Ross Poldark (42 page)

Having slept all night and been awake no more than three hours, she went off to sleep again, one slippered toe stretched towards the fire, one hand hanging over the wooden arm of the settle, Tabitha curled against her foot, purring lightly.

Demelza came in with an armful of beech leaves and wild rose hips.

Verity sat up.

“Oh, beg pardon,” Demelza said, ready to go.

“Come in,” Verity said in confusion. “I’ve no business to be sleeping at this hour. Please talk to me and help me wake.”

Demelza smiled reservedly, put the armful of flowers on a chair. “Do you feel the draught from this window? You should have shut’n.”

“No, no, please. I don’t consider the sea air harmful. Let it be.”

Demelza closed the window and pushed a hand through her ruffled hair.

“Ross’d never forgive me if you caught cold. These mallows is dead; their heads are all droopin’; I’ll bury them.” She picked up the jug and carried it from the room, returning with it freshly filled with water. She began to arrange the beech leaves. Verity watched her.

“You were always fond of flowers, weren’t you? I remember Ross telling me that once.”

Demelza looked up. “When did he tell ee that?” Verity smiled. “Years ago. Soon after you first came. I admired the flowers in here and he told me you brought in fresh every day.”

Demelza flushed slightly. “All the same, you got to be careful,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Tedn’t every flower that takes kindly to bein’ put in a room. Some of them looks pretty but they fair stink when you pick them.” She thrust in a spray or two of the rose hips. The beech leaves were just turning a delicate yellow and they toned with the yellow-orange-red of the hips. “I been trespassing today, picking these. Over as far as Bodrugan land.” She stood back to look at the effect. “And sometimes flowers don’t take kindly to one another, an’ no matter ’ow you try to coax ’em they won’t share the same jug.”

Verity stirred in her seat. She must take the risk of a frontal attack. “I ought to thank you, my dear, for what you’ve done for Ross.”

The other girl's body tautened a little, like a wire on the first hint of strain.

“What he's done for me, more like.”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right,” Verity agreed, some of the old spirit creeping into her voice. “I know he's—brought you up—all that. But you’ve—you seem to have made him fall in love with you, and that… has changed his whole life—”

Their eyes met. Demelza's were defensive and hostile, but also puzzled. She thought there was antagonism behind the words but couldn’t make out where it lay.

“I don’t know what you d’ mean.”

This was the final issue between them.

“You must know,” Verity said, “that when he came home, he was in love with Elizabeth—my sister-in-law.”

“I know that. You ’aven’t any need to tell me that. I know it as well as you.” Demelza turned to leave the room.

Verity got up. For this she had to stand. “Perhaps I’ve expressed myself badly since I came here. I want you to understand… Ever since he came back—ever since Ross came back and found Elizabeth promised to my brother I have been afraid that he would not—would not get over it as an ordinary man would get over it. We are strange that way, many of our family. We don’t have it in us to make a compromise with events. After all, if part of you is—is wrenched away, then the rest is nothing. The rest is nothing—” She regained her voice and after a moment went on, “I have been afraid he would mope his life away, never find any real happiness, such as he might… We have always been closer than cousins. You see, I’m very fond of him.”

Demelza was staring at her.

Verity went on: “When I heard he had married you I thought it was a makeshift. Something to console him. And I was glad even of that. Even a makeshift is so much better than a life that goes withered and dry. I was consoled to feel that he would have companionship, someone to bear his children and grow old with him. The rest didn’t really matter so much.”

Again she stopped, and Demelza was about to speak, but changed her mind. A dead mallow flower lay between them on the floor.

“But since I came here,” Verity said, “I have seen it's no makeshift at all. It is real. That is what I want to thank you for. You’re so lucky. I don’t know how you’ve done it. And he is so lucky. He has lost the biggest thing in his life—and found it again in another person. That's all that matters. The greatest thing is to have someone who loves you and—and to love in return. People who haven’t
got it—or had it—don’t believe that, but it's the truth. So long as life doesn’t touch that you’re safe against the rest—”

Her voice had again lost its tone, and she stopped to clear her throat.

“I’ve not come here to hate you,” she said. “Nor to patronize you. There's
such
a change in Ross, and it is your doing. Do you think I care where you came from or what is your breeding or how you can curtsey? That's not all.”

Demelza was staring again at the flowers.

“I’ve—often wanted to know how to curtsey,” she said in a low voice. “Often I’ve wanted to know. I wish you would teach me—Verity.”

Verity sat down again, desperately tired with the effort of what she had said. Near tears, she looked at her slippers.

“My dear, I am poor at it myself,” she replied unsteadily.

“I’ll get some more flowers,” Demelza said, and fled from the room.

Ross had spent most of the day at the mine, and when he came home for a meal at five, Demelza had gone into Sawle with Prudie to buy rushlight and candles, and some fish for dinner tomorrow. She was late coming back on account of watching another catch of pilchards, so Ross and Verity had their meal alone. No reference was made to Demelza. Verity said that Francis still spent three or four nights a week in Truro playing whist and faro. This was bad enough in the winter months, but during the summer it was indefensible.

“I think,” Verity said, “we are a peculiar family. Francis comes near to having all he desires, and now acts as if he cannot settle to anything but must rush off to the gaming tables and plunge further into debt. What is there in us, Ross, that makes us so uncomfortable to live with?”

“You malign us, my dear. It is only that, like most families, we are never all happy at one time.”

“He is fretful and irritable,” Verity complained. “Far worse than I. He takes no interference with his aims and is quickly angry. It's not a week since he and Aunt Agatha had a cursing match across the dinner table, and Mrs. Tabb listening open-mouthed.”

“Aunt Agatha won?”

“Oh, without question. But it is such a bad example for the servants.”

