All the same, thought Dwight, there might have been love and youth between them; and even if the glow lasted only a short time, it was not, in this drab world, a thing to be lightly sacrificed. He knew that.
‘We reckon,’ said Charlie, ‘t’build on another room next year, so’s Lottie an’ May can sleep to theirselves. Then Rosina and me, if mebbe we get a family increase, can have things fitty and proper, like.’
Dwight glanced round the room. He was not an observant man in the ordinary way of things, and the slow changes which had taken place inside this cottage during the last eighteen months were suddenly apprehended by him as if they were the work of recent weeks. The new curtains, the good earthenware cups, the matting at the door, the candles in suitable sticks, the glass in the window. He looked at Kempthorne, and Charlie, who by some instinct had been driven to look at him, quickly lowered his eyes.
‘I hope you’ll be very happy,’ Dwight said.
‘And we hope you’ll come to our wedding,’ said Charlie quickly. ‘Don’t us, Rosina? Why, all we have we owe to surgeon. Rosina’s lipsy leg cured. And me with my consumptives. If it edn been for that, I should never be living a decent life and making money from my sail-making.’
‘And now Lottie on the mend,’ said Mrs Hoblyn.
‘When do you expect to have your wedding?’ Dwight asked.
‘Next month, sur. Banns aren’t called yet, and ’twill take a little time for to get things ready. Lottie’ll be out an’ about ’fore then.’
‘Oh, yes, she’ll be out and about before then.’ If the miracle happened and no one else caught it. Charlie was still watching him. Charlie was a mystery: good-natured, friendly as a dog, always working, always smiling, always grateful for what you did. He never allowed anyone to forget, in Dwight’s hearing, that he owed his good health to the surgeon. Yet Dwight, more especially of late months, was not quite comfortable in his presence. In a crisis he felt he would sooner trust the slow scowl of Jacka Hoblyn than the ready show of Charlie Kempthorne’s yellow teeth.
On his arrival home he did not see Bone about; and his visitor’s horse was tethered round the side of the house, so that he walked into the parlour unsuspecting.
She was standing by the window, tall and straight as a lance, and she turned at once smiling at him.
‘Caroline . . . Is something the matter?’
‘Everything is the matter. I have surprised your secret life! “From Rosina, with love.” Is that how your patients address you?’
She handed him the scarf that Rosina had made for him, to which the printed note was still pinned. He accepted it but put it over the back of a chair, took her hands.
‘You should have sent a message, my love. Have you been allowed out without your faithful groom?’
‘No, I gave him the slip. I mustn’t stay long.’
‘It’s more than good to see you. Let me look at you. Always when you are away from me . . .’
‘There is a complication to report, and I came to report it. Uncle Ray has advanced our departure for London by one week. He now proposes to leave Killewarren on the third of February.’
He stared at her. ‘We can put forward our own going by a couple of days, then. That’s all. It will mean a slight arrangement, but we can leave on the first.’
‘Have you heard again from Paul Hardwicke?’
‘Yes. He thinks there will be a clear opening in the town when Dr Marquis retires. Until then it should not be difficult, he says, to find full occupation in temporary work. He counsels against my setting up on my own.’
‘No doubt there is a certain cliquishness among the apothecaries. Dwight, I think it would be a good thing if we fixed our going for the second. If I am supposed to be leaving for London on the morning of the third, it will make my packing that much easier. Instead of escaping with a bundle through a top window in the approved fashion, I can get my trunks downstairs and safely stowed in the coach.’
‘Do you still very much insist on going in – your own coach?’
‘Of course. Why are you so much against it? Because it looks as if I am running away with you?’
He frowned uncomfortably. ‘Not altogether. But I – well I have a feeling for providing the means of travel. It’s going to be a moot point with us many times in the future, no doubt; I shall have to accustom myself to having a wife with a will and money of her own—’
‘Especially a will.’
