Demelza

by Winston Graham

  His keen eyes went around the room and instantly, irritatingly noticed the slip of paper folded under the spice jar on the table.

  “Is this it?”

  “No, Ross! You mustn’t look! Leave it be!” She ran across and they both reached it together, struggled, laughed, her fingers having somehow gotten inside his. The parchment tore down the middle, and they separated, each holding a piece.

  “Oh,” said Demelza. “Now we’ve spoiled it!”

  He was reading, “On the occasion of the day of national Majesty the King and the Mayor of Truro will hold—”

  “Stop! Stop!” she said. “My part comes in between. Begin again.”

  “‘On the occasion of the day of national—’”

  “‘Thanksgiving,’” she put in, “‘Set aside to celebrate the recovery to health of His—’ Now it’s your turn.”

  “‘Majesty the King, namely April the twenty-third next, the Lord—’”

  “‘Lieutenant of Cornwall, the High Sheriff, the Burgesses—’”

  “‘And the Mayor of Truro will hold a Grand Assembly and Ball at the Assembly Rooms—’”

  “‘Commencing at eight o’clock of that day, preceded by—’”

  “‘Bonfires and general rejoicings.’” He looked at his paper again. “‘Captain Poldark are invited.’”

  “‘And Mrs.’” she cried, “‘to attend. Captain and Mrs. Poldark are invited to attend.’”

  “It says nothing about that on my invitation,” he objected.

  “There! There!” She came up to him and fit the torn paper with his own piece. “‘And Mrs.’ See, we shall both go this time.”

  “Do we each walk in with our own piece?” he asked. “They would not admit you just as ‘Mrs.’ It’s altogether too vague.”

  “I do not wonder,” she said, “that they put you to drive the copper companies, for you would drive anyone into bad thoughts.”

  “Well, anyway, the invitation is useless now,” he said, making a move to drop his half in the fire.

  “No, Ross! No!” She caught at his hand and tried to stop him. After a moment or two, his mood changed; he gave up the struggle and caught her to him and kissed her.

  And as suddenly, she was quiet, breathing quickly like an animal that knows it has been caught.

  “Ross, you shouldn’t do that,” she said. “Not in the day.”

  “How much of our crockery did Garrick break?”

  “Oh…but two saucers.”

  “And how many cups?”

  “One, I think… Ross, we shall go to this Assembly?”

  “And who let him in here?”

  “I think he just sort of sneaked in. You know what he is like. Will never have no for an answer. One minute he was outside and the next he was in.” She wriggled in his grip, but he held her fast. Her flushed cheek was close to his and he put his nose against it, liking the smell. “And what of Verity? What news had she?”

  “Am I a dandelion,” she said, “to be snuffed over? Or a carrot to be hung before a—a…”

  “A donkey’s nose?” He laughed. Then she laughed, and their laughter infected each other.

  They sat down on the settle and giggled together.

  “I shall wear my apple green and mauve,” she said presently, “the one I wore at Trenwith the Christmas before last. I don’t think I am any fatter now.”

  Ross said, “I shall wear a secondhand wig with curls on the forehead, and scarlet stockings and a coat of green silk embroidered with field mice.”

  She giggled again. “Do you think we should be allowed in as Mrs. and Miss Poldark?”

  “Or two ends of a donkey,” he suggested. “We would throw lots who was to be the tail.”

  A few minutes later, Jane Gimlett put her plump, tidy little head around the door, and they sat there together on the settle and laughed at her.

  “Oh, I beg pardon,” she said hastily. “I didn’t know you was back, sur. I thought something was amiss.”

  Ross said, “We have an invitation to a ball and by mischance have torn it up. One piece is here and one piece is there. So we were considering what was the best to do.”

  “Oh, sur,” said Jane, “I should stick the twin halves together with a mix of flour paste. Put ’em on a piece o’ newsprint to hold ’em firm. No one would be able to make head nor tail of it as it is.”

