Demelza Page 12

  “A letter came for you this afternoon,” she said. “I don’t know who ’twas from.”

  “Oh, from George Warleggan. I met him this morning. He said he had written to invite me to another of his parties and I should find the invitation at home.”

  She was silent. Somewhere in the depths of the house Jud and Prudie were arguing; you could hear the deep growl of Prudie’s complaint and the lighter growl of Jud’s answer, like two dogs snarling at each other, the mastiff bitch and the crossbred bulldog.

  “This will make enmity between you an’ George Warleggan, won’t it?”

  “Very likely.”

  “I don’t know that that’s good. He’s very rich, isn’t he?”

  “Rich enough. But there are older and stronger interests in Cornwall, if they can be roused.”

  There was a clash of pans from the kitchen.

  “Now, tell me,” Ross said. “What was exciting you when I met you at Wheal Maiden?”

  Demelza got up. “Those two old crows’ll wake Julia. I must go and separate them.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dwight Enys, very gratified, rode over on the following day. Together they went to see the Gatehouse in the clump of trees beyond Reath Cottage, and Keren Daniel stood at a window and watched them ride past and thought her own strange thoughts. Demelza had been nearer divining her mind than Keren ever imagined.

  Ross was surprised to find that Enys too had an invitation to the Warleggan party, and when he arrived there on the day, he soon located him standing rather defensively against the wall in the reception room.

  There was a sprinkling of ladies among the guests and Ross kept his eyes and ears open. All society whispered of some woman Francis was paying attention to, but so far he had never seen her. Uncle Cary Warleggan was there that night. Cary was not quite on the same respectable level as brother Nicholas and nephew George, and though he was one of the trio that was stretching its financial fingers all over west Cornwall, he generally kept in the background. He was tall and thin and bloodless, with a long nose, which he spoke through, and a wide tight crease of a mouth. Also present was a miller named Sanson with fat hands and a sharp, sly look half masked by a habitual blink.

  Ross strolled about with Dwight for a while, through the reception rooms and then out upon the lawns, which ran down to the river at the back of the house. He mentioned Jim Carter and his imprisonment in Bodmin and Enys said he would gladly go and see the young man any time.

  When they returned to the lighted house, Ross saw a tall young woman with shining black hair standing beside Francis at the hazard table. His deferential attitude left no doubt.

  “A twelve as I’m alive! You nick,” said the lady, her voice slow and deep with a not-unattractive burr. “And a bad dream to you, Francis. Always you was lucky at this game.”

  She turned her head to glance around the room, and Ross felt as if he had touched hot metal.

  Years before, when he had left the Assembly Rooms sick at heart and desperate and had gone to the Bear Inn and tried to drink his misery away, there had come to him a tall, gaunt young harlot, distinctive and unusual but down-and-out, importuning him with her wide bold eyes and drawling tongue. And he had gone with her to her derelict hut and tried to drown his love for Elizabeth in a tawdry counterfeit passion.

  He had never known her name except that it was Margaret. He had never known anything about her. Not in any wild dream had he thought to find that.

  All evidence of poverty was gone. She was powdered and scented and so hung with bracelets and rings that at every move she rustled and clinked.

  At that moment George Warleggan came into the room. Beautifully dressed and thick-necked and bland, he came over at once to the two gentlemen by the door. Margaret’s eyes followed her host and they reached Ross. Seen from the side with the scar, he was unmistakable. Her eyes widened. Then she gave way to a hearty burst of laughter.

  “What is it, my love?” Francis said. “I see nothing comical in a four and a three when you need a ten for a chance.”

  “Mrs. Cartland,” said George, “may I introduce Captain Poldark, Francis’s cousin. Mrs. Margaret Cartland.”

  Ross said, “Your servant, ma’am.”

  Margaret gave him the hand in which she held the dice shaker. How well he remembered the strong white teeth, the broad shoulders, the feline, lustful dark eyes. “Me lord,” she said, boldly using her old name for him, “I’ve looked for this introduction for years. I’ve heard such tales about you!”