‘ – but in the first instance I should have better preferred us to travel by my arrangement and at my expense. I admit there is no logic to it.’ He smiled. ‘You have the coach – why shouldn’t it be used? But—’
‘Why not indeed? Once we have left Cornwall no one is to know it is not your coach. I shall certainly not say any different.’
Bone could be heard outside, raking the gravel path near the front door. The interview could not last much longer, and they talked on at an accelerated pace. This meeting might be their last before they met to be married, but he would not kiss her.
‘I care nothing for poxes, small, large, or cow,’ said Caroline. ‘But I am bitterly jealous of your Rosina – still Hoblyn by name if no longer hobbling by nature. A nice scarf, if a thought coarse for a gentleman. I chanced to see her only last week when I happened to be in Sawle. Pretty enough, I grant you. I hope you will not jilt me, dear.’
‘I think I am a little sensitive to such jokes,’ said Dwight, taking the scarf from her again, ‘and therefore hope you’ll not make them. If there is any jilting, it will be on your side, and you know it. I shall not rest easy until you wear a ring on your finger and I have put it there.’
‘So long as it is not a ring through my nose, you may put it there as soon as you can.’
She began to pull on her gloves. He had gone over to a side table, a trifle put out by what she had said although he tried not to be. She followed him with her eyes, which were a little doubting under their mockery.
‘You do not regret making this move, Dwight?’
He turned at once. ‘Heavens, no! How could I regret it?’
‘Often since we decided to go I have noticed a discomfort in you, an unease, call it what you wish.’ She threw back her hair to tie her own scarf. ‘Is it still against your principles?’
‘No, nor ever was. Believe me, please.’ He stared at her and then half laughed himself. ‘You’re incorrigible, Caroline. For a moment I believed you were serious. You must rate me for having so literal a mind.’
‘I think,’ said Caroline acutely, ‘that you would not have taken it seriously if it had not been a serious consideration in your thoughts.’
‘Utter nonsense. I could shake you.’ He took her by the elbows but only held her firm. ‘Caroline, look at me. I love you. Does that mean anything to you? Does it mean anything at all?’
‘Oh, yes, quite a certain amount, I assure you.’
‘That’s an admission anyhow. Then perhaps you’ll not goad me with these strange doubts which you put into my mind ready-made. It’s very mischievous of you – and a little unfair. We are utterly agreed as to the end – how could I have second thoughts as to that? – and as to the method, what doubts I had I voiced long since and have now forgotten.’
She put her gloved fingers up to his stock, patted it, then allowed her hand to travel affectionately down the line of his cheek.
‘I’m sorry if I plague you so grievously. It is only that sometimes I wonder when the “end in view” has become a commonplace, sitting at your fireside and sharing your bed and never absent from your table, I wonder whether then you will not perhaps sigh for your Cornish patients and your lost integrity.’
‘Can I say more than no? And why should the doubts be all on your side? What of you, throwing away thirty or forty thousand pounds for a down-at-heel physician? When the first excitement’s failed and the novelty’s over and it means living to an economy you’ve never been used to . . . not able to keep up with the rich people of Bath, hunting to a restricted purse, dres
sing and entertaining at the same rate.’
‘In the first place, as you know, I do not suppose I am throwing away thirty or forty thousand pounds, not if we arrange to quarrel at a distance and leave loopholes for reconciliation. My uncles bark worse than they bite, and they have no one else to leave their money to except a hatch of nephews and nieces who’re already well provided for. But if they do remain estranged and will their money to the Astronomical Society, I shall certainly not complain and shall think the exchange a fair one. I intend to live my life in my own way and shall not be bribed by them into remaining their domestic tabby. It will do me good, Dwight, to stand on my own feet, and I want you to help me . . .’
‘I’ll help you, my darling,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps we shall have to help each other.’
Chapter Eight
A half-hour’s conversation might be all Ross needed with Mark Daniel; but the arrangements for such a conversation, and its venue on one of a group of wind-swept islands well out in the Atlantic in mid-winter, needed a margin on either side to allow for delays. Ross estimated he would be away a week.
