the staring child. Geoffrey Charles was a plump little boy, his face so smooth that one could not imagine it ever having creased into a thoroughgoing smile. A hand some child, as might be expected with such parents.

Ross's own sight of Elizabeth after six months had not been quite as casual or as unemotional as he had hoped and expected. He had hoped to find himself immune, as if his marriage and love for Demelza were the inoculation against some fever of the blood and this a deliberate contact on his part to prove the cure. But Demelza, he found, was not an inoculation, though she might be a separate fever. He wondered, just at that first greeting, whether after all Demelza's impulse to refuse the invitation had not perhaps been wiser than his own.

Their meeting, Elizabeth's and Demelza's, left him with a sense of dissatisfaction; their manner towards each other was so outwardly friendly and so inwardly wary. He did not know if their greeting deceived anyone else, but it certainly didn’t deceive him. Naturalness just was not in it.

But Demelza and Verity had taken days to get on friendly terms. Women were like that: However charming taken singly, a first meeting with one of their own kind was an intuitive testing and searching.

Elizabeth had given them one of the best bedrooms, looking southwest towards the woods.

“ ’Tis a handsome house,” said Demelza, dropping her cloak from her shoulders. With the first ordeal over she felt better. “Never have I seen the like. ’Tis like a church, that hall. And this bedroom. Look at the birds on the curtains; like missel thrushes, only the specks are the wrong colour. But, Ross, all those pictures hanging down stairs. I should be afeared of them in the dark. Are they all of your family, Ross?”

“I have been told so.”

“It is more than I can understand that people should wish to have so many dead ’uns about them. When I am dead, Ross, I don’t want to be hung up to dry like last week's bed linen. I don’t want to stare down forever upon a lot of people I’ve never known at all, great-grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren. I’d much sooner be put away and forgot.”

“This is the second time today you’ve spoken of dying,” Ross said. “Do you feel unwell?”

“No, no; I am brave enough.”

“Then oblige me by keeping to some more agreeable subject. What's this box?”

“That?” said Demelza. “Oh, that is something. I asked Jud to bring it over with our night rails.”

“What is in it?”

“A dress.”

“For you?”

“Yes, Ross.”

“The riding habit you bought in Truro?”

“No, Ross, another. You would not like me to be shabby in front of all your great-grandmothers, would you?”

He laughed. “Is it a dress from the library you have adapted?”

“No… Verity and me bought this also in Truro at the same time.”

“Did she pay for it?”

“No, Ross. It came out of the money you give us for furnishings.”

“Deceit, bud. And you looking so innocent and guileless.”

“You are stealin’ Aunt Agatha's name for me.”

“I think I like it. But I am just finding the worm in the bud. Deceit and duplicity. Still, I’m glad Verity did not pay. Let me see it.”

“No, Ross.
No
, Ross!
No, Ross!
” Her voice rose to a shriek as she tried to prevent him from reaching the box. He got one hand to it, but she put her arms round his neck and hugged him to stop any further move. He lifted her up by the elbows and kissed her, then he smacked her twice on the seat and put her down.

“Where's your good behaviour, bud? They’ll think I’m beating you.”

“Which is the truth. Which is the truth.” She slipped away from him and danced back with the box held behind her.

“Go down now, please, Ross! You was not to know anything about it! Maybe I’ll not wear it, but I want to try it on and dinner is in an hour. Go down and talk to Aunt Agatha and count the whiskers on her chin.”

“We’re not attending a ball,” he said. “This is just a family party; no need to flig yourself up for it.”

“It is Christmas Eve. I asked Verity. She said it was right to change my clo’es.”

“Oh, have it as you please. But mind you’re ready by five. And,” he added as an afterthought, “don’t lace your stays too tight or you’ll be incommoded. They feed you well, and I know your appetite.”

With this he went out, and she was left to make her preparations alone.

She did not feel that she need heed Ross's final warning tonight at any rate. All day she had had recurring bouts of nausea. The Trenwith dinner was safe from her greed: all that was unsafe was the little she might force down. It would be too bad if she made a show of herself this evening. It would be tragic. She wondered if she had to get up from the table in a hurry where the nearest close-stool was.

She pulled her dress over her head, stepped out of her underskirt and stood for a moment in the small clothes Verity had lent her, staring at her reflection in the
lovely clear mirror of the dressing-table. She had never before in her life seen herself so clearly and so entirely. This reflection was not too shameful, but she wondered how she had had the brazenness to move about and dress with Ross in the room when she was wearing the underclothes of her own and Prudie's devising. She would never wear them again.

