Perhaps some shadow crossed Dwight’s face, for Elizabeth broke off what she had been talking about.
“Dr. Enys, may I ask you a question?…From something he said I’ve come to suspect that my husband—that Francis tried to commit suicide when he was in Bodmin. Do you know if it is true?”
That was a poser. In embarrassment Dwight glanced at the old lady, who was still watching him as if she could hear every word.
“Your husband and I shared a room in Bodmin, as you know. The atmosphere of the town was very excitable at that time and Mr. Poldark was—susceptible to the general feeling of recklessness and hard drinking. We—talked a long time together, well into the night, and I think his having someone to talk to helped him over a difficult period. I don’t think you need worry about it.”
Aunt Agatha said: “Shingles I had, I recollect, and he gave me blood from a cat mixed with cow milk to put on the sore place mornings and evenings. And treacle water at nights. He was a skirt little fellow, I mind, but as bright as a bee.”
“You haven’t answered my question, Dr. Enys,” Elizabeth said.
“That’s the only answer I can give…I’ve known nowhere worse than this district for wild rumours, and I should advise you to ignore them.”
There was a glint in Elizabeth’s eyes as she turned. “Perhaps you don’t realize how cut off we are here from the general social world, Dr. Enys.”
“No…I hadn’t realized it.”
“Our cousins from Nampara don’t come, we can no longer afford to entertain, and Francis is seldom in a mood for polite visiting. So perhaps it will explain to you why I am put to this strait in begging information from a—stranger.”
Dwight said: “I should be sorry if you looked on me as that. I shall be only too happy if I can be of help or value to you—and I hope you’ll call on me in any way you think fit.”
“In those days,” said Aunt Agatha, chewing at her gums, “no gentleman never went out without his sword. Didn’t dare. I mind seeing a highwayman hanged at Bargus. Pretty looking man, he was, in a crimson suit o’ clothes and a gold-laced hat. Went off very well, too, bold as brass to the last kick. You wouldn’t have dared rode from Truro like that, young man, dressed as if you was going to a burying.”
“I live between Nampara and Mingoose,” said Dwight in a raised voice.
“Yes, I know tis easy enough now. Here to Truro they say’s as safe as your own backlet. All the spirit’s gone out of the world.”
Elizabeth said: “Francis will have told you of the estrangement between ourselves and our cousins?”
“I know of it, yes.”
“Do you think Ross is settled down after all his trouble?”
“I always feel,” Dwight said, “that Ross is like a volcano. He may be quiet for ever—or erupt tomorrow.”
He caught a look in her eyes which seemed to show agreement. He went on: “Demelza I’ve seen less of than before.” (Which was true enough. Sometimes indeed it might have been that Demelza was trying to avoid him, though he could think of no reason.)
“Where’s Geoffrey Charles?” said Aunt Agatha. “Where’s the boy…?”
“Would you think,” Elizabeth said, “that they were happy together?”
“…He’s going to be a tartar,” said the old lady. “Not seven yet and up to all manner o’ saucy tricks. I’d give him a good nooling. No cheeil’s right without a stick to his back once in a while.”
Dwight said: “Perhaps I should answer that if I knew the answer.”
“She was good to us last year,” Elizabeth said. “Without her one or more of us might have died. Would you take her a message from me? Tell her—would you say that we once spent a happy Christmas together at Trenwith and say that we should like them to come again this year. Impress it on her, would you, that we really want them, need them? D’you mind doing this for me?”
“Of course I will.”
“Perhaps you’d join us yourself. We shall have no special attraction to offer you, but—”
He thanked her, said he would be delighted, and took his leave. On his way out he saw Francis coming in, walking up the drive from the direction of the main gate. They didn’t directly pass each other, but Francis raised an ironical finger to his forehead. He was roughly dressed and his boots were caked in mud, but he looked better than when last Dwight had seen him.
The short day was closing, and it would be dusk before he reached Grambler. The sullen sea was already blurred where it could be glimpsed between the declivities of the land. The damp mild pall of clouds drifted across from the coast in infinite deepening layers of brown like forerunners of the long night.
As he came out on the main track above Grambler he saw a squat bowlegged figure tramping ahead. It was Jud Paynter, and in a hurry. He glanced behind nervously at the sound of a horseman, but his aggrieved face cleared when he saw who it was.
“Evening, Paynter.” Dwight was riding past when Jud raised his hand.
“Handsome weather we’re ’aving, Mester Enys. Proper job for the time o’ year. Twill pass the winter away.”
Dwight replied conventionally, then he slackened his reins to move on again.
“Mester Enys.”
“Yes.”
“I s’pose tes axing more’n you could do to keep aside of me till we get to Grambler.”
“Not if there’s some good reason. It’s only half a mile.”
“Alf a mile can be a cant of a way. Aye, an’ thur’s reason, sure ’nough. Thur’s a couple o’ great men inching up behind me, and I aren’t taking to the notion at all. No, not me. Not Jud Paynter. I aren’t aiming to be churched just yet. See any sign of ’em, did ee?”
“What d’you mean?”
“What I d’say, that’s what. Just in St. Ann’s I am, about me ordinary, proper, reasonable, human, respectable, decent, fair an’ honest business when first I seen the two of ’em eyeing me as if I was a green goose ready for the Christmas pot. Ullo, I says. Footpaths, I says. Or some such, I says. I’d best be off home, else they’ll likely slit me throat when I aren’t looking. Tes a crying shame,” Jud went on, “what the country’s coming to. Can’t stir outside your own front door wi’out blackguards lying in wait. Tedn right. Tedn proper. Tedn fair.”
