Demelza Read online

  She decided to have two parties if Ross could be talked into it.

  She put it to him four weeks after Julia was born, as they were taking tea together on the lawn before the front door of Nampara, while Julia slept soundly in the shade of the lilac tree.

  Ross looked at her with his quizzing, teasing glance.

  “Two parties? We’ve not had twins.”

  Demelza’s eyes met his for a moment, then stared into the dregs of her cup.

  “No, but there’s your people and there’s my people, Ross. The gentlefolk and the other folk. It wouldn’t do to mix ’em, no more than you can’t mix cream and—and onions. But they’re both nice enough by themselves.”

  “I’m partial to onions,” Ross said, “but cream cloys. Let us have a party for the country people: the Zacky Martins, the Nanfans, the Daniels. They’re worth far more than the overfed squires and their genteel ladies.”

  Demelza threw a piece of bread to the ungainly dog squatting near.

  “Garrick’s no better looking for his fight wi’ Mr. Treneglos’s bull,” she said. “I’m certain sure he’s got some teeth left, but he swallowed his food like a seagull and expect his stomach to do the chewing.”

  Garrick wagged his two-inch stump.

  “Here,” said Demelza, “let me see.”

  “We could gather a very nice picking of the country folk,” said Ross. “Verity would come too. She is just as fond of them as we are—or would be if she were let. You could even ask your father if it pleased you. No doubt he’s forgiven me for throwing him in the stream.”

  “I thought ’twould be nice to ask father and brothers as well,” Demelza said, “on the second day. I thought we could have that on the twenty-third of July, Sawle Feast, so that the miners would have the day off anyhow.”

  Ross smiled to himself. It was pleasant sitting in the sun, and he did not mind her wheedling. Indeed, he took an objective interest in what would be her next move.

  “Yes, he’s teeth enough to make a show,” she said. “It is plain laziness, naught else. Would all your fine friends be too fine to be asked to dinner with a miner’s daughter?”

  “If you open your mouth much wider,” said Ross, “you’ll fall in.”

  “No, I shan’t; I’m too fat. I’m getting a rare fudgy face, and my new stays will scarcely lace. John Treneglos, I reckon, wouldn’t say no to an invitation. And even maybe his slant-eyed wife would come if you was here for bait. And George Warleggan—you said his grandfather was a smith, so he’s no call to be proud even if he is rich. And Francis…I like Cousin Francis. And Aunt Agatha wi’ her white whiskers and her bettermost wig. And Elizabeth and little Geoffrey Charles. We should be a rare boiling. And then,” said Demelza slyly, “maybe you could ask some of your friends you go visiting at George Warleggan’s.”

  A cool breeze stirred between them. It lifted a frill of Demelza’s dress, flapped it idly, and let it fall.

  “Gamblers all,” said Ross. “You would not want gamblers at a christening. And twice meeting at a card table is not a close acquaintance.”

  She loosed Garrick’s slavering jaws and moved her hands to wipe them down the side of her dress. Then she remembered and bent to rub them on the grass. Garrick licked her cheek and a dark curl fell over one eye. The trouble with arguing with women, Ross thought, was that one was diverted from the point by their beauty. Demelza was not less lovely for being temporarily more matronly. He remembered how his first love Elizabeth had looked after Geoffrey Charles was born, like an exquisite camellia, delicate and spotless and slightly flushed.

  “You can have your two christenings if you want them,” he said.

  For a moment, absurdly, Demelza looked a little troubled. Used to her sudden changes of mood, he watched her quizzically, and then she said in a small voice, “Oh, Ross. You’re that good to me.”

  He laughed. “Don’t weep for it.”

  “No, but you are; you are.” She got up and kissed him. “Sometimes,” she said slowly, “I think I’m a grand lady, and then I remember I’m really only…”

  “You’re Demelza,” he said. “God broke the mold.”

