Demelza (47 page)

Tonkin said: 'You can form a company like this with fair enough prospects and find many people willing to invest a little. But it is altogether a different matter to find people willing to buttress up a shaky concern or to buy shares suddenly flung on the market. They see that the company is in difficulty and aren't agreeable to risk their money then.'

Sir John Trevaunance said: 'The company would have stood twice the chance if we had restricted it to people with unassailable credit.'

Tonkin said: 'You can't hold an inquiry into people's finances when they wish you well. And of course it was not thought that the exact composition of the company should ever become publicly known.'

'Oh, you know what it is in these parts,' Sir John remarked. 'No man can keep a secret for five minutes. I do believe it is something in the air, it is moist and humid and breeds confidences.'

'Well, somebody's confidences have cost us dear,' said Tonkin. 'I have lost my position and best part of my life's savings.'

'And I am for bankruptcy,' said Harry Blewett. 'Wheal Maid must close this month. It is doubtful if I will stay out of prison.'

'Where is Penvenen tonight?' Ross asked.

There was silence.

Sir John said: 'Well, don't look at me. I am not his keeper.'

'He has lost interest in the sinking ship,' Tonkin said rather bitterly. 'He is more interested in his rolling mill than in the copper company,' Johnson said.

'As for a sinking ship,' Sir John said, 'I think in truth the ship may be considered sunk. There is no question of desertion. When one is left struggling in the water it is but natural to make what provision one can to reach dry land.'

Ross had been watching the faces of his companions. There was the barest touch of complacency about Sir John that he had not noticed before Christmas. In this venture Sir John stood to lose the most - though not proportionately the most. The great smelting furnaces stood on his land. During the company's brief life he had been the only one to receive a return for his larger investment - in the shape of port dues, increased profit from his coal ships, ground rent and other items. This change was therefore surprising. Had he during Christmas caught sight of some dry land not visible to the others? All the time Ross had been striving to sense the mood of the other men. He had been hoping for signs of a greater resilience in some of them. But even Tonkin was resigned. Yet he was determined to make a last effort to bring them round.

'I don't altogether agree that the ship is yet sunk,' he said. 'I have one suggestion to make. It might just see us through the difficult months until the spring...'

Trenwith House looked chill and grey. Perhaps it was only her imagination harking back to the last visit. Or perhaps it was knowing what the house now held.

She pulled at the front doorbell and fancied she heard it jangling somewhere away in the kitchens right across the inner court. The garden here was overgrown, and the lawn falling away to the stream and the pond was green and unkempt. Two curlews ran across it, dipping their tufted heads and sheering away as they saw her.

She pulled the bell again. Silence.

She tried the door. The big ring handle lifted the latch easily and the heavy door swung back with a creak.

There was nobody in the big hall. Although the tall mullioned window faced south the shadows of the winter afternoon were already heavy in the house. The rows of family pictures at the end and going up the stairs were all dark except for one. A shaft of pale light from the window fell on the portrait of the red-haired Anna-Maria Trenwith, who had been born, said Aunt Agatha, when Old Rowley was on the throne, whoever he might be.

Her oval face and the fixed blue eyes stared out through the window and over the lawn.

Demelza shivered. Her finger touching the long table came away dusty. There was a herby smell. She would have done better to follow her old custom and go round the back. At that moment a door banged somewhere upstairs.

She went across to the big parlour and tapped. The door was ajar and she pushed it open. The room was empty and cold and the furniture was hung in dust sheets.

So this was the part they were not using. Only two years ago she had come to this house for the first time, when Julia was on the way, had been sick and drunk five glasses of port and sung to a lot of ladies and gentlemen she had never seen before. John Treneglos had been there, merry with wine, and Ruth his spiteful wife, and George Warleggan; and dear Verity. This house had been glittering and candlelit then, enormous and as impressive to her as a palace in a fairy tale. Since then she had seen the Warleggans' town house, the Assembly Rooms, Werry House. She was experienced, adult and grownup now. But she had been happier then.