  “My lady,” he said, “believe only the most circumstantial—or those that are witty.”

  She said, “Could any of them fail to be, that concerned you?”

  His eyes traveled over her face. “Or any not seem to be, ma’am, with you to recount them.”

  She laughed. “Nay, it is the stories that can’t be told that I find most diverting.”

  He bowed. “The essence of a good joke is that only two should share it.”

  “I thought that was the essence of a good bed,” said Francis, and everybody laughed.

  Later Ross played whist, but toward the end of the evening he came upon the lady alone at the foot of the stairs.

  She dropped him a rather sarcastic curtsy, with a rustle of silk and a clink of bracelets. “Captain Poldark, how fortunately met.”

  “How surprisingly met.”

  “Not so polite out of company, I see.”

  “Oh, I intend no impoliteness to an old friend.”

  “Friend? Wouldn’t you put it higher than that?”

  He saw that her eyes, which he had always thought quite black, were really a very deep blue.

  “Higher or lower as you count the matter,” he said. “I’m not one for splitting hairs.”

  “No, you was always a willing man. And now you’re married, eh?”

  He agreed that he was.

  “How monstrously dull.” There was sarcastic laughter in her voice that provoked him.

  “Should you despise marriage who appear to have followed it?”

  “Oh, Cartland,” she said. “He’s wed and dead.”

  “Did you put that on his stone?”

  She laughed with feline good humor.

  “It was the colic put him away, but not before his time; he was forty. Ah, well. May he rest quieter for knowing I’ve spent his money.”

  George Warleggan came down the stairs. “You find our new guest entertaining, Margaret?”

  She yawned. “To tell the truth when I have eaten so well almost anything will entertain me.”

  “And I have not yet eaten,” said Ross. “No doubt, ma’am, that explains our difference in sentiment.”

  George glanced sharply from one to the other, but he made no comment.

  It was midnight before Ross left, but Francis stayed on. He had lost heavily at faro and was still playing, the number having been reduced to four: Cary Warleggan, who had also lost; Sanson, who was banker and had won all evening; and George, who had come in late to the game. Margaret was also there, watching the play, her hand resting lightly on Francis’s shoulder. She did not look up as Ross left.

  • • •

  Dwight Enys moved to his half-ruined Gatehouse and took up his duties as bal surgeon to Wheal Leisure, and Keren Daniel settled with a smothered discontent into her life as a miner’s wife. Demelza, taken apparently with a sudden mood, practiced her letters with fanatic zeal, and Ross was much away in the company of the talented and persuasive Richard Tonkin, interviewing, discussing, contriving, estimating—working to bring a pipe dream down to the shape of reality.

  Life moved on. Julia grew and her mother began to feel her gums for signs of teeth, the price of copper dropped to sixty-seven pounds and two more mines closed, there were riots in Paris and starvation in the provinces, Geoffrey Charles Poldark had the measles at last, and
the physicians attending the king found it hard to follow his mathematics on the subject of flies.

  It came to the time for Demelza to write her letter, and she did so with great care and many false starts.

  Dear Cap’n Blamey,

  Have the goodness to meet us at Mistress Trelasks silk mercer shop in Kenwen Street twenty October in the forenoon. Verity will not no so I beg of you to take us by chense.

  Sir, I am, with due respect,

  Your friend and servant,

  Demelza Poldark

  She was not sure about the last part, but she had taken it from a book on correspondence Verity had lent to her, so it must be all right.

  Lobb, the man who acted as postman, was due on the morrow, so after her fiftieth reading, she sealed the letter and addressed it in her boldest writing to: Cap’n Blamey, Packut Offices, Falmouth.

  There was still a week to go, with all the possible chances of mishap. She had Verity’s promise on the excuse that she wanted advice on the buying of a cloak for the winter.

  As she walked back down the valley with the Mercury tucked under one arm and with Garrick making rude munching sounds at her heels, she saw Keren Daniel moving across the valley almost to cut across her path.