  At that they looked at each other and laughed again—as if Jane Gimlett had told them a very funny joke.

  That night, before they went to sleep, Ross said, “Now that we are in our right minds again, tell me: Has Verity mentioned Captain Blamey to you of late?”

  The question came as a shock to Demelza. She had a sharp struggle with her conscience. “Why do you ask?”

  “There is a rumor that she is meeting him!”

  “Oh?” said Demelza.

  “Well?” he said after a wait.

  “I wouldn’t like to say, Ross. I wouldn’t like to say that she hadn’t, and then again I wouldn’t like to say that she had.”

  “In shorter words, you wouldn’t like to say anything at all.”

  “Well, Ross, what’s given in confidence it isn’t fair to repeat even to you.”

  Ross thought it over.

  “I wonder how she met him again. It was most unfortunate.”

  Demelza said nothing but crossed her fingers in the dark.

  “There can’t be anything serious meant now,” Ross said uneasily. “That moody bully. Verity would be mad to go on with it, whatever the chances were before. All that bitterness will begin again if Francis gets to know.”

  Demelza said nothing but crossed her legs as well.

  “When I heard it, I discounted it,” he went on. “I could not believe that Verity would be so foolish. You are very silent.”

  “I was thinkin’,” said Demelza quietly, “that if the—if they still feel the same after all these years, it must never really have broke at all.”

  “Well,” he said after a pause, “if you can’t tell me what is happening you can’t. I won’t pretend I’m not disturbed, but I am only glad I didn’t bring them together. I am more than sorry for Verity.”

  “Yes, Ross,” she said. “I see just how you feel. I’m awful sleepy. Can I go to sleep now?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It rained all night, but by eight the day was clearing and a fresh soft wind blew from the southwest. Mark Daniel had spent his whole morning in the garden, but at half an hour after noon, he came in to eat his dinner and get ready for the mine. Keren had made an herb pie out of things she had been able to gather and had flavored it with two rabbit legs she had bought from Mrs. Vigus.

  For a time they ate without speaking. In Mark silence was usual, but in Keren it meant either a new grievance or sulks over an old. He glanced at her several times as they sat there. To test her mood he tried to think of something to say.

  “Things is coming up too fast to be safe; it is as if the spring is two months on. I hope there’ll be no frost or bitter wind like last year.”

  Keren yawned. “Well, we ought to have something after that January and February. I’ve never known such months, not anywhere.”

  (She blamed him for the weather, as if the Cornish climate were a part of the general fraud practiced on her by marriage.)

  “The thrushes in the May tree will be hatching out any time now,” he said. “Reckon they’re so early they’ll be sitting a second time.”

  There was another silence.

  “Peas an’ beans’ll be a month early too,” said Mark. “We owe thanks to Captain Poldark for they, for giving us the seeds.”

  “It would have looked better for him to have found you better work instead.” She had no good to say of the Poldarks.

  “Why, I have a pitch at Wheal Leisure. More he couldn’t do.�
�

  “And a poor pitch it is. Brings you in not half what the Grambler one used to.”

  “All the best pitches was taken, Keren. Some would say it was my own fault to have took it, for he offered me contract work. Paul was saying but yesterday forenoon he was lucky to have work at all.”

  “Oh, Paul…” said Keren contemptuously. “What’s Zacky Martin doing, I should like to know? He’s working for Captain Poldark, isn’t he? I’ll wager he’s not working miner’s hours for a few shillings a week. Why, the Martins’ve never been better set in their lives. Zacky’s been away here and away there—pony provided and all. Why couldn’t they give you a job like that?”

  “Zacky’s more eddicated than me,” said Mark. “’Is father rented a few acres an’ sent him to school till he were nine. Everyone around here knows that Zacky’s a cut above we.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Keren said, getting up. “Reading and writing’s easy to learn. Anyone can learn it if they’ve the mind to. Zacky only seems clever because all you folks are slothful and ignorant.”

