Demelza

by Winston Graham

  Not that she really minded. In a way she enjoyed playing the role of sober helpmeet. Something like her old part in Hilary Tempest. She sometimes dreamed of herself as his wife—Mark out of the way—wholly charming in a workmanlike but feminine dress, helping Dwight in some serious strait. Her hands, she knew, would be cool and capable, her manner superbly helpful; he would be full of admiration for her afterward, and not only he but all the gentry of the countryside. She would be talked of everywhere. She had heard all about Mistress Poldark having been a great success at the celebration ball, and quite a number of people had been riding over to see her since then. Keren could not think why.

  It had gone to her head, for she’d thought fit the previous month to come the lady and drop a hint to Keren about being careful what she did, and Keren had resented it. Well, if she were so successful in society, Keren, as a doctor’s wife, would go much further. She might not even stay a doctor’s wife all her life. There was no limit to what might happen. A big, hairy elderly man, who had been over to the Poldarks’ one day, had met her as she crossed Nampara Combe, and he had given her more than a moment’s look. When she knew he was a baronet and unmarried, she’d been thankful for wearing that flimsy frock.

  She plowed through the rough undergrowth on her way back to the cottage. It had been half after three by Dwight’s clock, so there was nice time. As well not to run it too close. A mist had settled on the low ground between the two houses. She plunged into it as into a stream. Things were hung heavy with moisture; the damp touched her face and glistened on her hair. Some moonflowers showed among the scrub, and she picked one as she passed. She groped across the gully, climbed again, and came out into the crystal-cool air.

  So as she lay naked in Dwight’s arms, she had encouraged him to talk: about the work of the day, about the little boy who had died of the malignant sore throat over at Marasanvose, about the results of his treatment on a woman in bed with an abscess, about his thoughts for the future. All of it was like a cement to their passion. It had to be, with him. She did not really mind.

  The moon was setting as she reached the cottage, and dawn was blueing the east. Back the way she had come the gully was as if filled with a stream of milk. Everywhere else was clear.

  She went in and turned to close the door. But as she did so, a hand from outside came to press it open. “Keren.”

  Her heart stopped, and then it began to bang. It banged till it mounted to her head and seemed to split.

  “Mark!” she whispered. “You’re home early. Is anything wrong?”

  “Keren…”

  “How dare you come startling me like this! I nearly died!”

  Already she was thinking ahead of him, moving to attack and defeat his attack. But that time he had more than words to go on.

  “Where’ve you been, Keren?”

  “I?” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. I have had a pain. Oh, Mark, I had such a terrible pain. I cried for you. I thought perhaps you could have made me something warm to send it better. But I was all alone. I didn’t know what to do. So I thought maybe a walk would help. If I’d known you was coming home early I’d have come to the mine to meet you.” In the half dark, her sharp eyes caught sight of the bandage on his hand. “Oh, Mark, you’re hurt! There’s been an accident. Let me see!”

  She moved to him, and he struck her in the mouth with his burned hand, knocked her back across the room. She fell in a small injured heap.

  “Ye dirty liar! Ye dirty liar!” His breath was coming in sobs again.

  She wept with her hurt. A strange, kittenish, girlish weeping, so far from his own.

  He moved over to her. “Ye’ve been wi’ Enys,” he said in a terrible voice.

  She raised her head. “Dirty yourself! Dirty coward! Striking a woman. Filthy beast! Get away from me! Leave me alone. I’ll have you sent to prison, you! Get out!”

  A faint light was coming in from the glimmering dawn; it fell on his singed and blackened face. Through the screen of her hands and hair she saw him, and at the sight she began to cry out.

  “You’ve been wi’ Enys, lying wi’ Enys!” His voice climbed in great strides.

  “I’ve not! I’ve not!” she screamed. “Liar yourself! I went to see him about my pain. He’s a doctor, ain’t he? You filthy brute. I was in such pain.”

  Even then, the quick-thoughted lie gave him pause. Above all things he had always wanted to be fair, to do the right thing by her.

  “How long was you there?”

  “Oh…over an hour. He gave me something to take an’ then had to wait an—”

  He said, “I waited more’n three.”

  She knew then that she must go and go quickly.

  “Mark,” she said desperately, “it isn’t what you think. I swear before God it isn’t. If you see him he’ll explain. Let’s go to him. Mark, he wouldn’t leave me alone. He was always pestering me. Always and all the time. And then, when once I yielded, he threatened he’d tell you if I didn’t go on. I swear it before God and my mother’s memory. I hate him, Mark! I love only you! Go kill him if you want. He deserves it, Mark! I swear before God he took advantage of me!”

  She went on, babbling at him, throwing words at him, any words, pebbles at a giant, her only defense. She sprayed words, keeping his great anger away from her, twisting her brain this way and that. Then, when she saw that it was going to avail no longer, she sprang like a cat under his arm and leaped for the door.

  He thrust out one great hand and caught her by the hair, hauled her screaming back into his arms.

  She fought with all strength in her power, kicking, biting, scratching. He pushed her nails away from his eyes, accepting her bites as if they were no part of him. He pulled the cloth away from her throat, gripped it.