  It was all land belonging to Ross. It was not an enclosed estate, Joshua having been content to set a few stone posts to mark the limits of his land, but Nampara Combe was generally acknowledged as being within a special sphere of privacy on which the thirty or forty cottagers did not intrude unless invited.

  It was clear that Keren did not know.

  She was hatless that morning, with her crisp, curling black hair blowing in the wind, and she wore a brilliant scarlet dress of some cheap flimsy material she had filched from the property box. The wind blew it about the curves of her figure, and it was caught provocatively around her waist with a tight green girdle. It was the sort of dress that would make the men look and the women whisper.

  “Good morning,” said Demelza.

  “Good morning,” said Keren, eyeing her covertly for unfavorable comparisons. “What a wind! I mislike wind greatly. D’you never have nothing but wind in these districts?”

  “Seldom,” said Demelza. “For my part, now, I like a suggestion of breeze. It stirs up the smells and keeps ’em circulated and makes everyone more interesting. A place without wind’d be like bread without yeast, nothing to keep it light. Have you been shopping?”

  Keren looked at her keenly a moment to make sure what was intended. Failing, she glanced at her basket and said, “To Sawle. It is a miserable small place, isn’t it? I suppose you do all your shopping in Truro.”

  “Oh, I like to buy from Aunt Mary Rogers whenever it is feasible. She’s a brave kind soul for all her fat. I could tell you things about Aunt Mary Rogers…”

  Keren looked uninterested.

  “And then there’s pilchards,” said Demelza. “Sawle pilchards are the best in England. Mind you, it has been a rare bad season for ’em, but last year was wonderful. It set ’em up for the winter. What they’ll do this year is beyond imagining.”

  “Mistress Poldark,” Keren said, “don’t think Mark is worth something better than being a common ordinary miner? Don’t you?”

  Surprised, Demelza stared at the sudden question. She said, “Yes. Maybe. I hadn’t thought to look at it that way.”

  “Nobody does. But look at him: he’s strong as an ox, he’s sharp enough, he’s keen, and he’s a worker. But Grambler Mine is a dead end like. What can he do but work an’ work, day in day out for a starvation wage till he’s too old an’ crippled like his father. An’ then what’s to become of us?”

  “I didn’t know ’twas so near starvation,” Demelza said. “I thought he made a fair wage. He’s on tribute, isn’t he?”

  “It keeps us. No more.”

  Demelza saw a horseman come over the hill.

  “My father was a miner,” she said. “Tributer like Mark. Still is. He made a fair wage. Up an’ down of course, an’ nothing startling at the best. But we should have managed if he hadn’t swilled it all away at the gin shops. Mark don’t drink, do he?”

  Keren moved a stone about with her foot.

  “I wondered if it was ever possible Captain Poldark ever had a vacancy in his mine, you see; a vacancy for something better. I only wondered. I thought it might be. Those on tribute there are doing well, they say; I thought maybe there might be something better sometime.”

  “I’ve nought to do with it,” Demelza said. “But I’ll mention it.” It was not Ross on the horse.

  “Mind,” said Keren, tossing her hair back, “we’re nice and comfortable and all that. It isn’t that one needs to ask favors, so to say. But Mark is so behindhand in that. I said to him one day, ‘Why don’t you go ask Captain Ross; you’re a friend of his; he couldn’t bite you; maybe he’s never thought of you in that way; nothing venture, nothing have.’ But he just shook his head and wouldn’t answer. I always get angry when he won’t answer.”

  “Yes,” said Demelza.

  The horseman was coming through the trees, and Keren heard him and looked over her shoulder. Her face was slightly flushed and slightly resentful, as if someone had been asking a favor of her. It was Dwight Enys.

  “Oh, Mrs. Poldark. I have just been to Truro and thought to call in on the way back. Is Captain Poldark at home?”

  “No, he’s in to Redruth, I b’lieve.”