“And Elizabeth?”

“Sometimes she can persuade him and sometimes not. I don’t think they get on very well. Perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but that is my impression.”

“Why should that be?”

“I don’t know. She is devoted to the child, and he fond of him. Yet in a way—they say children cement a marriage. Yet it seems to me that they have not got on so well since Geoffrey Charles was born.”

“There are no more coming?” Ross asked.

“None yet. Elizabeth has been ailing these last months.”

There was silence for some time.

“Ross, I have been looking through the old library. In the part that has not been cleared there are bits and pieces of lumber which might be of use to you. And why do you not bring out your mother's spinet? It would go in that corner very nice and would enhance the room.”

“It's out of repair and there is no one here to play it.”

“It could be put
in
repair. And Prudie tells me that Demelza is always strumming on it. Besides, you may have children.”

Ross looked up quickly.

“Yes. Maybe I will think it over.”

Demelza came in at seven, full of the new catch which had been taken.

“The shoal was brought inshore on the tide and folk was going out knee-deep and catching ’em in buckets. Then they came in still farther and were wriggling ’pon the sand. It is not so big a harvest as the last; still, I am sorry there is no moon, for then we might have been enticed to go an’ watch them again.”

She seemed, Ross thought, at last less constricted, and he was thankful for the improvement. His discomfort during the last few days had been acute, and twice he had been on the point of saying something before them both, but now he was glad he had not. If they would but settle themselves like two cats in a basket, without outside interference, all might yet be well.

There was one question he intended to ask Demelza, but forgot to do so until they were in bed and Demelza, he thought, asleep. He made a note of it for some other date and was himself dozing off when the girl stirred beside him and sat up. He knew then at once that she had not been asleep.

“Ross,” she said in a low voice, “tell me about Verity, would you? About Verity and Captain—Captain What's-his-name. What was it that ’appened? Did they quarrel, and why was it the—the others brokeen up?”

“I told you,” Ross said. “Francis and her father disapproved. Go to sleep, child.”

“No, no. Please. Ross, I want to know. I been thinking. You never told me what truly happened.”

Ross put out an arm and pulled her down close beside him. “It's of no moment. I thought you were not interested in my family.”

“I am in this. This is different. Tell me.”

Ross sighed and yawned. “It doesn’t please me to pander to your whims at this time of night. You are more inconsequent even than most women. It happened this way, love: Francis met Captain Blamey at Truro and invited him to Elizabeth's wedding. There he met Verity and an attachment sprang up—”

He did not enjoy resurrecting the dismal story. It was over and buried; nobody showed up well in it, and the re telling evoked memories of all the unhappiness and anger and self-criticism of those days. The episode had never been spoken of since: all that idiotic business of the duel, played out without any proper civilized sanctions in the heat of a common brawl… The party he had been going to at Ruth Teague's… One thing hung on another; and all that period of unhappiness and misunderstanding hung together. It was his marriage which had cut the strands and seemed to have given him a fresh, clean start.

“… so that brought it all to an end,” he said. “Captain Blamey went off and we’ve heard nothing of him since.”

There was a long silence, and he thought perhaps she had quietly fallen asleep while he spoke.

But then she stirred. “Oh, Ross, the very shame on you—” This in a troubled voice.

“Um?” he said, surprised. “What do you mean?”

She slipped away from his arm and sat up abruptly in the bed.

“Ross, how
could
you!”

“I want no riddles,” he said. “Are you dreaming or talking sense?”

“You let ’em part like that. Verity goin’ home to Trenwith. It would break ’er heart.”

He began to grow angry. “D’you think I relished the adventure? You know what I feel for Verity. It was no pleasure to see her love affair go to pieces like my own.”

“Nay, but you should’ve stopped un! You should have sided wi’ her instead of wi’ them.”

“I sided with nobody! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Go to sleep.”

“But siding wi’ nobody
was
siding wi’ them. Don’t you see? You should have stopped the duel and stood up to them instead of letting ’em ride
roughshod over all. If you’d helped Verity, then they needn’t ever of parted, and—and—”

“No doubt,” said Ross, “the matter seems simple enough to you. But since you know none of the people and weren’t there at the time, your judgment may conceivably be at fault.”

Sarcasm on his part was something she couldn’t yet quite cope with. She groped for his hand and found it and put it against her cheek.

“Don’t get teasy with me, Ross, I did want to know. And you d’ look at it like a man would and I d’ look at it like a woman. That's the difference. I can see what Verity would feel. I know what she would feel. To love someone and be loved by someone. And then to be quite alone—”

Ross's hand, from being quiescent, began slowly to stroke her face.

“Did I say you were the most inconsequent of women? It was an understatement. When I suggest Verity coming here you almost weep. And for half a week and more since she came you have been as stiff as an old gander. Now you choose this unseasonable hour to take Verity's side in a long-buried contention and to lecture me on my short comings. Go to sleep before I box your ears!”

Demelza pressed his hand against her mouth. “You have never hit me when I deserved it, so I am not scared now when I do not.”

“That is the difference between dealing with a man and dealing with a woman.”

“But a man,” Demelza said, “even a kind one, can sometimes be cruel wi’out knowing it.”

“And a woman,” Ross said, pulling her down again, “never knows when a subject must be dropped.”

She lay quiet against him, knowing a last word but not saying it.

V
ERITY HAD KNOWN THAT NIGHT, FROM THE BOWL OF FRESHLY PICKED HAZEL leaves in her bedroom, that she had, with her halting self-exposure of the morning, at last got past Demelza's defences. But in reaching this tentative view she was underrating Demelza. The girl might lack subtlety, but there was nothing grudging in her decisions when she came to them. Nor did she lack the courage to own herself wrong.