  Her screaming stopped. Her eyes started tears, died, grew big. She knew there was death, but life called her, sweet life, all the sweetness of youth, not yet gone. Dwight, the baronet, years of triumph, crying, dying.

  She twisted and upset him, and they fell against the shutter, whose flimsy catch gave way. They leaned together out of the window, she beneath him.

  A summer morning. The glazing eyes of the girl he loved, the woman he hated, her face swollen. Sickened, mad, his tears dropped on her face.

  He loosened his hold, but her beautiful face still stared. He covered it with a great hand, pushed it away, back.

  Under his hand, coming from under his hand, a faint gentle click.

  He fell back upon the floor of the cottage, groping, moaning upon the floor.

  But she did not move.

  • • •

  There was no cloud in the sky. There was no wind. Birds were chirping and chattering. Of the second brood of young thrushes that Mark had watched hatch out in the stunted hawthorn tree only a timid one stayed; the others were out fluttering their feathers, shaking their heads, sharp with incentive, eyeing the strange new world.

  The ribbon of milky mist still lay in the gully. It stretched down to the sea, and there were patches across the sand hills like steam from a kettle.

  When light came full, the sea was calm, and there seemed nothing to explain the roar in the night. The water was a pigeon’s-egg blue with a dull terra-cotta haze above the horizon and a few pale carmine tips where the rising sun caught the ripples at the sand’s edge.

  The ugly shacks of Wheal Leisure were clear-cut, and a few men moving about them in their drab clothes looked pink and handsome in the early light.

  The mist stirred before the sun’s rays, quickened with the warmth, and melted and moved off to the low cliffs, where it crouched in the shade for a while before being thrust up and away.

  A robin that Keren and Mark had tamed fluttered down to the open door, puffed out his little chest, and hopped inside. But although the cottage was silent, he did not like the silence, and after pecking here and there for a moment, h
e hopped out. Then he saw one of his friends leaning out of the window, but she made no welcoming sound and he flew away.

  The sun fell in at the cottage, strayed across the sanded floor, which was pitted and scraped with the marks of feet. A tinderbox lay among the sand, and the stump of a candle, a miner’s hat beside an upturned chair.

  The moonflower Keren had picked lay on the threshold. Its head had been broken in the struggle, but the petals were still white and damp with a freshness that would soon begin to fade.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ross had been dreaming that he was arguing about the smelting works with Sir John Trevaunance and the other shareholders. It was not an uncommon dream or one that went by contraries. Half his waking life was made up of defending the Carnmore Copper Company from inward fission or outside attack. For the battle was carefully joined, and no one could tell which way it would go.

  Nothing much was barred in the struggle. Pressure had been brought to bear on United Mines, and Richard Tonkin had been forced out of the managership. Sir John Trevaunance had a lawsuit dragging on in Swansea over his coal ships.

  Ross dreamed there was a meeting at Trevaunance’s home, as there was to be in a few days, and that everyone was quarreling at once. He pounded the table again and again, trying to gain a hearing. But no one would listen and the more he pounded the more they talked, until suddenly everyone fell silent and abruptly he found himself awake in the silent room and listening to the knocking on the front door.

  It was quite light and the sun was falling across the half-curtained windows. The Gimletts should be up soon. He reached for his watch but as usual had forgotten to wind it. Demelza’s dark hair clouded the pillow beside him, and her breathing came in a faint tic-tic. She was always a good sleeper; if Julia woke she would be out and about and asleep again in five minutes.

  Hasty footsteps went downstairs and the knocking stopped. He slid out of bed and Demelza sat up, as usual wide-awake, as if she had never been asleep at all.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, my dear.”

  There was a knock on the door and Ross opened it. Somehow in such emergencies he still expected to see Jud standing there.

  “If you please, sur!” said Gimlett. “A boy wants to see you. Charlie Baragwanath, who’s gardener’s boy over to Mingoose. He’s terrible upset.”

  “I’ll be down.”

  Demelza breathed a quiet sigh into the bedclothes. She had thought it something about Verity. All the previous day, such a lovely day, of which they had spent a good part on the beach in the sun paddling their feet in the sun-warmed water, all the time she had thought of Verity. It had been Verity’s day of release, for which she, Demelza, had plotted and schemed for more than a year. She had wondered and waited.

  With only her eyes showing over the rim of the bedclothes she watched Ross dress and go down. She wished people would leave them alone. All she wanted was to be left alone with Ross and Julia. But people came more, especially her suitors, as Ross satirically called them. Sir Hugh Bodrugan had been several times to tea.

  Ross came back. She could tell at once that something was wrong.

  “What is it?”

  “Hard to get sense out of the boy. I believe it is something at the mine.”

  She sat up. “An accident?”

  “No. Go to sleep for a little. It is not much after five.”

  He went down again and joined the undersized boy, whose teeth were chattering as if with cold. He gave him a sip or two of brandy and they set off through the apple trees over the hill.

  “Were you first there?” Ross asked.

  “Aye, sur…I—I b’long to call that way on my way over. Not as they’re always about, not at this time o’ year when I’m s’early, but I always b’long to go that tway. I thought they was all out. An’ then I seen ’er…an’ then I seen ’er…”

  He covered his face with his hands.

