Demelza Read online

  “Is that Dr. Choake?”

  Jinny bent over her own child, whom she brought on her back and kept in a basket in the kitchen. “Yes, sur. He says the baby won’t be afore dinner at the early side, and he say he’ll be back by nine or ten.”

  Ross turned away to hide his annoyance. Jinny looked at him with devoted eyes.

  “Who helped you with your babies, Jinny?” he asked.

  “Mother, sur.”

  “Will you go and get her, Jinny? I think I would trust your mother before that old fool.”

  She blushed with pleasure. “Yes, sur. I’ll go right off. She’ll be that glad to come.” She started as if to go and then looked at her own baby.

  “I’ll see she comes to no harm,” Ross said.

  She glanced at him a moment and then snatched up her white bonnet and left the kitchen.

  Ross walked into the low hall, stood at the foot of the stairs, disliked the silence, went into the parlor and poured himself a glass of brandy, watched Jinny’s brisk figure dwindling toward Mellin, returned to the kitchen. Little Kate had not moved but lay on her back kicking and crowing and laughing at him. The mite was nine months old and had never seen its father, who was serving a two-year sentence in Bodmin Jail for poaching. Unlike the two eldest, who took after their father, little Kate was a true Martin: sandy hair, blue eyes, tiny freckles already mottling the bridge of her button nose.

  The fire had not been lighted that morning, and there was no sign of breakfast. Ross raked the ashes, but they were dead; he picked up some kindling wood and set about lighting it, wondering irritably where Jud had gone. There must be hot water, he knew, and towels and basins. Nothing was being prepared down there. Damn Choake for his impertinence, not even waiting to see him before he left.

  Relations between the two men had been cool for some time. Ross disliked his inane wife, who had gossiped and whispered about Demelza, and when Ross disliked someone, he found it hard to hide the fact. He fumed that he should be at the mercy of the obstinate, stiff-necked, unprogressive old fool who was the only physician within miles.

  As the fire began to take Jud came in, and wind came with him and rushed around the kitchen.

  “Thur’s something blawing up,” he said, eyeing Ross out of bloodshot eyes. “Seen the long black swell, ’ave ’ee?”

  Ross nodded impatiently. There had been a heavy groundswell since the previous afternoon.

  “Well, tes breaking all ways. Scarcely ever did I see the like. It might be as someone was lashin’ of un with a whip. The swell’s nigh gone and the sea’s all licky-white like Joe Triggs’s beard.”

  “Keep your eye on Kate, Jud,” Ross said. “Make some breakfast in the meantime. I am going upstairs.”

  • • •

  At the back of his mind, Ross was aware of the sound of wind rushing about in the distance. Once, when he glanced out of the bedroom window, his eyes confirmed that the swell had, in fact, quite broken up and the sea was stippled with white-lipped waves, which crossed and recrossed each other in confusion, running heedlessly, colliding, and breaking up into wisps of futile spray. The wind was as yet only gusty on the land, but here and there eddies rushed over the water, little winds, vicious and lost.

  While he was there Demelza made a big effort to be normal, but he saw that she wished him gone. He could not help her.

  Disconsolate, he went down again and was in time to greet Mrs. Zacky Martin, Jinny’s mother. Flat-faced, competent, bespectacled, and sneezing, she came into the kitchen with a brood of five small children dragging at her heels, talking to them, chiding them, explaining to Ross that she had no one to trust them with—Jinny’s two eldest and her three youngest—greeting Jud and asking after Prudie, commenting on the smell of frying pork, inquiring about the patient, saying she had a touch of ague herself but had taken a posset before leaving, rolling up her sleeves, telling Jinny to put the colewort and the motherwort on to brew, they being better than any doctor’s nostrums for easing of the maid, and disappearing up the stairs before anyone else could speak.

  There seemed to be a child on every chair in the kitchen. They sat like timid ninepins at a fair, waiting to be knocked off. Jud scratched his head and spat in the fire and swore.

