Once Demelza might have sighed for the disfigurements of a hillside and the south end of their pretty valley. The stream which ran beside the house was yellow with mud, and the bal girls worked almost on the fringes of her garden. But now she would have turned her flowerbeds into ditches to dig out the tin.
When they got home, Gimlett was waiting for them, tireless, friendly, anxious to please. He took Darkie and his presents, it seemed, with equal gratitude. Presently he disappeared into the rear of the house. Demelza ran upstairs to see for Jeremy. He was asleep, looking more angelic, more frail than ever. Despite his vastly improved health, he clung to that look. He had a round, graceful head, dark hair, a slender neck, a wide, mobile mouth, a Poldark mouth. There was a look of distinction about him even so early – and an air of restlessness. Only in sleep was his energy dormant.
Hearing a movement, Demelza looked up and saw that Ross had followed her. He so seldom came in here now. He smiled without looking at her, nodded down.
‘He has survived without you.’
‘So it seems.’
‘I wonder Jane has had no children of her own. We must get more help in the house now. Do you think Jinny would come back?’
‘We could perhaps find someone younger. I only need another young girl.’
‘Two would be better. You will have to grow used to giving orders instead of doing things yourself.’
She did not reply, and he thought perhaps his words had sounded like criticism. ‘Soon, if the prosperity lasts, I want the library rebuilt. It has never been anything but a barn of a room. We need an extra room downstairs; and if that were in a proper state, it would transform the house.’
‘At least we might fill in the cache.’
He smiled. ‘I think it should be left as a warning.’
Jeremy turned over and breathed uneasily in his sleep.
‘We should move,’ he said, ‘or we’ll wake him.’
‘Oh, no, that is past. He takes no notice of anything now.’
‘Perhaps he’s easier for my not being in the room.’
She looked up, half veiling her look with a swift glance away. ‘I do not suppose that.’
‘Some say children are jealous of their fathers. Jeremy has had little to be jealous of, of late.’
Demelza said: ‘I think perhaps that’s a subject we should sleep sounder for not discussing.’
There was silence for a few seconds. A shade experimentally, he put his hand on her shoulder. She did not move.
‘I intended to have bought him some building bricks,’ he said. ‘I knew there was something else.’
‘You’ll be able to get them in London now.’
‘Do you think you might come with me? Why not try? Jeremy is well enough with Jane.’
‘Me? . . . Oh, no. No, thank you, Ross. Not this time. Though next time gladly. I think you should meet Caroline alone.’
‘Why?’
‘It is a feeling I have.’
‘You could stay at the inn while I went to see her.’
‘No. This time I’d rather not.’
He had moved a little closer to her. ‘Demelza.’
‘Yes.’
‘There have been a lot of unhappy things between us these last months. Not said – but felt. I should be glad to think they are all forgotten.’
‘Of course, Ross. I feel nothing now.’
He put his face against her hair. ‘It is not nothing that I want you to feel.’
‘I’m sorry . . .’
They stayed thus for a moment more. Although unable to feel any tautness within her, he knew it was there. He had not removed it, he had not defeated it. He knew he could take her if he wanted, and her resistance would only be token; yet the token was there, and while it existed the reconciliation would be ashes.
He kissed her abruptly on the hair, released her, went across to the north window, and pulled aside the curtain to look out. Her eyes followed him.
He said: ‘Perhaps you’re right; we don’t ever regain what we lightly lose.’
‘I don’t think ’twas lightly lost on either side.’
‘But lost.’
‘Well . . .’
It was so dark outside he could hardly see the sea.
‘And lost to no good purpose,’ he said, half speaking to himself.
‘That I don’t know.’
‘Oh, there was a purpose, a good purpose served, if you come to think of it; though perhaps you would not agree. I don’t know . . . I have not wanted to talk of it.’
She stood by the cot watching him.
‘Perhaps sometime it will have to be talked of,’ he said, ‘if we are ever to straighten this out between us. Yet I have a prejudice, a feeling that it is a bad thing . . .’
‘What is a bad thing, Ross?’
He turned from the window, let the curtain fall from his long fingers, said wryly: ‘I think there is an etiquette even in adultery, and I cannot bring myself to discuss one woman with another, even when the second happens to be my wife.’
‘You don’t suppose I should want to hear it?’
‘Yet it might not displease you.’
‘I can’t see how it would be likely to please me.’
‘Then you are less perceptive than I suppose.’
‘’Tis very likely.’
There was another pause. Ross came slowly back from the window and after a moment’s hesitation bent and kissed her on the lips.
‘Yes, it is very likely,’ he said, and went out.
She did not move for a time. Jeremy’s breathing was a little more hurried now, as if he were dreaming. She turned him over expertly, firmly; as if knowing the touch of the familiar hand, he settled more comfortably after it.
She straightened up and went to the window herself. There were movements of warmth in her heart where she had not expected to have feeling again.
Chapter Four
The next day Dwight received news of his appointment. He was to be surgeon of the frigate HMS Travail, fitting out at Plymouth, and was to join her on December 20.
