Demelza (26 page)

'I thought it was a mistake. I thought Bartle must have brought it wrong. Have you been buying something at Mistress Trelask's, Ross?'

'Yes,' he said. 'It seems like a year ago. On my way to Launceston I called in to order you a frock.'

'Oh,' said Demelza, her dark eyes widening.

'For the celebrations tomorrow. That was when I still thought we should go.'

'Oh, Ross. You're that kind. Could I see it?'

'If you've the interest,' he said. 'It will do for sometime in the future.'

She fell on the box and began to pull at the cord. She at last wriggled it free and lifted the lid. She pulled out some sheets of paper and loose cloth packing and stopped. She put in her fingers and began to lift out the gown. It shimmered silver and scarlet. 'Oh, Ross, I never thought.

Then she put it back and sat on her heels and began to cry.

'It will do for some other time,' he said again. 'Come, you do not dislike it?'

She did not answer but put her hands to her face, and the tears trickled through her fingers.

He reached for the brandy bottle but found it empty. 'We could not enter with any enjoyment into the visit tomorrow, not now, with this fresh in our minds. Could you?'

She shook her head.

He watched her for some moments. His mind was fumed with brandy but he could not see her crying like this without discomfort.

'There is something else in there if you will look. At least, I asked that a cloak should be sent.'

But she would not look. And then John showed Verity in. Demelza got quickly up and went to the window. Without handkerchief, she stared hard at the garden and wiped her cheeks with her hands and with the lace cuffs of her frock.

'I am
de trop
,' Verity said. 'Well, it's no good to withdraw now. I knew I should not have come tonight. Oh, my dear, I am so sorry about Jim.'

Demelza turned and kissed her but did not meet her eyes. 'We - we have been a little upset, Verity. It is tragical about Jim, is it not...' She went from the room.

Verity looked at Ross. 'Forgive me for being so intruding. I had intended coming over yesterday but have been busy getting Elizabeth off.'

'Off?'

'With Francis. They are sleeping for two nights at the Warleggans. I stayed behind and thought you might allow me to ride in with you tomorrow.'

'Oh,' said Ross. 'Yes, if we were going.'

'But I thought it was settled long since. You mean…' Verity sat down. '…because of Jim.'

Sombrely he reached out and kicked at the log on the fire. 'Verity, I have a strong stomach, but the sight of a powdered head would turn it.'

Verity's glance had several times strayed to the open box. 'This is what Bartle brought? It looks something like a frock.'

In a few words Ross told her. Verity pulled at her gloves and thought what a strange man Ross was, at once a cynic and a sentimentalist, a strange blend of his father and his mother and a personal
x
equation belonging to neither. Abstemious enough by the standards of the day, he was now drinking himself into an ugly stupor over the death of this boy, who had not even been employed by him for a year or more before his imprisonment. An ordinary man in his station would have passed over the loss with a grunt of regret and not have ventured within two miles of a gaol to prevent it. And this gesture of the frock… No wonder Demelza wept. They were all sentimentalists at heart, the Poldarks, Verity thought, and she realized suddenly for the first time that it was a dangerous trait, far more dangerous than any cynicism. She herself at this moment, happy among all the distress and discontent; life was full for her again, and she had no right to let it be on the strength of a
mésalliance
which might any time end in disaster, which was a deliberate closing of the eyes to one side of life, a forgetting of the past and a planning for an unrealizable future. Sometimes in the night she woke up cold at the thought. But in the day she went on and was happy.

Francis too. Half his ailments came from the same source. He expected too much of life, of himself, of Elizabeth. Especially of Elizabeth. When they failed him he resorted to gambling and to drink. He wouldn't come to terms. None of them would come to terms.

'Ross,' she said at last, after the silence, 'I do not think you are wise to stay away tomorrow.'

'Why?'

'Well, you would disappoint Demelza desperately, for she has been building on this ever since the word came, and however much she may grieve for Jim and Jinny she will bitterly regret it if she does not go. And this frock you have rashly and beautifully bought will heap coals of fire on her disappointment. Then you would disappoint me, who would now have to ride in alone. But most important you should go for your own sake. You can't help poor Jim now. You have done your most, and can't reproach yourself for that. It will do real harm to sit and mope here. And your move in forcing the gaol will not be popular. Your presence among people tomorrow will emphasize that you are one of their class, and if they contemplate any move it will, I think, give them pause.'