She heard a footstep on the stairs and slipped back quickly into the hall. In the half-light an old woman was tottering down them clutching anxiously at the banister. She was in faded black satin and wore a white shawl over her wig.

Demelza went quickly forward.

Aunt Agatha's ancient tremblings came to a stop. She peered at the girl, her eyes interred before their time in a mass of folds and wrinkles.

'What, eh..? Is it you, Verity? Come back, have ye? And about time too…'

'No, it's Demelza.' She raised her voice. 'Demelza, Ross's wife. I came to enquire.'

'You what? Oh, yes, tis Ross's little bud. Well, this be no time for calling. They're all sick, every last jack of them. All except me and Mary Bartle. And she be so busy attending on them that she's no time to bother with a old woman. Let me starve! I b'lieve she would! Lord damme, don't an old body need just so much attention as a young?' She clung precariously to the banister and a tear tried to trickle down her cheek, but got diverted by a wrinkle. 'Tis all bad managing, and that's a fact. Everything has gone amiss since Verity left. She never ought to have left, d'you hear. Twas selfish in her to go running after that man. Her duty was to stay. Her father always said so. She'd take no notice of me. Always headstrong, she was. I bring to mind when she was but five…'

Demelza slipped past her and ran up the stairs. She knew where the main bedrooms were, and as she turned the corner of the corridor an elderly black-haired woman came out of one of the rooms carrying a bowl of water. Demelza recognized her as Aunt Sarah Tregeagle, Uncle Ben's putative wife. She dipped a brief curtsy when she saw Demelza.

'Are they in here?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Are you - seeing after them?'

'Well, Dr Tommy calls me in, ma'am. But tis midwifing that belongs to be my proper work, as ye d'know. I come 'cos there was no one else. But my proper work be lying-in - or laying-out, when need be.'

Her hand on the door, Demelza stared after the woman, who was slopping water on the floor in her carelessness. Everyone knew Aunt Sarah. Not the nurse for these gentlefolk. But of course there was no choice. The smell of herbs was much stronger here.

She opened the door gently and slipped in.

After the meeting of the shareholders Ross did not go straight back to the Pascoes. They did not sup till eight, and he did not want to spend an hour making polite conversation with the ladies in the parlour.

So he strolled through the back streets of the little town. Deliberately he turned his mind away from all the things which had just finished. Instead he thought about himself and his family, about his rake of a father, who had been in and out of trouble all his life, making love to one woman after another, fighting with this husband and that parent, cynical and disillusioned and sturdy to the end. He thought of Demelza and of how his estrangement from Francis sometimes seemed to come between her and him. It had no business to but it did - a sort of reservation, a bar sinister on their clear intimacy. He thought of Garrick her dog, of Julia, laughing and self-absorbed and untroubled with the perplexities of the world. He thought of Mark Daniel away in a foreign land, and wondered if he would ever bring himself to settle down there, or whether one day homesickness would lure him back into the shadow of the gibbet. He thought of the sickness at Trenwith and of Verity.

The drift of his steps had taken him out of the town and towards the river, which was full tonight and gleamed here and there with the lights of ships and the lanterns moving about the docks. There were three vessels moored alongside the wharves: two small schooners and a ship of some size for this creek, a brigantine Ross saw when he got near enough to make out the yards on her foremast. She was a nice new ship, recently painted, with brass glistening on the poop. She would draw so much water, he thought, as to make it unsafe to put in and out of here except at the high tides. That was the reason for all the bustle tonight.

He strolled on towards the trees growing low to the riverbank and then turned to come back. From here, although there was no moon, you could make out the wide gleam of the flood tide with the masts like lattices in the foreground and the winking pins of light in the black rim of the town.

As he came near the brigantine again he saw several men going aboard. Two sailors held lanterns at the top of the gangway, and as one of the men reached the deck the lantern light fell clear on his face. Ross made a half movement and then checked himself. There was nothing he could do to this man.

He walked thoughtfully on. He turned back to look once, but the men had gone below. A sailor passed.

'Are you for the
Queen Charlotte
?' Ross asked on impulse.

The sailor stopped, and peered suspiciously. 'Me, sur? No, sur.
Fairy Vale
. Cap'n Hodges.'