  “Honest, sur, I near fainted away. I near fell away on the spot.”

  As they neared the cottage they saw three men standing outside: Paul Daniel and Zacky Martin and Nick Vigus.

  Ross said, “Is it as the boy says?”

  Zacky nodded.

  “Is anyone…inside?”

  “No, sur.”

  “Does anyone know where Mark is?”

  “No, sur.”

  “Have you sent for Dr. Enys?”

  “Just sent, sur.”

  “Aye, we’ve sent fur he, sure ’nough,” said Paul Daniel bitterly.

  Ross glanced at him.“Will you come in with me, Zacky?” he said.

  They went to the open door together, then Ross stooped his head and went in.

  She was lying on the floor covered with a blanket. The sun from the window streamed across the blanket in a golden flood.

  “The boy said…”

  “Yes… We moved ’er. It didn’t seem decent to leave the poor creature.”

  Ross knelt and lifted back the blanket. She was wearing the scarlet kerchief Mark had won at the wrestling match twenty months before. He put back the blanket, rose, wiped his hands.

  “Zacky, where was Mark when this happened?” He said it in an undertone, as if not to be overheard.

  “He should have been down the mine, Cap’n Ross, should by rights have been coming up now. But he had an accident early on his core. Matthew was home to bed before one. Nobody has seen Mark Daniel since then.”

  “Have you any idea where he is?”

  “That I couldn’t say.”

  “Have you sent for the parish constable?”

  “Who? Old Vage? Did we oughter have done?”

  “No, this is Jenkins’s business. This is Mingoose Parish.”

  A shadow fell across the room. It was Dwight Enys. The only color in his face was in the eyes, which seemed suffused, as in a fever. “I…” He glanced at Ross, then at the figure on the floor. “I came…”

  “A damned nasty business, Dwight.” Friendship made Ross turn away from the young man toward Paul Daniel, who had followed him in. “Come, we should leave Dr. Enys alone while he makes his examination.”

  Paul seemed ready to challenge it, but Ross had too much authority to be set aside, and presently they were all out in the sun. Ross glanced back and saw Dwight stoop to move the cloth. His hand was trembling and he looked as if he might fall across the body in a faint.

  • • •

  All that day there was no word of Mark Daniel. Blackened and hurt, he had come up from the mine at midnight and in the early hours of Monday morning had put his stamp upon unfaithfulness and deceit. Then the warm day had taken him.

  Everyone knew so much, for like the quiet movement of wind among grass, the whisper of Keren’s deceit had spread through villages and hamlets around, and no one doubted that it had brought her death. And curiously, no one seemed to doubt the justice of the end. It was the Biblical punishment. From the moment she came she had flaunted her body at other men. One other man, and they knew who, had fallen into her lure. Any woman with half an eye would have known that Mark Daniel was not to be cuckolded lightly. She had known the risk and taken it, matching her sharp wits against his slow strength. For a time she had gone on and then she had made a slip and that had been the end. It might not be law, but it was justice.

  And the Man in the case might thank his stars he too wasn’t laid across the floor with a broken neck. He might yet find himself that way if he didn’t watch out. If they were in his shoes they’d get on a horse and ride twenty miles and stay away while Mark Daniel was at large. For all his scholaring he was not much more than a slip of a boy, and Daniel could snap him as easy as a twig.

  There wasn’t much feeling against him, as there might well have been. In the months he had been there they had grown to like him, to respect him, where they all disliked Keren. They might ha
ve risen against him as a breaker of homes, but instead, they saw Keren as the temptress who had led him away. Many a wife had seen Keren look at her man. It wasn’t the surgeon’s fault, they said. But all the same they wouldn’t be in his shoes. He’d had to go in and examine the body, and it was said that, when he came out, the sweat was pouring off his face.

  At six that evening Ross went to see Dwight.

  At first Bone would not admit him; Doctor had said in no circumstances was he to be disturbed. But Ross pushed him aside.

  Dwight was sitting at a table with a pile of papers before him and a look of hopeless despair on his face. He hadn’t changed his clothes since that morning and he hadn’t shaved. He glanced at Ross and got up.

  “Is it something important?”

  “There’s no news. That’s what is important, Dwight. If I were you I should not stay here until nightfall. Go and spend a few days with the Pascoes.”

  “What for?” he asked stupidly.

  “Because Mark Daniel is a dangerous man. D’you think if he chose to seek you out, Bone or a few locked doors would stop him?”

  Dwight put his hands to his face. “So the truth is known everywhere.”

  “Enough to go on. One can do nothing in private in a country district. For the time being—”

  He said, “I’ll never forget her face! Two hours before I’d been kissing it!”

  Ross went across and poured him a glass of brandy.

  “Drink this. You’re lucky to be alive and we must keep you so.”

  “I fail to see any good reason.”

  Ross checked himself. “Listen, boy,” he said more urgently. “You must take a good hold on yourself. This thing is done and can’t be undone. What I wish above all is to prevent more mischief. I’m not here to judge you.”