Ross said nothing of his intention to go and see Caroline, but he told Dwight of his discovery about the money. Dwight’s face flushed up. He had known nothing of it, he said, and hid his other feelings behind a mask of apology for having spoken so freely of his friend’s business affairs. Ross told him he had never been so much obliged to anyone for talking freely of his business affairs.
He left for London on the following day, dining at St Austell and spending the night at Liskeard. They crossed the ferry at Plymouth and lay the next night at Ashburton. Friday they dined at Exeter and slept at Bridgewater, and Saturday saw them eating at Bath and sleeping in Marlborough. The last day was a full one, for they were up early making a stage before breakfast. They dined at Maidenhead and reached London just before ten at night. The ground was snow-covered as they neared the city.
It was snowing the following day when Ross set out to find Caroline. Her address was No. 5 Hatton Garden, which he knew to be a superior residential district; but he had to ask many times on the way. The streets were more crowded than he remembered them, and people seemed to have no manners, pushing and thrusting each other aside to get along more quickly or to gain some temporary advantage. Twice he saw people knocked into the gutter. And there were enough in the gutter to begin: blind beggars, tattered ex-soldiers short of an arm or a leg, children with sore eyes, bent crones holding out acquisitive claws. Snow had made things worse, for there were a half-dozen pitched battles in progress between apprentices of one sort and another, and often the women joined in. In the middle of one fight a carriage came along, and suddenly everyone turned on it so that the coachman was nearly pelted off his seat. Whoever was inside knew better than to open a window to protest.
Ross bought a daily paper, but it was filled more with quacks’ advertisements than news of the war. Anyway, since the execution of Marie Antoinette, people had become inured to the bloodstained horrors of Paris. The French
had gone mad, that was plain. And England was at war. That was the main thing. What fighting there had been had been disappointing and inconclusive, almost as if the combatants hadn’t yet got their hearts in it. But even that was a relief to overburdened feelings. More would follow. England was at war. Eventually the insanity would be purged. It was only a matter of time now.
A liveried manservant opened the door of the house when he rang, stared petulantly at Ross’s clothes, which he had not had time or patience to renew since his change of fortunes. ‘Miss Penvenen?’ said the manservant, after being stared down. He would inquire. A considerable wait. He came back. Miss Penvenen was in and would see Mr Poldark. Ross was shown into a fine, rather empty, rather cold room overlooking the street. The manservant’s heels clicked on the polished inlaid floor.
His eyes newly alive to decorations and furniture, he took note of the elegant walnut writing bureau with the claw feet; the inset oval-shaped cupboards displaying fine china on either side of the great marble mantelpiece. The panelling of the room was of carved pine, and there were few pictures but many miniatures and silhouettes. A fire burned in the grate but did not seem to warm the larger spaces of the room. Downstairs somewhere children were laughing.
The door opened and Caroline came in.
‘Why, Captain Poldark, I could not believe it was you! But the name was so unusual. London is honoured. I have seen no flags out for your visit.’
‘They don’t put flags out when I come to a place,’ Ross said, bending over her hand. ‘They put them out when I go.’
He was quite shocked by the change in her. She had gone so much thinner and lost much of her beauty. She was a person whose looks would always be volatile, but just now they were at a low ebb. She wore a dress of a fashion Ross had never seen before, with the waist under the armpits and falling straight to the floor. It had short puff sleeves and a gold cord and tassel.
‘You should have told me of your visit. How long shall you be staying?’
‘Two or three days. I couldn’t have forewarned you, for I didn’t know of it myself until a few days ago.’
‘Urgent business? You’ll have sherry and biscuits? It’s nearly time. The apothecary tells me I must have sherry every two hours, and I don’t find it an unpleasurable remedy.’
He watched her sit and then took a seat himself at the other side of the fireplace while she talked on rather aimlessly and at some length. She was ill at ease in his presence.
‘You’ve been ill, Miss Penvenen?’
‘I am a little out of sorts, and the heat of a London summer took my energy. How is your wife?’
‘Very well, thank you. We are all very well. And the mine has come into paying country, so that I am making money for the first time in my life. And all thanks to you.’
She looked quite convincingly surprised; then to give herself an escape from his heavy-lidded look, she turned and pulled the bell tassel beside her.
‘I drew it out of Pascoe last week,’ he said. ‘Afterwards he was a thought repentant of his confidences, but I gave him your full absolution.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Yes, indeed. So it would be a pity to waste time denying the indictment. You are convicted, Miss Penvenen, of wilfully saving three people from the worst disaster that bankruptcy can bring. You had no possible excuse for doing it, no ties of friendship or relationship, and it is a very grave charge.’
‘And what’s the sentence?’
‘To receive my gratitude for a selfless, kind, and Christian act that I shall never be able to understand and shall never forget.’
The colour came to her face, perhaps more at his tone than what he had said. She laughed and turned towards the door, glad before it opened of the interruption. When the sherry was on a table between them and the servant had left again, she said:
‘You make altogether too much of it, Captain Poldark.’