Ross got up and stood a moment leaning against the mantelpiece. 'Your arguments fill me with disgust, Verity.'

'Everything at the moment, my dear, no doubt seems disgusting. I know the mood too well. But being in that mood, Ross, is like being out in the frost. If we do not keep on the move we shall perish.'

He went over to the cupboard and looked for another bottle of brandy. There was none there.

He said suddenly, confusedly: 'I cannot think straight tonight. Demelza said she did not wish it. '

'Well, she would say that.'

He hesitated. 'I'll think it over, Verity, and send you word in the morning.'

WHEN IN THE end, without consulting anyone further, Ross decided to go to the celebrations after all, and when, after an uneventful ride in, Demelza found herself shown up into one of the bedrooms of the Great House, the town house of the Warleggans, there were several worms of discomfort within her to spoil the first flush of excitement.

First there was compassion for Jinny, who last night had tried to hang herself from a beam in her own kitchen; second there was anxiety about Ross, who had not yet been entirely sober since his return and carried his drink like a gunpowder keg which any chance spark might set off; third there was unease over Julia, who had been left in the care of Mrs Tabb at Trenwith.

But all these reservations, vital though they were, could not quite destroy the pleasure of the adventure.

Some inherent good taste told her that this house had nothing to equal the Elizabethan charm of Trenwith, but she was overwhelmed by its bright furnishings, its soft carpets, its glittering chandeliers, its many servants. She was overwhelmed by the large number of guests and the easy familiarity with which they greeted each other, their expensive clothes, their powdered hair and patched faces and their gold snuflboxes and glittering rings.

They were all here; George Warleggan had seen to that; it was like a preliminary regal reception before the public entertainment of the ball. Or all were here who would come. The Lord Lieutenant and his family had politely declined; so had the Bassetts, the Boscawens and the St Aubyns, not yet ready to put themselves on a level with these wealthy upstarts. But their absence was unremarked except by the perceptive or the malicious. Demelza had a confused recollection of meeting Sir John This and the Hon Someone Else, and had passed in a dazed fashion in the wake of a servant up the stairs to her bedroom. Now she was waiting for the arrival of a maid, who was coming to help her put on her new gown and to dress her hair. She was in a panic about it and her hands were cold; but this was the price of adventure. She knew herself far better able to cope with John Treneglos, who traced his ancestry back to a Norman count, than to face the prying eyes of a saucy servant girl who if she didn't know what Demelza had been would soon be ready to guess.

Demelza sat down at the dressing table and saw her flushed face in the mirror. Well, she was really here. Ross had not come up yet. Dwight Enys was here, young and handsome. Old Mr Nicholas Warleggan, George's father, big and pompous and hard. There was a clergyman called Halse, thin and dried-up but vigorous-looking and moving among the aristocracy like one of them, not cringing for a bone like Mr Odgers of Sawle-with- Grambler. Dr Halse and old Mr Warleggan, Demelza knew, had been among the magistrates who had sentenced Jim. She was afraid for what might happen.

A knock came at the door and she checked an impulse to start up as a maid entered.

'This has come, ma'am. I was telled to bring it up to you. Thank you, ma'am. A dressing maid'll be along in just a few minutes.'

Demelza stared at the packet. On the outside was written: 'Rs. Poldark, Esquire,' and over that Ross had just scrawled in ink not yet dry: 'For delivery to Mrs Demelza Poldark.'

She pulled at the wrapping, took out a small box, parted some cotton packing, gasped. After a moment, gingerly, as if afraid of burning herself, she put in a finger and thumb and drew out the brooch.

'Oh,' she said.

She lifted it and held it to her breast so that she could see the effect in the mirror. The ruby glowed and winked at her. This gesture of Ross's was tremendous. It melted her. Her eyes, black and liquid with emotion, glowed back at herself above the ruby. This gift, if anything, would give her confidence. With a new dress and this no one surely could look down on her. Even the maids could hardly do so.