  “No, he didn’t. There’s another one in the cot.” She looked at him keenly. “Did you really mean all those pretty things you said before Julia was born? Did you, Ross?”

  “I’ve forgotten what I said.”

  She broke away from him and went skipping across the lawn in her smart dress. Presently she was back. “Ross, let’s go and bathe.”

  “What nonsense. And you but a week out of bed.”

  “Then let me put my feet in the water. We can go to the beach and walk in the surf. It is quiet today.”

  He gave her a pat. “Julia would suffer for your cold feet.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” She subsided in her chair.

  “But,” he said, “there is dry sand enough to walk on.”

  She was up in a moment. “I will go’n tell Jinny to keep an eye on Julia.”

  When she came back, they walked to the edge of the garden where the soil was already half sand. They crossed a patch of wasteland, threading between thistles and tree mallows, and he lifted her over the crumbling stone wall. They plowed through soft sand and were on Hendrawna Beach.

  It was a soft summery day with white regiments of cloud mustered on the horizon. The sea was quiet, and the small wavelets turning their heads near the edge left behind them on the green surface a delicate arabesque of white.

  They walked arm in arm, and he thought how quickly they had refound their old companionship.

  Out in the sea were two or three herring boats from Padstow and one from Sawle. They thought it Pally Rogers’s boat and waved, but he took no notice, being more concerned with fish than friendship.

  She said, “I think it would be a good thing if Verity came to both our parties. She needs the change and new notions to interest her.”

  “I hope you don’t intend to have the child held over the font two days together.”

  “No, no, that would be the first day. The high folk would see that. The low folk will not mind if they are given plenty t’eat. An’ they can finish up what’s left from the day before.”

  “Why do we not also have a children’s party,” said Ross, “to finish up on the third day what has been left on the second?”

  She looked at him. “You mock me, Ross. Always you mocked me.”

  “It’s an inverted form of reverence. Didn’t you know that?”

  “But quite serious, do you not think it would be a good genteel notion to have such a gathering?”

  “Quite serious,” he said. “I’m disposed to gratify your whims. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Then I wish you would gratify me in another. I’m that worried over Verity.”

  “What is wrong with her?”

  “Ross, she was not meant to be an old maid. She has so much in her warm-like and fond. You know that. Well, it isn’t the life for her, tending Trenwith, looking to the farm and the house and caring for Elizabeth and Francis and Elizabeth’s baby and old Aunt Agatha, and caring for the servants and ordering the supplies and teaching the old choir at Sawle Church and helping the mine folk. That isn’t what she ought to be doing.”

  “It is precisely what she enjoys doing.”

  “Yes, if it was on her own, like, yes. If she was wed and with a home of her own it would make all the difference. Last September when she was here wi’ us at Nampara she looked betterer in no time, but now she’s yellow as a saddle and that thin. How old is she, Ross?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Well, it is high time something was done.”

  Ross paused and threw a stone at two quarreling seagulls. Not far ahead, on the cliff top, were the buildings of Wheal Leisure, open as a result of years of contriving on his part, open and employing fifty-six men and s
howing a profit.

  “You have walked far enough,” he said. “Back now.”

  Obediently she turned. The tide was coming in, eating quietly away at the sand. Every so often a wave would make a larger encroachment and then retreat, leaving a thin fringe of soapy scum to mark its limits.

  He said amusedly, “Nine months ago you would not have Verity at any price. You thought her an ogre. When I wanted you to meet, you went as stiff as a pit prop. But since you met you have never ceased to pester me to find her a husband. Short of going to one of the old witches of Summercourt Fair and buying her a love potion, I know of no way of satisfying you!”

  “There’s still Captain Blamey,” said Demelza.

  He made a gesture of irritation.

  “That too I’ve heard. And am growing a little tired of. Leave well alone, my dear.”

  “I shall never be wise, Ross,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think I wish to be wise.”

  “I don’t want you to be,” he said as he lifted her over the wall.