  Ross went back to the parlor. On the table was a bundle of crochet work that Demelza had been doing the previous night. A fashion paper that Verity had lent her lay beside it—something new and novel come to them from London; there had never been anything like it before. The room was a little dusty and unkempt.

  It was fifteen minutes after six.

  No birds sang that morning. A moment prior, a ray of sunlight had fallen across the grass but had been quickly put out. He stared at the elm trees that were waving backward and forward as if with an earth tremor. The apple trees, more sheltered, were bending and turning up their leaves. The sky was heavy with racing clouds.

  He picked up a book. His eyes scanned the page but took nothing in. The wind was beginning to roar down the valley. Mrs. Zacky came in.

  “Well?”

  “She’m doing brave, Cap’n Ross. Prudie and me’ll manage, don’t ’ee worry an inch. ’Twill all be over long before ole Dr. Tommie comes back.”

  Ross put down the book. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I’ve had eleven o’ my own and there’s three of Jinny’s. And I helped wi’ two of Betty Nanfan’s twins and four of Sue Vigus’s, the first three out of wedlock.” Mrs. Zacky hadn’t fingers enough to count. “This won’t be easy, not like Jinny’s was, but we’ll do a proper job, never you fear. Now, I’ll go get the brandy an’ give the maid a tot o’ that t’ ease her up.”

  The house suddenly shuddered under a gust of wind. Ross stood staring out at the wild day, anger with Choake rising in him and seeking outlet like a part of the storm. Common sense told him that Demelza would be all right, but that she should be denied the best attention was intolerable. It was Demelza who suffered there, with only two clumsy old women to help her.

  He went out to the stables, hardly aware of the storm that was rising about them.

  At the stable door he glanced over Hendrawna and saw that clouds of spray had begun to lift off the sea and drift away like sand before a sandstorm. Here and there the cliffs were smoking.

  He had just gotten the stable door open when the wind took it out of his hand, slammed it shut, and pushed him against the wall. He looked up and saw that it would not be possible to ride a horse in the gale.

  He set off to walk. It was only a matter of two miles.

  A hail of leaves and grass and dirt and small twigs met him as he turned the corner of the house. Behind him the wind was tearing off mouthfuls of sea and flinging them to join the clouds. At another time he would have been upset at the damage to his crops, but that seemed a small matter. It was not so much a gale as a sudden storm, as if the forces of a gathering anger had been bottled up for a month and must be spent in an hour. The branch of an elm came down across the stream. He stumbled past it, wondering if he could make the brow of the hill.

  In the ruined buildings of Wheal Maiden, he sat and gasped and groped for breath and rubbed his bruised hand, and the wind blew bits of masonry from the gaunt old granite walls and screamed like a harlot through every slit and hole.

  Once through the pine trees, he met the full force of the storm coming in across Grambler Plain, bringing with it a bombardment of rain and dirt and gravel. It seemed that all the loose soil was being plowed up and all the fresh young leaves and all the other small substances of the earth were being blown right away. The clouds were low over his head, brown and racing, all the rain emptied out of them and flying like torn rags before the frown of God.

  Down in Fernmore, Dr. Choake was beginning his breakfast.

  • • •

  He had finished the grilled kidneys and the roast ham and was wondering whether to take a little of the s
moked cod before it was carried away to be kept warm for his wife, who would breakfast in bed later. The early ride had made him very hungry, and he had set up a great commotion because breakfast was not waiting when he returned. Choake believed servants should not be allowed to get fat and lazy.

  The loud knocking on the front door was hardly to be heard above the thunder of the wind.

  “If that is anyone for me, Nancy,” he said testily, lowering his eyebrows, “I am from home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He decided after a sniff to take some of the cod, and was irritated that it was necessary to help himself. That done, he settled his stomach against the table and had swallowed the first knifeful when there was an apologetic cough behind him.

  “Begging your pardon, sir. Captain Poldark—”

  “Tell him—” Dr. Choake looked up and saw in the mirror a tall dripping figure behind his harassed maid.

