Jeremy Poldark

  He found her in their room lying on the bed. It was her favourite retreat in her rare moments of despair. She had her face in the pillow, and she didn’t move when he came in or when he sat on the bed.

  “Demelza.”

  She might have been dead for all the response this produced.

  “Demelza. I’ve brought you some tart.”

  “I don’t want nothing to eat,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “All the same, a mouthful or two can be put away somewhere. I want to talk to you.”

  “Not now, Ross,” she said.

  “Yes now.”

  “Not now.”

  He stared at her tangle of hair, at her figure’s tantalizing twisted grace.

  “You’ve got a hole in your stocking,” he said.

  She wriggled and after a moment sat up. Her face was streaked and she wiped it with a corner of lace, hating him but not wanting to be unsightly in his eyes.

  “Eat this, my dear.”

  She shook her head.

  He put the dish down. “Look, Demelza, if there have to be quarrels I like them to have a good substantial basis with a nice groundwork of grievance on both sides to work on. But I don’t see a basis for this in a fat hairy old man who comes here pestering you for favours. In your heart I think you know Bodrugan just as well as I do. So perhaps there is some other irritant at work. Do you know what it is?”

  She made a little gesture which did not convey much.

  “You speak of my cold looks and bitter tongue,” he said. “But after living in this house six or seven years and being married to me for over three, my peculiarities can’t be any surprise to you. I admit them, but they’ve not grown on me overnight like Billy Thomson’s beard. You’ve suffered under them and thrived under them for long enough. So I can’t help but feel there is an underlying cause which makes them no longer bearable. I’ve noticed a falling off in the hours we spend together and in the sort of satisfaction they bring. Haven’t you?”

  She said indistinctly: “It is not of my seeking.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “we expect too much if we expect the early glow to last. We had fifteen or eighteen months that were as near perfect as any man or woman could wish for; but now at the beginning of this second stage we’re disappointed that absolute happiness has gone and each is inclined to blame the other. So minor irritations magnify and we come to a quarrel. That’s the plain truth, is it not?”

  “If that’s how you see it,” she said, keeping her head away.

  “Isn’t that how you see it? Well, not yet, but perhaps you will come to see it that way.”

  Not only does he not want our child but he no longer wants me, she thought.

  “In the meantime,” he went on gently enough, “let’s strive for tolerance in our irritations. I’ll do my most to avoid condescension towards you—which is the last thing I feel. And if you find my company cold as well as dull, try to excuse it, because I’ve subjects enough to engage me, and a passing sourness of expression is much more likely to be concerned with a passing thought than being a sign of dissatisfaction with you.”

  After saying that, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek and left her again, having only succeeded in considerably deepening the misunderstanding between them.

  ***

  A good deal later that night she came down and found him at the table in the parlour with all his books around him. In the old days she would have sat on the arm of his chair and tried to make out how he came by the balance; but that would not do now. A half-full brandy bottle was at his elbow, and she wondered if it had been new to begin the evening. He glanced up with a brief smile when she came in, but soon was working again.

  She went across and poked the fire, threw on another couple of billets of wood and sat quiet watching the blue tentative flames.

  She could hear the stream hissing, and an owl screeched sometimes in the dark. A quiet night. All December so far had been the same, a time of early dews and wet leaves underfoot and darkness lingering in the day as if it were the earth’s natural element. It was gentle weather—but gentle with the atmosphere of decay. There seemed nothing new or young in the world.

  Suddenly she looked up from biting her finger and saw that Ross was watching her. To cover her thoughts she said:

  “Do you still not get paid for being head purser of the mine, Ross?”

  “It saves money and I draw a greater profit.”

  “And so does everyone else. Where Father used to work they paid the head purser forty shillings a month. We are so poor now that it would help.”

  “But not enough.” He began to fill his long pipe. “These are not all cost books. Some are for my own accountings. I shall not be able to meet my obligations in three weeks’ time.”

  “Did you see your moneylender today then?” She tried to say it casually, though she knew all it meant to them both.

  “Pearce would be flattered by your name. Yes, I saw him. He has agreed to extend the loan for another year.”

  “Then…”

  “Pascoe has also agreed to add interest to mortgage with his bank, while cautioning me that, now he has partners to consider, he may not be able to do it for a further year. But he’s unlikely to have the need, for I can’t find the four hundred pounds’ interest for Pearce, nor near it, without selling out of the mine; and without that we shall not drag on a very long time.”

  She felt suddenly ashamed of herself for having picked this day to quarrel with him.

  “How much are you lacking?”

  “A little over two hundred pounds.”

  “Could you not…”

  “Oh yes, I could perhaps borrow the money—that much—from some friend, but what’s the use? I should only get in even deeper. It would have been better, as Pascoe advised, to sell a year ago to the Warleggans and have done with them and started free of the worst debt.”

  “It’s not like you to be down in the mouth, Ross. But even borrowing from a friend wasn’t quite what I meant. We have—some things, a few things, which did ought to bring us in money.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well…there’s my ruby brooch. You said that was worth a hundred pounds.”

  “The brooch is yours.”