  • • •

  The following day Verity came. She had caught a bad chill from her wetting of a month prior but was well again. She cooed over the baby, said she was like them both and like neither of them, heard of Demelza’s schemes for the christening and endorsed them without hesitation, tried valiantly to answer one or two questions Demelza had been afraid to ask Dr. Choake, and brought out a fine lace christening gown she had made for the child.

  Demelza kissed her and thanked her, and then sat looking at her with such dark serious eyes that Verity broke into one of her rare laughs and asked what was to do.

  “Oh, nothing. Will you take some tea?”

  “If it is time.”

  Demelza pulled at the tassel by the fireplace. “I do naught but drink all day long since Julia came. And I reckon tea’s better than gin.”

  The red-haired, fair-skinned Jinny came in.

  “Oh, Jinny,” Demelza said awkwardly. “Would you make us a dish of tea? Nice an’ strong. An’ make the water to boil before you put it on the leaves.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I can’t believe that’s me,” said Demelza when she had gone.

  Verity smiled. “Now, tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “You are, Verity.”

  “I? Dear, dear. Say at once how I have offended.”

  “Not offended. But if… Oh, it is me that will give the offense…”

  “Until I know the subject I can’t advise you on that.”

  “Verity,” Demelza said. “Ross told me once, after I’d been plaguing him for hours, told me about that you’d once been fond of somebody.”

  Verity did not move, but the smile on her face became less soft, its curves slightly changed.

  “I’m sorry that should trouble you,” she said.

  Demelza was too far on to mind her words.

  “What’s testing me is whether it was right that you should’ve been kept apart, like.”

  A faint color was moving in Verity’s sallow cheeks. She’s gone old-maidish and drawn-in, Demelza thought, just like when I first saw her. Such a difference, like two people living in the same body.

  “My dear, I don’t think we can measure the behavior of others by our own judgments. This is what the world is always at. My…father and brother have strong and considered principles and they acted on them. Whether it was right or wrong to do so is hardly for us to say. But what is done cannot be undone, and anyway, it is long since buried and almost forgot.”

  “Did you never hear of him again?”

  Verity got up. “No.”

  Demelza went and stood beside her. “I hate it. I hate it,” she said.

  Verity patted her arm, as if Demelza had been the injured one.

  “Will you not tell me about it?” said Demelza.

  “No,” said Verity.

  “Sometimes telling helps—makes it easier, and that.”

  “Not now,” said Verity. “Speaking of it now would be…digging an old grave.”

  She gave a little shiver of emotion (or distaste) as Jinny brought in the tea.

  That evening Demelza found Jud in the kitchen alone. No one could have told from their behavior whether those two liked each other or held to an armed neutrality. Jud had never been won over by Demelza quite as his wife had been. For long he had felt a grudge that a foundling who had once run at his bidding should be in a position to order him, but then Jud was sure Fate was cruel to him in many ways. Given the choice, he would have preferred Demelza to some coxy-faced madam used to luxury and being waited on all ends.

  “Jud,” said Demelza, taking down the baking board and the flour and the yeast. “Jud, do you recollect a Captain Blamey who used to come here to see Miss Verity?”

  “Do I just,” said Jud.

  “I must ha’ been here then,” said the girl, “but I don’t recall nothing—anything about it.”

  “You was a little small tiddler o’ thirteen,” Jud said gloomily, “an’ kep’ in the kitchen where ye belonged to be. That’s what.”

  “I don’t suspect you remember much about it now,” said the girl.

  “No, I don’t know, not I, when I was thur through un all, what next.”

  She began to knead the dough.

  “What happened, Jud?”

  He took up a piece of wood and began to whittle it with his knife, blowing a little between his two teeth. His shiny head with its fringe of hair gave him the look of a dissident monk.

  “He’d killed his first wife by accident, like, hadn’t he?” she asked.

  “I see ’ee knaw all about un.”

  “No, not all. Some, not all, Jud. What happened here?”