  Dwight dismounted, handsome and young. Keren glanced quickly from one to the other.

  “I have a letter here, that’s all. Mr. Harris Pascoe asked me to deliver it. May I presume to leave it with you?”

  “Thank you.” Demelza took the letter. “This is Mistress Keren Daniel, Mark Daniel’s wife. This is Dr. Enys.”

  Dwight bowed. “Your servant, ma’am.” He was not sure from the girl’s dress to what class she belonged, and he had forgotten who Mark Daniel was.

  Under his gaze Keren’s expression changed like a flower when the sun comes out. While she spoke she kept her eyes down, her long black lashes on the dusky peach bloom of her cheeks. She knew the young man, having seen him two or three times from her window after that first glimpse of him with Ross. She knew that he had come to live in that turreted house half hidden in a clump of trees just up the other side of the valley from her own cottage. She knew that he had never seen her before. She knew the value of first impressions.

  They walked down together toward Nampara House, Keren determined that she should not leave the other two until she was forced. At the house Demelza invited them in for a glass of wine, but to Keren’s great disappointment he refused. Keren, quickly deciding that a few minutes of Dr. Enys’s company was worth more than the interest of seeing the inside of Nampara House, refused also, and they left together, Dwight leading his horse and walking beside Keren.

  • • •

  The twentieth of October was a windy day with dust and dead leaves blowing and the promise of rain. Demelza was on edge, as if she had a long-distance coach to catch, and Verity was amused by her wish to get into Truro by eleven at the latest. Demelza said that it wasn’t nervousness for herself but that Julia had been restless in the night and she suspected she was feverish.

  At that, Verity suggested they might postpone the visit: they could very easily ride in another day when it was more convenient. It would have suited her, for the date had come around for the quarterly meeting of the Grambler shareholders. But Demelza seemed more keen than ever to go…

  That time they had Bartle for company, for Jud was growing ever more wayward.

  Halfway there it began to rain, a thin, damp drizzle moving across the country like a mesh of fine silk, slower than the low bags of cloud that spun it. About three miles from Truro they saw a crowd of people stretching across the road. It was so unusual to see many people about in the middle of the day that they reined in.
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  “I think ’tis a pile o’ miners, ma’am,” said Bartle. “Mebbe ’tis a feast day we’ve forgotten.”

  Verity went forward a little doubtfully. Those people did not look as if they were celebrating.

  A man was standing on a cart talking to a compact group gathered around him. He was some distance away, but it was clear that he was giving expression to a grievance. Other groups of people sat on the ground or talked among themselves. There were as many women as men among them, all poorly dressed and some with young children. They looked angry and cold and desperate. A good many were actually in the lane, which ran between clearly defined hedges, and hostile looks met the two well-dressed women on horseback with their well-fed groom.

  Verity put a bold front on it and led the way slowly through; silently they were watched and sullenly.

  Presently the last were left behind.

  “Phhh!” said Demelza. “Who were they, Bartle?”

  “Miners from Idless an’ Chacewater, I bla’. These are poor times, ma’am.”

  Demelza edged her horse up to Verity’s. “Were you scairt?”

  “A little. I thought they might upset us.”

  Demelza was silent for some moments. “I mind once when we were short of corn in Illogan. We had potatoes an’ water for a week—and mortal few potatoes.”

  For the moment her attention had been diverted from the plot on hand, but as they reached Truro she forgot the miners and only thought of Andrew Blamey and what she had engineered.

  Chapter Twelve

  Truro wore its usual Thursday morning appearance, a little untidier than most days because of the cattle market of the afternoon before. They left Bartle in the center of the town and made their way on foot, picking a fastidious path over the cobbles and through the mud and refuse.

  There was no sign of a stocky figure in a blue-laced coat, and they went into the little dress shop. Demelza was unusually fussy that morning, but at length Verity persuaded her to pick a dark bottle-green cloth that would not clash with any of the clothes she already had and that greatly suited the color of her skin.