  “You gave it me. I can give it back if I want to. And there’s Caerhays. I can manage well without a horse. I scarcely ever go beyond what I can comfortably walk. I always did walk, an’ the frock would fetch something—and this clock, and the new carpet in our room.”

  “I couldn’t consider it. If I went to prison you would have to live on those things and what they brought. I’m not just going to empty them into the bottomless pit.”

  “Then there’s some of the farm stock,” said Demelza, more happy now she had something definite to consider. “All rare good stock but more than we properly need. It seems simple enough to me. If you pay off this interest debt you can make more money somehow. But if we sell the shares these other things’ll be no manner of use to anyone. They won’t bring us in money to live on. Wheal Leisure does. Besides…it wouldn’t be like you to give in to the Warleggans.”

  She had touched the raw spot. He got up, thrusting back his chair, and stood while he lit his pipe from a piece of twisted paper.

  “You always did argue like a lawyer.”

  That pleased her. The light flickered about her face.

  “You’ll do that, won’t you, Ross?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could raise two hundred pounds,” she said. “I’m sure we could.”

  Chapter Two

  The following day Demelza rode a little defiantly off to meet the Bodrugans at Werry House. She was in a reckless mood, and for the moment it didn’t seem so much to matter that she knew nothing whatever about horses. When she saw the sick mare she had a rush of misgivings, but it was
plain that Sir Hugh expected her to prescribe some vile-smelling nostrum and that he put down as false modesty her expressed wish not to interfere. She’d cured Sir John’s Minta and could at least make an attempt to do the same here.

  She stared at the mare for some time and then glanced up to meet a look of curiosity and challenge on Constance Bodrugan’s face. Well, if that was the way they felt…If the mare died they could well afford the loss, and it might ease Sir Hugh’s attentions once and for all…If she had to commit a crime she might as well do it with a flourish…

  She ordered all the blisters, clysters, ointments/salves, pills, and poultices of the professional horse doctors to be thrown away. That cleared the air quite a bit. Then she told them to go out and gather nine leaves of heart-fever grass and nine flowers of the scarlet pimpernel and tie them in a silk bag round the mare’s neck. When these were eventually brought she recited a poem over the animal.

  Herb Pimpernel, I have thee found

  Growing upon Christ Jesu’s ground.

  The same gift the Lord Jesus bare thee

  When His blood He shed to spare thee;

  Herb and grass this evil pass

  And God bless all who wear thee—Amen.

  It was a doggerel she had heard old Meggy Dawes of Illugan recite: she rather thought Meggy used it as a cure for warts, but anyhow it couldn’t do any hurt.

  Then she prescribed the same cordial of rosemary, juniper, and cardamon which she had recommended for the pedigree Hereford. After that they all went back to the house and she took two glasses of port and a biscuit and watched a litter of puppies chewing the rug at her feet. The port just in time helped to kill off the growth of self-criticism. She refused an invitation to dinner and left before one, her virtue unimpaired, followed by the blustering good wishes of Sir Hugh and the speculative glances of Constance Lady Bodrugan. She could guess what Constance would say if the mare died.

  Ross didn’t mention the visit over dinner, but at supper he said:

  “What was the matter with Bodrugan’s blood mare? Influenza, d’you think?”

  So he had taken it for granted that she had gone in spite of his disapproval. “I don’t know at all, Ross. It might well be. She’s awful bad, with a quivery feel to the muscles like Ramoth before he died.”

  “What did you do for her?”

  Uneasily she told him.

  He laughed. “You’ll have every veterinarian in the county up in arms. You’re stealing their fire.”

  “I don’t care for that. But she’s a rare lovely animal. I hope she comes round. I expect twould be quite a loss if she died.”

  “She must be worth upwards of three hundred guineas.”

  Demelza dropped her knife and went pale. “You’re joking, Ross!”

  “I may be wrong, of course. But King David was her sire. And he—”

  “Judas!” Demelza got up. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I thought you knew. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll have done her no harm.”

  Demelza went to the side table. “It was mean of you not to tell me, Ross.”

  “I thought you knew! Bodrugan is always boasting of it, and you have had his acquaintance for more than a year. But perhaps when you meet you don’t talk of horses.”

  She did not take him up on that quip, but moved the dishes restlessly about. After a minute she came back to the table and sat down again.

  “By the way,” he said, “what did happen in Bodmin? How was it you came to meet Sir Hugh while you were there? And why does he seem to think you’re under some obligation to him?”

  She said: “I don’t know how they dared send for me.”

  ***

  At much the same time that Demelza was rashly making her second essay in animal medicine, Dwight Enys, applying all his conscience and skill to the less valuable human animals of Sawle, was making discoveries about his own shortcomings. Doctoring, he found, was not only a constant fight against other people’s ignorance but also against one’s own.