A message had arrived from Mark that he was willing to come. Ross had suggested the twenty-ninth of January as an approximate date, because Trencrom had said the One and All would leave on the twenty-eighth and they could drop him off at St Mary’s the following day and pick him up on their return. Mark had agreed to the twenty-ninth, but, with his own journey in an Irish ketch even more dependent on wind and weather than Ross’s, he might well be days early or late.
With such news Ross decided to risk his last £75 on the purchase of coal. What had seemed a useless gesture now looked a fair business risk.
As the month neared its end political crisis again overshadowed the personal worries of men. The long-drawn trial of Louis the Sixteenth had ended in a sentence of death. There was still chance of a reprieve, but few really believed it would come about. The Convention could hardly retract now. Changes took place in England overnight. The noisy Jacobin clubs silently closed their doors. Arguments which had gone on for years in taproom and in coffee shop came to an end. Men waited. Some went home and looked out old fowling pieces and rubbed up relics of earlier wars.
On the twenty-fourth it was known that the execution had been carried out. That settled it. Few people in England had much admiration for Louis beyond the manner of his dying; and it was less than one hundred and fifty years since they had cut off the head of their own king; but sentiment does not derive from logic. Theatres closed, crowds demonstrated outside the Palace. The French ambassador was given his papers. Now it was only a question of time.
It was in this atmosphere that Ross took leave of Demelza on Sunday the twenty-seventh and made his way by easy stages to St Ives, where the One and All had been undergoing repairs. Her crew, mainly St Ann’s men, had found their own way down the coast in ones and twos; and soon after six on the following morning the seventy-ton cutter slipped out on the flood tide. A thin layer of powdered frost lay on her decks and did not melt until the sun rose. It seemed to Ross, standing in the bows with the small waves lipping at the yellow gunwales as she went about, that the sun came up directly above where Nampara would be. To feel a deck under his feet again after so long was unfamiliar and exciting.
To Demelza, rising early and knowing that if things went according to plan he would be at sea before dawn, the wintry day was charged with apprehension. No study of the battered old linen map, showing the Scilly Isles far out of reach of the French regicides, was a complete reassurance. As she went about her daily work, she blamed herself for getting into the habit of worrying. It was entirely outside her nature so far as her own safety went, but with Ross the tendency had grown on her. She must check it; she must correct it. One could only wish that he was a man less prone to attract trouble.
Determined to be practical, she hummed and sang at her work all morning, and in the afternoon for the first time for months opened her spinet and played a few airs. Once she had taken lessons from Mrs Kemp, but that was in the happy days of moderate prosperity when Julia was alive. She wished she could find time and interest to take it up again. Just playing a chord sometimes gave her exquisite pleasure, it struck down into her soul, not merely heard but felt, emotion of a new kind. In the middle of this exercise Dwight Enys arrived.
When she opened the door to him he said: ‘Was that you playing? I’m sorry, I’d no wish to disturb you. Is Ross in?’
His cloak was flecked with hail, though she had not noticed the shower.
‘No, Dwight. He’s . . . from home for a day or two. Won’t you come in?’
He took off his cloak and hat on the threshold and shook them. Over the hills the sky was as brown as an old blanket with the passing storm.
‘Did you walk?’ she asked as he followed her into the parlour.
‘Yes. I came about five because I thought Ross was usually back then. I should have come days ago but have been putting it off.’
‘You’ll take tea? It’s that cold. I wish ’twould snow and then the cold might come down.’
‘Do you know when Ross will be back?’
‘By Saturday, I believe. Is it something urgent?’
‘Oh . . . no, not urgent. Not in the ordinary sense.’ Hesitating, nonplussed, Dwight sat on the edge of a chair. ‘Jeremy is well?’
‘Yes. Can you hear him? He has Jinny Scoble’s two little boys in to play, and Jinny is minding them for me.’ She turned to watch the kettle, which was making some preliminary, intermittent noises. ‘I’ll go fetch the teapot. I forgot to bring it in.’
