Ross Poldark

by Winston Graham

  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.

  BOOK THREE

  JUNE—DECEMBER 1787

  CHAPTER ONE

  1

  ROSS 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.

  2

  She had already grown into his life. That was what he thought. What he meant was that she had grown into the life of the house, seeing to his needs eagerly but without fuss, a good servant and an agreeable companion.

  Under the new arrangement this didn’t much alter. Legally an equal, she remained in fact his inferior. She did what he said, no less eagerly, no less unquestioningly, and with a radiant good will to illuminate it all. If Ross had not wished to marry her, she would not have fretted for something else; but his decision to make the union legal and permanent, his honouring her with his name, was a sort of golden crown to set upon her happiness. Those few bad moments when Elizabeth called were almost forgotten and altogether discarded.

  And now she was growing into his life in a different way. There was no going back for him, even if he had wished it, which he found he did not. There was now no
mistaking that he found her desirable: Events had proved it to be no delusion of a single summer night. But he was not yet at all sure how far it was she personally who was desirable to him, how far it was the natural needs of a man that she as a woman met.

  She did not seem to be troubled with any heart searchings of her own. If she had grown and developed quickly before, now her personality flowered overnight.

  When a person is as happy as she was that summer, it is hard for others to be unaffected, and after a time the atmosphere she created began to have its effect on all in the house.

  The additional freedoms of marriage came to her slowly. Her first attempt in this direction was a mild suggestion to Ross that some day it would be a good thing to have the mine office moved from the library, as the men walked across her flower beds in their big boots. No one was more surprised than she when a week later she saw a file of men carrying the mine papers up to one of the wooden sheds on the cliff.

  Even then weeks passed before she could bring herself to steal into the library without the old sense of guilt. And it needed all the hardihood in the world to sit there trying to conjure tunes out of the derelict spinet when anyone was within hearing.

  But her vitality was so abundant that gradually it overcame the barriers which custom and subservience had set up. She began to strum more openly and to sing low-voiced chants of her own devising. One day she rode in with Ross and brought back a few broad-sheets of verse which she learned by heart and then hummed to her own tunes at the spinet, trying to fit in sounds where they sounded right.

  As if to collaborate with Demelza's happiness, the summer was the warmest for years, with long weeks of bright quiet weather and rare full days of rain. After the epidemics of the winter, the fine clean weather was welcome to all, and the level at which many families spent the summer seemed like plenty compared with what had gone before.

  Work on Wheal Leisure was going slowly but well. With the adit making progress towards the workings, every attempt was made to avoid the heavy cost of a pumping engine. Horse whims were devised one beside another and the water thus raised was ingeniously dammed in a hollow and released down a teat to turn a water wheel, which itself worked a pump to raise more water. Copper was being mined now. Soon there would be enough to send a consignment into Truro for one of the ticketings.

  3

  She had already grown into his life, he thought.

  Often now he wished he could separate the two Demelzas who had become a part of him. There was a matter-of-fact, daytime Demelza with whom he worked and from whom for a year or more he had derived certain definite pleasures of companionship. This one he had grown to like and to trust—to be liked and trusted by her. Half servant, half sister, comradely and obedient, the direct and calculable descendant of last year and the year before. Demelza learning to read, Demelza fetching wood for the fire, Demelza shopping with him and digging the garden and never still about her tasks.

  But the second was still a stranger. Although he was husband and master of them both, this one was incalculable with the enigma of her pretty candlelit face and fresh young body—all for his carnal satisfaction and increasing pleasure. In the first days he had held this one in a certain contempt. But events had moved beyond that. Contempt had gone—but the stranger was still left.

  Two not-quite-distinct persons, the stranger and the friend. It was unsettling in the day, in moments of routine and casual encounter, to get some sudden reminder of the young woman who could somehow call herself into being at will, whom he took and owned, yet never truly possessed. Still more odd was it in the night to see sometimes peering from the drugged dark eyes of this stranger the friendly untidy girl who had helped him with the horses or cut out his supper. At such times he was perturbed and not quite happy, as if he found himself trampling on something that was good in its own right.

  He wished he could separate these two. He felt he would be happier if he could separate them entirely. But as the weeks passed it seemed that the reverse of what he wanted was taking place. The two entities were becoming less distinct.

  It was not until the first week of August that a fusion of the two occurred.

  CHAPTER TWO

  PILCHARDS HAD COME LATE TO THE COAST THAT YEAR. THE DELAY HAD CAUSED anxiety, for not only did the livelihood of many people depend on the arrival of the fish but virtually in these times their existence. In the Scillies and the extreme south, the trade was already in full swing, and there were always wiseacres and pessimists who were ready to predict that the shoals would miss the northern shores of the county this year and go across to Ireland instead.