  It was Parthesia Hoblyn’s gums which gave him the clue to the disease which had been spreading through the village all autumn. If any excuse could be found for his own incompetence it lay in the paludal fever which had so constantly masked the more serious complaint. In this case, as in most of the others, the girl had taken the fever, had recovered, had taken it again, and after the second attack all the life had gone out of her and she had been breathless and exhausted with the least effort. Discoloration of her arms like bruises had made him suspect, first, her father and then, when he proved blameless, the disease known as purpura. He had given her an occasional fever powder to clear the blood, and had ordered her to sit out on mild days and drink cold water—a course that Jacka Hoblyn strongly disapproved of. (Busy about the house, he said: that was what she should be; it would work off the bad humours far better than sitting at the door breathing in all the moisture and the steams.)

  And then Dwight met Ted Carkeek (whose shoulder wound was long since healed and almost forgotten) and Ted by chance mentioned that his father had died at sea; and going from him Dwight came straight into Vercoe, the bearded excise officer from St. Ann’s—an ex-naval man—who stopped to ask him about his wife with an abscess under her tooth and went on talking about life aboard ship; and straight afterwards Dwight called on the Hoblyns and saw Parthesia’s gums—and everything then was suddenly plain and he was abusing himself for having been so criminally blind. These listless blotchy ailing people of Sawle, with their nose bleedings and their sallow skins, were the victims of an outbreak of scorbutus. Choake, presuming he now came into the village at all, had not spotted it; and he had not spotted it, so people went on suffering and being wrongly treated.

  “Parthesia, I’m going to change your medicine. I think you need a change, do you not? I haven’t the ingredients here,” he said to Rosina, who was standing by the chair, “but I think a sulphur medicine might help. In the meantime, have you any source of fresh vegetables in or around the village?”

  “Vegetables? No, sur. We don’t belong to have vegetables—not above a few potatoes—before April or May.”

  “Or fruit—lemons in particular, or lemonades…no, of course you haven’t. I have green things sometimes myself. Can you not get them in Truro?”

  “They’re too dear for the likes of we. Those things d’run away with the money in no time.”

  He looked thoughtfully into Rosina’s beautiful eyes.

  “Ye-es…Still I must urge you to afford them. It’s vital. They’ll do Thesia far more good than all my draughts or all your mother’s home doctoring.”

  Rosina said: “I’ll ask Father. Maybe we could perhaps send in for some when the next mule train go in.”

  He went away thinking it over. Counsels of perfection which the Hoblyns, being people just above the privation level, might possibly be able to follow. But what of the rest? They could no more get fresh vegetables or fruit than if they were becalmed in the Pacific Ocean. Yet what good would his sulphur potions or diaphuretic salts be to them without it? At the best palliatives. Probably not that. It was infuriating. Amid all the doubts and disappointments of medicine there existed for this disease a certain cure—and the cure was unobtainable.

  Nor could he himself afford to feed a village, or some chosen families, on green stuffs of his own buying.

  Trenwith House was still the province of Thomas Choake; but Dwight, by roundabout and unsought ways, had come to have an interest below stairs in Mrs. Tabb who, having fallen and badly cut her arm a few days before, would have no one but Dr. Enys to dress it. She had walked to his house but had gone queer when she got there, so he had said he would call next time and save her the seven-mile walk. He found the wound not suppurating much, and applied a blister of Spanish fly to help it. Having left an ointment for later use, he walked down the stairs escorted by Tabb and saw Elizabeth Poldark in t
he hall.

  “Dr. Enys. We don’t often see you in our house.”

  “No, ma’am.” He smiled. “I try not to poach on a colleague.”

  She said slowly: “The game is only preserved on professional visits.”

  “Thank you. I’ll remember that. I’ve not seen your husband since we met in Bodmin.”

  “Francis told me of your kindness. We were all most relieved at the outcome of the trial…Will you take a glass of wine?”

  They turned towards the winter parlour. “If refinement of taste is enough, then our married life has been an idyll,” Francis had said on that long night in Bodmin. Refinement of taste? Was that all this woman had to offer? Her young withdrawn loveliness always caught at Dwight’s heart. Oh, he knew he was impressionable, but…

  In the parlour Aunt Agatha crouched over a smoky fire. The old lady’s hands trembled and fumbled unceasingly about in her lap, like wrinkled grey moles searching for something they could never find; but her spirit was as determined as ever, and the sharp old eyes looked Dwight over as he was reintroduced. Of course she remembered him at Ross’s baby’s christening party, she said, it being her habit nowadays never to admit she could forget anything.

  She could always tell an attorney’s face. They seldom—what? What? Yes, that’s what she’d said. And what was doctoring like in Truro these days? In her young days there’d been a Dr. Seabright with a big following. Used to prescribe fresh horse dung as a cure for the pleurisy. Lived over what was now Pearce’s Hotel. Very popular, but he caught farcy cutting up a horse and was dead within the month.

  “Aunt Agatha will not hear us; she’s very deaf,” Elizabeth said, and turned the conversation to commonplaces of the countryside. Dwight expanded—as he always did in sympathetic female company, and only now and then did the memories of that night come to disturb him. They blew across his brain like phantasms of a not quite real experience. The unwinking candles; Francis’s disembodied face, bitter and drawn; the harsh confidences, originally sought, but when given half turned away from; through it all ran Elizabeth, Elizabeth, the loved but the unloving, the Galatea who never woke.