  “Aye, I speak for myself,” Mark said quietly. “I well know you’re different too, Keren. You’re cleverer than Zacky or any. An’ maybe it’s sloth that folk don’t learn more an’ maybe it ain’t. You’ll acknowledge it is easier—like to get your letters as a tacker at school than when you’re more growed, and one by one, all by yourself wi’ no one to learn you. I went as a buddle boy when I were six. I’d no care for letters when I come home from that. Since then I been working wi’out a break except for feast days. Maybe I should ha’ learned instead of wrestling, but that’s the way of things. An’ you can’t say I’m idle about the house here and now.”

  Keren wrinkled her nose. “Nobody said you was idle, Mark, but you got little enough for all your sweat. Why, even the Viguses are better off than us—and him without work at all.”

  “Nick Vigus is a slippery rogue, an’ ’twas he got young Jim Carter into trouble. You wouldn’t want for me to spend all my time poaching or mixing cheap poisons to sell as gin?”

  “I’d want you to make some money,” said the girl, but she spoke in a softer voice. She had gone to the open door and was staring across the valley.

  Mark finished his meal. “You’ve eaten little or nothing,” he said. “You’ll keep no strength in you that way.”

  “My strength’s all right,” Keren said absently.

  “Besides, it is wrong to waste food.”

  “Oh, eat it yourself,” she said.

  Mark hesitated, and then slowly scooped the piece of pie she had left back into the tin dish.

  “’Twill stand till tomorrow.”

  She glanced away impatiently to the north. Several figures were moving over the hill.

  “It’s time you were off.”

  She stood at the door watching him while he put on his heavy boots and pulled on his coarse drill coat. Then he came to the door and she went out to let him pass.

  He looked at her, with the sun striking lights in her curly hair and her dark elfish eyes turned away.

  “Don’t ’ee take on about we, Keren,” he said gently. “We’ll come through all right, never fear. This bad time won’t last forever an’ we’ll soon be on our feet again.”

  He bent his great body and kissed her on the neck. Then he moved off a little stiffly in the direction of the mine.

  She watched him go. We’ll come through all right, she thought. Through to what? This cottage and children and middle age? We’ll soon be on our feet again. For what? For him to keep on going down the mine, making a bit more money or a bit less forever and ever until he is too old and crippled like the old men over the hill. Then he’ll be here about the house all day long, as they are; while I bring up the last of the children and do menial jobs for the Poldarks to eke out.

  That was the best she could look for. She’d been a fool to think she could change him. He didn’t want to change. Born and bred a miner, he had no horizon but digging for copper and tin. And although he was a great worker and a craftsman, he hadn’t the learning or the initiative to be able to rise even in the mine. She saw it all clear enough. He was a goat tethered to the peg of his own character and could only consume the riches of the earth that came within his range. And she had bound herself to stay in his circle for the rest of her life…

  Tears came to her eyes and she turned back into the cottage. Mark had done much to better the inside during the winter months, but she saw none of it. Instead, she swept through into their bedroom and changed her plain dimity frock for the challenging one of flimsy scarlet with the green cord girdle. Then she began to comb her hair.

  In ten minutes with her face sponged and powdered, her rich hair glossy and crisp, theatrical sandals on her bare feet, she was ready.

  She slipped out of the house and ran quickly down the hill to the bed of the dried-up stream, climbed across it, and ran up the other side toward the wood. Very soon, her breath coming in swift gasps, she was standing before the door of the Gatehouse.

  • • •

  Dwight Enys himself opened it.

  Against his better judgment something kindled in his eyes when he saw her standing there with her hands behind her back and the wind ruffling her hair.

  “Keren. What brings you here at this time of the day?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “May I come in before all the old women see me and begin to whisper?”

  He hesitated and then opened the door wider. “Bone is out.”

  “I know. I saw him go early.”