‘Ross,’ he said. ‘Christian names for a Christian act.’
‘Captain Ross, then. You make far too much of it. I have always been used to indulging my whims, and that was such a one. Sherry?’
‘Thank you. I disagree as to making much of it. You should have been in my shoes.’
‘But I was not. And don’t forget, spinsters are unpredictable at the best of times. I might well have endowed a sailor’s home instead, or indeed turned against you as easily—’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘In any case, the money is nothing to me. A few hundred pounds—’
‘Dwight tells me your personal fortune is not large.’
At that she was silent a moment, took up a biscuit, and chewed it slowly. ‘You have answers all ways. I see there is nothing for it but to accept the halo you offer me.’ She put up her hand to her hair. ‘I imagine it would look comic on a redhead, and in any case I shall surely tip it off at the first fence. But if it pleases you, Captain Ross, then don’t let me interfere with any arrangements you wish to make. The canonisation could be arranged for tomorrow at eleven.’
Ross sipped his sherry. ‘My journey took me five days. I have been thinking a good deal about you on the way – Caroline.’
‘I pray not for the whole five days. I do remember my ears burning once, but I thought it was the fever back.’
‘I came to tell you – one thing I came to tell you is that I shall be able to repay the whole of the money very soon. I have with me a draft on Pascoe’s bank for £280, which is your interest for the year. But the capital should also be forthcoming within a few months.’
‘There you are, you see! You elevate me merely for a shrewd stroke of business. I don’t believe my uncles earned me anything near twenty per cent when the money was in their charge.’
‘You talk of being a spinster, but I believe you’re not to remain so very much longer. I heard of your engagement just before I left – to a Lord Coniston, is it?’
‘Does that affect the safety of my investment?’
‘No. It only points my interest in your future.’
She rose and poured him another glass of sherry. Her arm was freckled along its outer curve.
‘You were not about to make me an offer yourself, Captain Ross?’
He smiled. ‘I’m not a Muslim. And have seldom regretted it before . . .’
She curtsied slightly before she sat down. ‘Thank you for being so gracious about it. But your compliments come a trifle early. I’m not promised to Walter.’
‘Not? You mean you are not promised to Lord Coniston?’
‘You look astonished. Does it matter – I mean, to you?’
‘Well, yes . . .’
‘He has offered himself once or twice, the last time as recently as last month. He’s personable enough, but I don’t think I shall marry him.’
Ross stared at his wine. Her reply had taken him completely by surprise. All he had planned to say to her – and all he had planned not to say to her – had been built on this belief. He felt as if his attitude of mind suddenly needed rethinking, and he had only a moment or so in which to do it.
‘Your uncle in Cornwall told someone I know that you had definitely promised to marry this man.’
‘My Aunt Sarah – whom I live with here – is always premature. He’s eligible and he had asked me; that was enough for her. But why does it upset you?’
‘If it’s not an impertinence, may I ask why you don’t intend to accept?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, the usual capriciousness of my sex.’
‘And you do not love him.’
‘As you say. I do not love him.’
‘In fact it’s probable that you are still in love with Dwight Enys.’
She took another biscuit. ‘Could the impertinence be in that question and not in the other?’
‘You know he has joined the Navy?’
She looked up quickly. ‘What, Dwight? No, I did not.’ For the first time he had got under her guard.
‘He’s joining his ship at Plymouth this week. There has been no
settling him in Cornwall since you left.’
‘How very unwise of him! I should have thought he would have behaved with the utmost common sense.’
‘One does not always behave very sensibly when one loves a person as he loves you.’
‘Did you really come to thank me for the money or to act as his ambassador?’
‘He knows nothing of this. But he told Demelza last week that it was because of you he was leaving us.’
‘And what am I supposed to do, go into a decline because of that? Would it suit you if I gracefully fretted away?’
‘It would suit me if you told me why you left Cornwall when he failed to meet you that night. Oh, not that. I can understand that very well. Why you didn’t later accept his very reasonable explanation.’
She got up and went to the window. ‘What business is it of yours?’
‘It has suddenly become my business. I’ve long had a sincere affection for Dwight. I’m now under the deepest obligation to you. I want to know.’
‘It doesn’t give you the least excuse to interfere.’ He came up beside her. ‘I want to know, Caroline.’ Two young girls were just coming out of the house in the charge of an older woman, a governess. One girl glanced up at the window and saw Caroline and waved. She raised a hand in return.
‘How is your cousin-in-law, Elizabeth Poldark?’ ‘She’s married again. She married George Warleggan.’ ‘Oh . . . That does surprise me. Are they living at Trenwith?’
‘Yes. On my doorstep.’ ‘That will not be welcome to you.’ ‘It is not welcome to me.’ ‘And your mine? It’s really paying?’ ‘We can’t compute yet what the returns will be.’ ‘My uncle has been ill. Do you know if he’s better?’ ‘At the moment, yes.’
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