  Ross came into the room. He had lost his hat and torn the lace on the sleeve of his coat; water followed him in a trail across Dr. Choake’s best Turkey carpet.

  But there was something in his eyes that prevented Choake from noticing. The Poldarks had been Cornish gentlemen for two hundred years, and Choake, for all his airs, came from dubious stock.

  He got up.

  “I disturb your breakfast,” said Ross.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “You’ll remember,” said Ross, “that I engaged you to be with my wife in her lying-in.”

  “Well! She is going on well. I made a thorough examination. The child will be born this afternoon.”

  “I engaged you as a surgeon to be in the house, not as a traveling leech.”

  Choake went white around the lips. He turned on the gaping Nancy.

  “Get Captain Poldark some port.”

  Nancy fled.

  “What’s your complaint?” Choake made an effort to outstare his visitor; the fellow had no money and was still a mere youngster. “We have attended your father, your uncle, your cousin and his wife, your cousin Verity. They have never found reason to call my treatment in question.”

  “What they do is their own affair. Where is your cloak?”

  “Man, I can’t ride out in this gale of wind! Look at yourself! It would be impossible to sit a horse!”

  “You should have thought of that when you left Nampara.”

  The door opened and Polly Choake came in with her hair in pins and wearing a flowing cerise morning gown. She gave a squeal when she saw Ross.

  “Oh, Captain Poldark! I’d no idea! Weally, to thee one like thith! But the wind upthtairth, faith, it upthetth one to hear it! I fear for the woof, Tom, that I do, an’ if it came in on my head I should be a pwetty thight!”

  “You’re not a pretty sight peeping around the door,” snapped her husband irritably. “Come in or go out as you please, but have the goodness to decide.”

  Polly pouted and came in, and looked at Ross sidelong and patted her hair. The door slammed behind her.

  “I never get uthed to your old Cornith windth, and thith ith a fair demon. Jenkin thayth there ith five thtlates off of the buttewy, and I doubt thewe’ll not be mowe. How ith your wife, Captain Poldark?”

  Choake slipped off his skullcap and put on his wig.

  “That will not stand in the wind,” said Ross.

  “You’we not going out, Tom? But you could not wide and thcarthely walk. An’ think of the dangew of falling tweeth!”

  “Captain Poldark is nervous for his wife,” Choake said whitely.

  “But thurely ith it that urgent tho thoon again? I wemembew my mother thaid I wath eight and forty hourth a-coming.”

  “Then your husband will be eight and forty hours a-waiting,” said Ross. “It’s a whim I have, Mrs. Choake.”

  Pettishly the surgeon flung off his purple-spotted morning gown and pulled on his tailcoat. Then he stumped out to get his bag and his riding cloak, nearly upsetting Nancy, who was coming in with the port.

  The wind was a little abeam of them on the return.

  Choake lost his wig and his hat, but Ross caught the wig and stuffed it under his coat. By the time they climbed the rise near Wheal Maiden they were both gasping and drenched. As they reached the trees they saw a slight figure in a gray cloak ahead of them.

  “Verity,” said Ross as they overtook her leaning against a tree. “You have no business out today.”

  She gave him her wide-mouthed generous smile. “You should know it can’t be kept a secret. Mrs. Zacky’s Betty saw Jud and Dr. Choake on her way to the mine, and she told Bartle’s wife.” Verity leaned her wet face against the tree. “Our cow shed is down and we have the two cows in the brew house. The headgear of Digory’s mine has collapsed, but I think no one is hurt. How is she, Ross?”

  “Well enough, I trust.” Ross linked his arm in Verity’s and they began to walk after the stumbling, cloak-blown figure of the physician. He had often thought that if a man were allowed a second wife he would have asked his cousin, for her kindness and generosity and for the soothing effect she always had on him. Already he was beginning to feel shamefaced at his own anger. Tom Choake had his good points and naturally knew his job better than Mrs. Zacky Martin.