When she came back, he was staring out of the window. Dusk had come suddenly, as if the sides of the valley had closed in, and the firelight flickered and glowed across the room. She thought, I wonder if he’s safely there now; I wonder what the Scillies look like. She pictured them as high barren rocks. Dwight helped her to light the candles.
As the light flickered on her skin, she said: ‘I know Ross wouldn’t mind you knowing. You have all our other secrets, almost, so another makes small difference. He has gone with Mr Trencrom and is dropping off at the Scilly Islands to meet Mark Daniel, who has been found at last. The One and All will pick Ross up again and bring him home about Friday or Saturday, when they will – anchor off our cove.’
Friday was the first of February. Too late for him. ‘I hope Daniel has some good news for you.’
The candles had died down to tiny pearls of light, and these now began to melt the tallow and to burn lozenge-shape.
‘It seems a century since that night,’ said Dwight. ‘When you stood between us, you only, and Mark would have killed me. I’d have welcomed death, then, because I’d betrayed all the things I valued most and the people who trusted me.’
‘We were all overwrought that night. I’m glad nothing worse happened.’
In a distant part of the house there was a bump and after a pause a giggle of children’s laughter. Demelza, who had expected tears, relaxed again.
Dwight said: ‘The last thing I want is to remember that time. Because I came today to see Ross to tell him that I am leaving this district very shortly . . .’
She waited for him to go on. ‘Is it to do with Caroline?’
‘Yes. We’re to be married. But because of her uncle’s opposition it must take place in secret. So we’re leaving together late on Saturday night.’ He went on to explain why any other solution was impossible, why they could not live here, why he owed it to her to start afresh in a town where neither of them was known. Demelza listened in silence, and her silence to his overstrained perceptions was a criticism.
She said: ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it for your sake, Dwight; sorry for our own. ’Twill not be only in Sawle and Grambler that you’ll be missed. We shall feel – quite lost. And Jeremy.’
‘Thank you . . .’
The kettle now seemed to be bursting with steam and water, and the fire was spitting its protests. She made tea.
‘I’ve been in correspon
dence with a physician who studied with me in London. He’s ill and needs a change, so has agreed to come for six months on trial, with the prospect of staying. It will be far better than leaving no one at all. Wright is a good man, older than I am, but with similar views. I’m sure you will like him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course I know it will not be the same for a time. Without conceit I know that. And it means also something for me – on which I depend. I shall miss people – and of course chiefly you.’ He frowned out of the window to hide his feelings. ‘I want you to tell Ross, will you, how much I feel I owe to him, to you both, for your friendship. The whole thing has been a great grief to me.’
After a few moments Demelza brought him a cup of tea. ‘Marrying someone you love isn’t a time for grief, Dwight. The last thing Ross or I should want – or I’m sure that any of your friends would want . . . Worry about us and our ailments so much as you like until Saturday. But after Saturday you should forget all that and begin your new life as if Sawle and Grambler had never been. ’Twould not be unfeeling to do that. It would be good sense.’
When Dwight had gone, Demelza cleared away the tea things. Time Jeremy was thinking of bed. Dwight’s visit had left her lonelier than ever. The discussion had curiously skirted the character of the girl in the case. Ross had once predicted Caroline would wipe her feet on Dwight, but perhaps he had revised his opinion since then. Demelza knew Bath by repute. That it would suit Caroline was fairly clear. Whether Dwight would settle into the conventional pattern remained to be seen.
Strolling round the small bleak island of St Mary’s, Ross waited impatiently for some sign of the Irish ketch bearing Mark Daniel. So far in two days there had been none. The winds had been contrary, veering and backing between northwest and east. An active man, and with so much at stake in this meeting, he found the time unbearably slow. Three French crabbers put into the sheltered water between St Mary’s and Tresco on Tuesday when the weather was bad, but their crews did not come ashore.
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