  A sigh of relief greeted the news that a catch had been made at St. Ives, but the first shoal was not sighted off Sawle until the afternoon of the sixth of August.

  A huer, watching from the cliff, as he had been watching for weeks, spotted the familiar dark red tinge far out to sea, and the cry he let out through his old tin trumpet inspirited the village. The seining boats instantly put out, seven men to each of the leading boats, four to the follower.

  Towards evening it was known that both teams had made catches much above the average, and the news spread with great speed. Men working on the harvest at once downed tools and hurried to the village, followed by every free person from Grambler and many of the miners as they came off core.

  Jud had been into Grambler that afternoon and came back with the news to Demelza, who told Ross over their evening meal.

  “I’m that glad,” she said. “All Sawle’ve been wearing faces down to their chins. Twill be a rare relief; and I hear it is a handsome catch.”

  Ross's eyes followed her as she rose from the table and went to trim the wicks of the candles before they were lighted. He had been at the mine all day and had enjoyed his supper in the shadowy parlour with the evening stealing into and about the room. There was no real difference between now and that evening two months ago when he had come home defeated and it had all begun. Jim Carter was still in prison. There was no real change in the futility of his own life and efforts.

  “Demelza,” he said.

  “Um?”

  “It is low tide at eleven,” he said. “And the moon's up. What if we rowed round to Sawle and watched them putting down the tuck net.”

  “Ross, that would be lovely!”

  “Shall we take Jud to help row us?” This to tease.

  “No, no, let us go, just the two of us! Let us go alone. You and I, Ross.” She was almost dancing before his chair. “I will row. I am as strong as Jud any day. We’ll go an’ watch, just the two of us alone.”

  He laughed. “You’d think it was a ball I’d invited you to. D’you think I can’t row you that far myself?”

  “When shall we start?”

  “In an hour.”

  “Good, good, good. I’ll make ready something to eat an’ brandy in a flask, lest it be cold sitting, an’—an’ a rug for me, and a basket for some fish.” She fairly ran from the room.

  They set off for Nampara Cove shortly after nine. It was a warm still evening with the three-quarter moon already high. In Nampara Cove they dragged their small boat from the cave where it was kept, across the pale firm sand to the sea's edge. Demelza got in and Ross pushed the boat through the fringe of whispering surf and jumped in as it floated.

  The sea was very calm tonight and the light craft was quite steady as he pulled towards the open sea. Demelza sat in the stern and watched Ross and looked about her and dipped a hand over the gunnel to feel the water trickling between her fingers. She was wearing a scarlet kerchief about her hair and a warm skin coat which had belonged to Ross as a boy and now just fitted her.

  They skirted the high bleak cliffs between Nampara Cove and Sawle Bay, and the jutting rocks stood in sharp silhouette against the moonlit sky. The water sucked and slithered about the base of the cliffs. They passed two inlets which were inaccessible except by boat at any tide, being surrounded by steep cliffs. All this was as familiar to Ross as the shape of his ow
n hand, but Demelza had never seen it. She had only once been out in a boat before. They passed the Queen Rock, where a number of good ships had come to grief, and then rounded a promontory into Sawle Bay and came on the first fishers.

  They had let down the seine—net a fine strong mesh of great length, with corks on the upper side and lead on the lower—some distance past the promontory and about half a mile from the shore. With this great net the seiners had enclosed about two acres of water and, they hoped, many fish. There was always the possibility, of course, that they had been wrongly directed by the man on the cliffs who alone could see the movement of the shoal, or that some flaw on the sea bed should have prevented the net from falling cleanly and so allowed the fish to slip away. But short of such accidents there was every hope of a good catch. And although in calm weather it might be possible to keep the net in position by means of grapnels for ten days or a fortnight, no one had the least intention of relying on good weather a minute longer than they had to.

  And tonight there was a moon.

  As low tide approached the boat known as the follower and carrying the tuck net was rowed cautiously into the enclosed area marked by the bobbing corks supporting the great stop seine. The boat was rowed round within the area while the tuck net was lowered and secured at various points. This done, they began to haul in the tuck net again.

  It was at this crucial stage that Ross and Demelza came closely on the scene. They were not the only spectators. Every boat that would float and every human being that could sit in one had come out from Sawle to watch. And those who had no craft or were too infirm stood on the shelving beach and shouted advice or encouragement. There were lights and lanterns in the cottages of Sawle and all along the shingle bar and moving up and down on the blue-white waters of the cove. The moon lit up the scene with an unreal twilight.