'She's a fine ship, the Queen Charlotte,' Ross said. 'Is she new to these parts?'

'Oh, she's been in three or four times this year, I b'la.'

'Who is her master?'

'Cap'n Bray, sur. She's just off, I reckon.'

'What is her cargo, do you know?'

'Grain for the most part; an' pilchards.' The sailor moved on.

Ross stared at the ship a moment longer and then turned and walked back into the town.

The heavy smell of incense came from a little brazier of disinfectant herbs burning smokily in the centre of the bedroom. Demelza had found them all in the one room. Francis lay in the great mahogany bed. Geoffrey Charles was in his own small bed in the alcove. Elizabeth sat beside him.

Any resentment she might once have felt for Demelza was as nothing before relief at her coming now.

'Oh Demelza, how kind of you! I have been in - in despair. We are in - terrible straits. How kind of you. My poor little boy…'

Demelza stared at the child. Geoffrey Charles was struggling for breath, every intake sounded raw and hoarse and painful. His face was flushed and strained and his eyes only half open. There were red spots behind his ears and on the nape of his neck. One hand kept opening and shutting as he breathed.

'He - he has these paroxysms,' Elizabeth muttered. 'And then he spits up or vomits; there is relief then; but only for - for a time before it begins all over again.' Her voice was broken and despairing. Demelza looked at her flushed face, at the piled fair hair, at the great glistening grey eyes.

'You're ill yourself, Elizabeth. You did ought to be in bed.'

'A slight fever. But not this. I can manage to keep up. Oh, my poor boy. I have prayed - and prayed.. '

'And Francis?'

Elizabeth coughed and swallowed with difficulty. 'Is... a little... on the mend. There - there my poor dear... if only I could help him. We paint his throat with this Melrose; but there seems small relief…'

'Who is it?' said Francis from the bed. His voice was almost unrecognizable.

'It is Demelza. She has come to help us.'

There was silence.

Then Francis said slowly: 'It is good of her to overlook past quarrels....'

Demelza breathed out a slow breath.

'If… the servants had not been ill too,' Elizabeth went on, 'we could have made a better shift... But only Mary Bartle… Tom Choake has persuaded Aunt Sarah... It is not a pretty task... He could find no one else.'

'Don't talk any more,' Demelza said. 'You should be abed. Look, Elizabeth, I - I didn't know if I came to stay for a long time, for I didn't know how you was fixed 'But 'But since you need me I'll stay - so long as ever I can. But first - soon - soon I must slip home and tell Jane Gimlett and give her word for looking after Julia. Then I'll be back.'

'Thank you. If only for tonight. It is such a relief to have someone to rely on. Thank you again. Do you hear, Francis, Demelza is going to see us through tonight.'

The door opened and Aunt Sarah Tregeagle hobbled in with a bowl full of clean water.

'Aunt Sarah,' said Demelza, 'will you help me with Mrs Poldark. She must be put to bed.'

After supper at the Pascoes, when the ladies had left them and they were settling to the port, Harris Pascoe said: 'Well; and what is your news today?'

Ross stared at the dark wine in his glass. 'We are finished. The company will be wound up tomorrow.'

The banker nodded his head.

'I made a last effort to persuade them otherwise,' Ross said. 'For the first time in years copper has moved up instead of down. I put that to them and suggested we should try to keep together for another six months. I suggested that the furnace workers should be invited to work on a profit-sharing basis. Every mine does the same thing when it strikes bargains with tributers. I suggested we should make one last effort. A few were willing but the influential men would have none of it.'

'Especially S-Sir John Trevaunance,' said the banker.

'Yes. How did you know?'

'You are right about the price of copper. I had news today, it has risen another three pounds.'

'That is six pounds in six weeks.'

'But, mind you, years may pass before the metal reaches an economic level.'

'How did you know Sir John would be opposed to my suggestion?'

Harris Pascoe licked his lips and looked diffident. 'Not so much opposed to your suggestion in p-particular as to a continuance in general. And then I was rather going on hearsay.'