Demelza (14 page)

Ross laughed.

'An' would I?' said Demelza, curious.

He said: 'Insults I have grown accustomed to bear. But, imbecility is something I cannot cope with.'

'What long words you d'use, grandpa,' Demelza said, impressed.

They went on down the valley. A few birds were still chattering in the coloured close of the evening. On Hendrawna Beach the sea had gone a pale opal green against the warm brown of cliff and sand.

'And your news?' she said presently.

'There is a scheme afoot to rival the copper companies by forming a company of our own. I am to lead it.'

She glanced at him. 'What does that mean, Ross?'

He explained, and they crossed the stream and reached the house. Jud came ambling out to take Darkie, and they went into the parlour, where supper was still laid for him. She was about to light the candles but he stopped her. So she sat on the rug and leaned her back against his knees, and he stroked her face and hair and went on talking while the light faded right away.

'Francis was not willing to enter with us at the start,' he said. 'And I don't blame him, for the very continuance of Grambler hangs on Warleggan good will. That will be the trouble for many. They are so deeply involved with mortgages and things that they dare not risk offending those who hold them. But a compromise was suggested and our enterprise is to be a secret one.'

'Secret?' said Demelza.

'If the company is formed it shall be formed by a few people who will act for those who do not wish their names known. I think it will work.'

'Shall you be secret, then?'

His long fingers moved down the line of her chin. 'No. I have nothing at stake. They can't touch me.'

'But doesn't Wheal Leisure owe some money to the bank?'

'To Pascoe's Bank, yes. But they are not connected with the copper companies, so that is safe enough.'

'Why should you have to take all the risks and let other men shelter behind you?'

'No, no. There are others that will help openly; a man called Richard Tonkin. One called Johnson. Many of them.

She moved a moment restlessly. 'And how far will it touch us?'

'I - may be more from home. It's hard to say.'

She stirred again. 'I'm not at all sure I like it, Ross.'

'Nor I, that part of it. But there was no other they would choose for leader. I tried…'

'We should be pleased at that.'

'It's a compliment to be chosen. Though no doubt before this is done I shall curse my weakness in taking it. There is the need of this enterprise, Demelza. I didn't want the advancing of it, but I found I couldn't refuse.'

'Then you must do what you think best to do,' she said quietly.

There was silence for some time. Her face was quiescent between his hands. The electricity had gone out of her now, that tautness of mind, the elfish vitality of spirit which he could always sense when she had something special on or was in one of her 'moods.' His news had deflated her, for she did not want him more gone from her than now. She longed to have more in common with him, not less. He bent and put his face against her hair. Vibrantly alive, like herself, it curled about his face. It smelled faintly of the sea. He was struck by the mystery of personality, that this hair and the head and person of the young woman below it was his by right of marriage and by the vehemently free choice of the woman herself, that this dark curling hair and head meant more to him than any other because it made up in some mysterious way just that key which unlocked his attention and desire and love. Closely, personally attached in thought and sympathy, interacting upon each other every turn, they were yet separate beings irrevocably personal and apart, and must remain so for all efforts to bridge the gulf. Any move beyond a point fell into the void. He did not know at this moment what she was thinking, what she was feeling. Only the outward symbols he had come to understand told him that she had been excited and nervously alert and now was not. Her mind instead was exploring this new thing he had told her, trying to foresee what even he could not foresee who knew and understood so much more.

'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.'

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 here tonight. Cary was not quite on the same respectable level as brother Nicholas and nephew George, and though he was one of the trio which 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 called 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 round the room, and Ross felt as if he had touched hot metal.

Years ago 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 this.

All evidence of poverty 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 this 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 asked. '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 now 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 travelled 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 towards 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 monstrous dull.' There was sarcastic laughter in her voice which 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 humour.

'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 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; and Demelza, taken apparently with a sudden mood, practised 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 and 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 Blamy,

Have the goodness to met us at Mistress Trelasks silk merger shop in Kenwen Street twenty October in the forenoon. Veryty 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 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:
Capten Blamy, 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.

This 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 this.

This morning she was hatless, with her crisp curling black hair blowing in the wind and 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 round her waist with a tight green girdle. It was the sort of dress which 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?'