Another knock at the door and another maid entered. Demelza blinked and hastily crumpled up the packing in which the brooch had come. She was glad to see they had sent an elderly maid.

Well, she was in it. It wasn't decent, she was sure of that, but the maid didn't seem to think anything was amiss. Of course other women wore this sort of thing; it was all the fashion; but other women might be used to this sort of gown; she was not.

It was the same general shape as the afternoon gown Verity had bought her, only more so. The afternoon dress was cut away from her neck and the tops of her shoulders, but this one was so much lower. It was amazingly ruched at the sides, and there was a lot of beautiful lace hanging over her hands, where she didn't need it. How Ross had bought it she could not conceive. It had cost a pretty penny, that was clear. He spent money on her as if it was chaff. Dear, dear Ross! Unbelievably dear. If only poor Jim's death had not come between these presents and their wearing, how happy tonight would be!

The maid had just finished her hair, piling it up and up. Since Julia's birth she had not kept it clipped but had let it grow, and the sudden luxuriance of her surroundings as Ross's wife had seemed to give great richness to it so that its darkness fairly gleamed with colour. The maid had brought her powder box, but she instantly concurred in Demelza's refusal; such hair was not to be whitened. She did not however agree with Demelza's hesitant refusal of make-up, and she was now attending to my lady's face. Demelza's restiveness under her hands had the result of keeping her dresser's enthusiasm within bounds, and she came out of it with her dark eyebrows slightly lengthened, only a moderate amount of powder to harden the soft glow of her skin and an excusable amount of rouge on her lips.

'One patch or two, ma'am?' said the maid.

'Oh, none, thank ee. I have no liking for 'em.'

'But ma'am would not be finished without one. May I suggest one just below the left eye?'

'Oh, well,' said Demelza. 'If you think so.'

Five minutes later, the jewel on her breast, she said: 'Can you tell me which is Miss Verity Poldark's room?'

'The second down the passage, ma'am. On the right-hand side.'

Sir Hugh Bodrugan tapped his snuffbox with hairy fingers.

'Damme, who's that filly just come in the room, Nick? The one wi' the dark hair and the pretty neck. With one of the Poldarks, ain't she?'

'I've never put eyes on her before. She's a pridey morsel to look at.'

'Reminds me of my mare Sheba,' said Sir Hugh. 'Same look in her eyes. She'd take some bridling, I'll lay a curse. Damme, I'd not refuse the chance.'

'Enys, you know the Poldarks. Who's that handsome creature Miss Verity has just led in?'

'Captain Poldark's wife, sir. They have been married about two years.'

Sir Hugh brought his thick eyebrows together in an effort of remembrance. Thinking was not his favourite pastime.

'Aye, but was there not some story that he'd married below him; a farm wench or some such?'

'I could not say,' Dwight answered woodenly. 'I was not here at the time.'

'Well, maybe that is she,' said Nick.

'Lord's my life, I'll not believe it. Farm wenches just don't come that way. Or not on my estate. I only wish they did. I only wish they did. Nay, she's no vulgar: her flanks are too long. Here, Enys, you know the lady. Grant me the favour.'

She had come down thinking she would find Ross, but in this crowd it would be all but impossible. A footman stood beside her, and she and Verity took a glass of port. Somebody called Miss Robartes monopolized Verity, and before she knew it they were separated. People began talking to her, and she answered them absently. As always port helped her, and she thought how wrong Ross had been to deny it her at the christening. It was specially needed tonight to give her confidence about her frock. Then she saw Dwight Enys bearing down on her and she greeted him with relief. With him was a beetle-browed, stocky elderly man with a hairy nose, and Dwight introduced him as Sir Hugh Bodrugan. Demelza looked at him with quickened interest and met a gaze that surprised her. She'd seen that look in a man's eyes twice before: once from John Treneglos at the Christmas party the year before last, once tonight from a stranger as she came down the stairs.

She breathed it in for a moment before curtsying.

'Your servant, ma'am.'

'Sir.'

'Cod, ma'am, Dr Enys tells me you are Mrs Poldark from Nampara. We've been neighbours two years and not met before. I hurry to repair the omission.' Sir Hugh snapped his fingers to a footman. 'Wine for this lady, man, her glass is empty.'