  They caught up with Choake as he was climbing over the fallen elm branch. Two of the apple trees were down, and Ross wondered what Demelza would say when she saw the remnants of her spring flowers.

  When she did…

  He quickened his pace. Some of his irritation returned at the thought of all the women milling about in the house and his beloved Demelza helpless and in pain. And Choake going off without a word.

  As they entered they saw Jinny pattering up the stairs with a basin of steaming water, slopping some of it into the hall in her haste. She never even looked at them.

  Dr. Choake was so distressed that he went into the parlor and sat on the first chair and tried to get his breath. He glared at Ross and said, “I’ll thank you for my wig.”

  Ross poured out three glasses of brandy. He took the first to Verity, who had collapsed in a chair, her fluffy dark hair contrasting with the wet streaks where the hood had not covered it. She smiled at Ross and said, “I will go upstairs when Dr. Choake is ready. Then if all goes well I will get you something to eat.”

  Choake gulped down his brandy and passed his glass for more. Ross, knowing that liquor made him a better doctor, gave it to him.

  “We will breakfast together,” Choake said, more cheerful at the thought of food. “We will just go up and set everyone’s mind at rest, then we will breakfast. What have you for breakfast?”

  Verity got up. Her cloak fell away and showed the plain gray dimity frock, the bottom eight inches embroidered with mud and rain. But it was at her face that Ross looked. She wore a full, uplifted, startled expression, as if she had seen a vision.

  “What is it?”

  “Ross, I thought I heard…”

  They all listened.

  “Oh,” said Ross harshly, “there are children in the kitchen. There are children in the stillroom and children for all I know in the clothes closet. Every age and size.”

  Shamefaced, Verity said, “Shh!”

  Choake fumbled for his bag. All his movements were clumsy and he made a great deal of noise.

  “That is not a grown child!” Verity said suddenly. “That is not a grown child!”

  They listened again.

  “We must go to our patient,” said Choake, suddenly ill at ease and faintly sly. “We shall be ready for breakfast when we come down.”

  He opened the door. The others followed him, but at the foot of the stairs they all stopped.

  Prudie was on the top step. She was still wearing her night shift, with a coat over it, and her great figure bulged like an overfull sack. She bent to look at them, her long pink face bulbous and shining.
/>   “We’ve done it!” she shouted in her organ voice. “Tes a gurl. We’ve gotten a gurl for ’ee. ’Andsomest little mite ever I saw. We’ve knocked her face about a small bit, but her’s as lusty as a little nebby colt. Hear ’er screeching!”

  After a moment’s silence, Choake cleared his throat portentously and put his foot on the bottom step. But Ross pushed him aside and went up the stairs first.

  Chapter Two

  Had Julia known the difference, she would have thought it a strange countryside into which she had been born.

  For hours a blight had stalked across it. So much salt was in the terrible wind that nothing escaped. The young green leaves of the trees turned black and withered, and when a breeze moved them, they rattled like dry biscuits. Even the dandelions and the nettles went black. The hay was damaged and the potato crop, and the young peas and beans shriveled and died. The rosebuds never opened, and the stream was choked with the debris of a murdered spring.

  But inside Nampara, in the little world made up of four walls and bright curtains and whispering voices, life was triumphant.

  Having taken a good look at her baby, Demelza decided that the infant was complete and wonderful to behold, once her poor bruised little face righted itself. No one seemed to know how long it would take—Ross thought privately that there might be lasting marks—but Demelza, of a more sanguine temperament, looked at the bruises and then looked out at the landscape and decided that nature in her own good time would work wonders on both. They should postpone the christening until the end of July.

  She had ideas about the christening. Elizabeth had had a party for Geoffrey Charles’s christening. Demelza had not been there, for that was four years before come November, when she was less than nothing in the eyes of the Poldark family. But she had never forgotten Prudie’s tales of the fine people invited, the great bunches of flowers brought from Truro, the feast spread, the wine, and the speeches. Having made her own debut, however modestly, into such society, she believed there was no reason why they should not give a party for their child, as good or even better.