  “Oh, this Captain Blamey fellow, he was tinkering after Miss Verity for a rare time. Cap’n Ross put’n to meet here when they’d been foiled to meet else, an’ one day Mister Francis and ’is father—’im they berred Septemby last—come over and found un in the parlor. Mister Francis called ’im to meet’n outside, and out they stamped wi’ them dueling pistols that’s hung by the window. Me they broft in to see fair play, as you’d only expect, as you’d be right to expect, and afore the day was five minutes older Mister Francis’d shot Captain Blamey and Blamey’d shot Francis. As tidy a bit of work as never you saw.”

  “Were they hurt?”

  “Not as you’d say ’urted. Blamey’d taken a snick in the hand, and the other ball fetched in Francis’s neck. ’Twas straight and fair doin’, and Cap’n Blamey up on his ’orse and rid away.”

  “Have you ever heard tell of him since then, Jud?”

  “Not a whisper.”

  “Don’t he live at Falmouth?”

  “When he’s not to sea.”

  “Jud,” she said, “I want for you to do something for me.”

  “Eh?”

  “The next time Captain Ross rides to see Jim Carter I want you to do something.”

  Jud looked at her with his bloodshot bulldog eyes, old and wary.

  “How so?”

  “I want for you to ride to Falmouth and ask after Captain Blamey and see if he’s there still and see what he’s doing.”

  There was silence while Jud got up and spat emphatically in the fire. When it had finished sizzling, he said, “Go on with yer mooling, missus. Tedn for we to be setting the world in step. Tedn sense, tedn natural, tedn right, tedn safe. I’d as lief bait a bull.”

  He picked up his stick and knife and walked out.

  Demelza gazed after him. She was disappointed but not surprised. And as she looked at the dough, turning it slowly with floured fingers, there was a dark glint in the depths of her glance that suggested she was not discouraged.

  Chapter Three

  The day of the christening broke fine, and inside Sawle Church the ceremony passed off well b
efore thirty guests, Julia squinting self-consciously when her second cousin, the Reverend William-Alfred Johns, dripped water on her forehead. Afterward everyone began to trek back to Nampara, some on horseback, others walking in twos and threes, chatting and enjoying the sun, a colorful procession straggling across the scarred countryside, gazed at with curiosity and some awe by the tinners and cottagers as they passed. They were, indeed, visitors from another world.

  The parlor, large and accommodating as it was, was none too spacious for feeding a company of thirty, some of them with hoop skirts and none of them used to being overcrowded.

  Elizabeth and Francis had both come, and with them Geoffrey Charles, three and a half years old. Aunt Agatha, who had not been outside Trenwith grounds for ten years and not on a horse for twenty-six, had come over looking disgusted on a very old and docile mare. She’d never ridden sidesaddle before in forty-seven years of hunting and she thought it an indignity to begin. Ross got her settled in a comfortable chair and brought her a charcoal foot warmer, then he put some rum in her tea, and she soon brightened up and started looking for omens.

  George Warleggan had come, chiefly because Elizabeth had persuaded him. Mrs. Teague and three of her unmarried daughters were there to see what was to be seen, and Patience Teague, the fourth, because she hoped to meet George Warleggan. John Treneglos and Ruth and old Horace Treneglos were there, variously out of interest in Demelza, spite, and neighborliness.

  They had also asked Joan Pascoe, daughter of the banker, and with her was a young man named Dwight Enys, who spoke little but looked earnest and likable.

  Ross watched his young wife doing the honors. He could not but compare Demelza with Elizabeth, who was twenty-four and certainly no less lovely than she had ever been. At Christmas she had been a little piqued by the young Demelza’s success, but she had taken pains to see if she could rebuild her ascendancy over Ross, a matter that was becoming more important to her than it had once been. She was wearing a brocaded dress of crimson velvet, with broad ribbons around the waist and tiers of lace on the sleeves. To anyone with a sense of color the rich crimson made her fairness mesmeric.