  “Keren. Your reputation will be worth nothing.”

  She walked ahead of him down the dark corridor and waited for him to open the door into his living room.

  “It gets cozier every time I see it,” she said.

  The room was built long and narrow with three slender Gothic windows looking over the hill toward Mingoose. The manner was less medieval than in the other rooms, and he had chosen it as his parlor and furnished it with a good Turkey carpet and some comfortable old chairs and a bookcase. It was also the only room with a good fireplace, and a bright fire burned there, for Enys had cooked his meal on it.

  “What time will Bone be back?”

  “Oh, not yet; he has gone to see his father, who has had an accident. But how did you see him go?”

  “I just watched,” she said.

  He looked at her kneeling there. She had interrupted his reading. It was not the first time nor even the fifth, though her arm was long since better. One side of him was displeased, indignant; the other, not. His eyes took in the gracious curve of her back, like a bow slightly bent, ready at any moment to quiver and straighten. He looked at the faint obverse curve of her throat, at the flamboyant color of the dress. He liked her in that best. (He thought she knew it.) But to be there then, and deliberately.

  “This must stop, Keren,” he said. “This coming—”

  The bow straightened and she looked up as she interrupted him. “How can I, Dwight? How can I? I so look forward to coming here. What does it matter if I am seen? What does it matter? There’s no harm in it. There’s nothing else I care about.”

  He was surprised by her vehemence and a little touched. He came over to the fire and stood with a hand on the mantelpiece looking down on her.

  “Your husband will get to know. He could not like your coming here.”

  “Why not?” she said fiercely. “It is the only little change and—and company I get. A change from the sort of common folk who live around here. There’s not one of ’em been further than a couple of miles from where they were born. They’re so narrow and small. All they think to do is work and eat and sleep like—like animals on a farm. They just don’t see farther than the top of St. Ann’s Beacon. They aren’t more than half alive.”

  He wondered what she expected in marrying a miner.

  “I think,�
� he said gently, “that if you look deeper you will find all sorts of good things in your neighbors—and in Mark too, if you’re also dissatisfied with him. Narrow, I grant you, but deep. They have no charity outside the range of their understanding, but within it they are loyal and kind and honest and God-fearing and brave. I have found that in the short time I have been here. Forgive me if I seem to preach, Keren, but in meeting them try to meet them on their ground for a change. Try to see life as they see it…”

  “And become one of them.”

  “Not at all. Use your imagination. In order to understand it’s not necessary to become. You are criticizing their lack of imagination. Show that you are different, that you do not lack it. I think in the main they are a fine people and I get on well with them. Of course, I know I have the advantage of being a surgeon—”

  “And a man.” She didn’t add, And a very handsome one. “That’s very well, Dwight, but you haven’t married one of ’em. And they accept you because you’re far enough above them. I’m betwixt and between. I’m one of them, but I’m a stranger and always will be. If I couldn’t read nor write and never seen the world, they might forgive me in time, but they never will now. They’ll be narrow and mean to the end of their days.” She blew out a little sigh from between pursed lips. “I’m that unhappy.”

  He frowned at his books. “Well, I am not that much beset with company that—”

  She got up eagerly. “I may come then? I may stay a little? You find it none too bad to talk to me? I promise I’ll not bore you with my grief. Tell me what you are doing now, what you are studying, eh?”

  He smiled. “There’s nothing in that would interest you. I—”

  “Anything would interest me, Dwight. Really it would. Can I stay a few hours today? Mark has just gone below. I’ll promise not to talk. I’ll not be in your way. I can cook you a meal and help you.”

  He smiled again, a little ruefully. He knew of old what this offer meant; an enthusiastic approach to his interests, a wide-open, wide-eyed receptiveness on her part, which changed by curious subtle feminine gradations until his interest became centered on her. It had happened before. It would happen again. He did not care. In fact, there was a part of him that looked forward to it.