She had heard it whispered that many good-class town women wore white stockings and no drawers. What with hooped skirts it was disgusting, and they deserved to catch their death.

She shivered. But soon she would be unsightly, however dressed. At least, she expected so. It was a surprise to her that so far there had been no change. Every morning she took a piece of string with a knot tied in it and measured herself. But, unbelievably enough, she seemed so far to have lost half an inch. Perhaps the knot had slipped.

A village upbringing had left little out in teaching her the ordinary facts of getting and begetting; yet when it came to herself she found gaps in her knowledge. Her mother had borne six other children, but she remembered so little of what had happened before she was eight.

She must ask Verity. This was now the usual resort for all problems which baffled her. She must ask Verity. It didn’t occur to her that there were questions on which Verity might know less than herself.

D
OWNSTAIRS IN THE LARGE PARLOUR ROSS FOUND ONLY ELIZABETH AND Geoffrey Charles. They were sitting in front of the fire. Geoffrey Charles was on his mother's knee, and Elizabeth was reading him a story.

Ross listened to the cool, cultured voice; there was pleasure for him in that. But she looked up, saw who it was, and stopped.

“ ’Gain, Mummie. Tell it again.”

“In a little while, darling. I must have a rest. Here is your Uncle Ross, come to tell me a story for a change.”

“I know no stories except true ones,” Ross said. “And they are all sad.”

“Not all, surely,” said Elizabeth. “Your own must now be happy with so charming a wife.”

Ross hesitated, uncertain whether he wished to discuss Demelza even with Elizabeth.

“I’m very glad that you like her.”

“She's greatly changed since I saw her last, and that's not seven months ago, and I think she will change more yet. You must take her into society and bring her out.”

“And risk the snubs of women like Mrs. Teague? Thank you, I’m well enough as I am.”

“You’re too sensitive. Besides, she may want to go out herself. Women have the courage for that sort of thing, and she is yet so young.”

“It was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded her to come here.”

Elizabeth smiled down on her son's curly head. “That's understandable.”

“Why?”

“Oh… it was meeting the family, wasn’t it? And she is a little
gauche
yet. She would perhaps expect to find antagonisms.”

“Mummie, ’gain. ’Gain, Mummie.”

“Not yet. In a while.”

“Man's got a mark on his face, Mummie.”

“Hush, dear. You must not say such things.”

“But he has. He
has
, Mummie!”

“And I’ve washed it and washed it and it won’t come off,” Ross assured him.

Thus addressed, Geoffrey Charles fell utterly silent.

“Verity has become very fond of her,” Elizabeth said. “We must see more of you now, Ross, now that the ice is broken.”

“What of your own affairs?” Ross said. “Baby Geoffrey is thriving, I see that.”

Elizabeth put out her small slippered feet and allowed her son to slide from her lap to the floor. There he stood a second as if about to run off, but seeing Ross's eyes still on him was overcome with his new shyness and buried his face in his mother's skirt.

“Come, darling, don’t be foolish. This is Uncle Ross; like Uncle Warleggan only more so. He is your true and only uncle and you mustn’t be coy. Up, up, and say how d’you do.”

But Geoffrey Charles would not move his head.

She said: “I haven’t been too well in health, but we are all worried about my poor mother. She's greatly troubled with her eyes. Park the surgeon from Exeter is coming to examine her in the New Year. Dr. Choake and Dr. Pryce take a grave view of the disease.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They say it's a recurrent distemper of the eye. The treatment is most painful. They tie a silk kerchief about her throat and tighten it until she is nearly strangled and all the blood is forced into her head. Then they bleed her behind the ears. She has gone now to rest with her cousin at Bodmin. I am very worried.”

Ross made a face. “My father had no trust in physicians. I hope you’ll have good news.”

There was silence. Elizabeth bent and whispered in Geoffrey's ear. There was no response for a moment, then with a sudden, peculiarly sly glance at Ross, he turned and ran from the room.

Elizabeth's eyes followed him. “Geoffrey is at an awkward age,” she said. “He must be cured of his little whimsies.” But she spoke in an indulgent voice.

“And Francis?”

An expression he had never seen before flitted across her face.

“Francis? Oh, we get along, thank you, Ross.”

“The summer has gone so quick and I have intended to come and see you. Francis may have told you I spoke to him once.”

“You have your own concerns to tend now.”

“Not to the exclusion of all others.”