“Do they suspect you to be carrying money?”
“Me?” said Jud, startled. “I aren’t carrying money. Not more’n a few pence to buy an honest glass o’ rum.”
“Why should anyone try to rob you, then? Why not me? My horse alone would be the better prize.”
Jud shrugged. “There you are. Tes the way of things. Maybe they think there’d be more of a dido if you was ditched. Nay. Tes the widows an’ orphans, that’s what the bad men d’go for.”
“Which are you?” Dwight asked.
“Who, me?” said Jud. “Why, I been an orphan ever since me mother and father died.”
They made slow progress, Dwight having difficulty in keeping his horse in check, Jud panting along grumbling behind. Dwight had a pot of ointment to deliver in the village, so he left that and was just overtaking Jud again when he reached his shack. Prudie was at the door.
“So there ye are, you splatty old pig,” she said, and then she recognized the horseman. “Avnoon, Dr. Dwight,” she added sheepishly.
“Good day to you, Prudie. You must be glad to see your husband safely home.”
“Home, an? I ain’t ’ad sight or sound of him these pretty many days. Reckon he b’long to think he can go off an’ come back just when he d’take the fancy. Dirty old gale.”
“You know where I been,” said Jud. “Know it fine an’ well. Earning money, I been, to keep ee in lazy idleness. And Doctor d’know just so well as you, though he may pretend elsewise.”
Dwight said: “A good run?”
“Twas none so poor.”
“Was that why th
e men were following you?”
“What men?” demanded Prudie, wiping her swollen red nose on her sleeve.
Jud looked uneasy while Dwight explained.
“Tes naught to do wi’ the trade,” he said. “Tes just as I told ee. Footpaths looking for some poor ’elpless old man to rob. I tell ee tes a bad business when law and order d’go for naught. I—”
“Well,” said Prudie, “I can’t suppose what’s amiss with ’im. Ever since he come ’ome from that trial he’s been like this—scared to go abroad after dark, ’e is. Scared of ’is own shadow oft times, I reckon. Say ‘bo’ to him an’ he’ll run like a meader.”
“Tedn true! Tedn right! I aren’t afraid of nothing except what tis natural to be afraid of. An’ I aren’t no meader, see, so there!”
“Be as it will, tis somethin’ to do wi’ that trial,” said Prudie. “Dear knows what tis, but you was there, Dr. Dwight, my son, an’ mebbe you can guess. Like as not Jud was tiddly when he went in the stand, an’ tis a mystery to me how he wasn’t locked away there and then!”
“But what has that to do with his being afraid now?”
“That’s what I been saying till I’m swelled out wi’ saying it,” Jud stated violently. “What you got t’eat, wife? I’m leary enough without all this slackjaw. Ef ye paid more heed to yer cooking and less to yer talkin’ the world’d be a sight betterer place. There’s no peace, not in the home nor out of it!”
Dwight took the hint and began to move on. Prudie’s voice followed him like an organ with all the stops pulled out.
“Law or no, tis on account o’ something to do wi’ that there trial. You can’t fox me, ole man. All the time, soon as it go dark, you’re hoppin’ and dodging like a flea on a hot plate. Thur’s somethin’ behind it, an’ I’ll get to the root of unyet!”
Dwight’s last view was of Jud going grumpily into the cottage, and Prudie’s threats and warnings blew after him through the wide dusk.
Chapter Three
The brooch fetched seventy pounds. The pawnbroker said prices had come down since they bought it; also there was not the sale for expensive jewellery in Cornwall. Ross said it was as much as they could reasonably expect. Demelza’s horse, Caerhays, fetched thirty-five guineas and the carpet ten. Ross said the frock was not to be sold. Very well, he should go to prison and she would never wear it again and the moths would get at it and it would go out of fashion, and it was too big already about the waist because she had lost weight and he should go to prison; but the frock was not to be sold. Demelza took a warmth and comfort from that.
Then they started on the farm stock. They sold their two-year-old colt, Sikh, for ten guineas, and their two best cows for fourteen guineas apiece. It was not a good time of year for disposing of farm stock. Ross sold with the bitter consciousness that the people who bought his animals would be able to dispose of them in three months’ time at a profit. They got two pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence each for two month-old heifer calves. Without oxen, ploughing would be almost impossible, so there could be no economy there. They sold their pigs and almost all their poultry. Jane Gimlett was in tears, and Jack Cobbledick only just avoided them. With some twenty-five pounds still to be got Ross went round his farm. Of all his livestock, built up carefully over seven years, he now had one cow, due to calf in April, one horse, his team of oxen, a half dozen chickens and a few ducks. It was while they were on this tour that Dwight arrived with Elizabeth’s invitation.
“Tell them…” said Ross, and stopped, the anger swelling, “that we are so busy savouring the sweets of—”
“Tell them…” said Demelza hastily. “But it isn’t for Dwight to be our messenger, is it? Shall you accept for yourself, Dwight?”
“I think so. Christmas isn’t a great deal of pleasure spent alone.”
“There are worse alternatives,” said Ross.
After a minute Dwight added: “Of course I should enjoy it better at Trenwith if you were there…”
“Complimentary but inaccurate.”
“I’ll take the chance.”
“There’s no chance to take.”
The awkward silence was broken by Garrick, who suddenly appeared and came bounding across the yard like a monstrous French poodle, wagging his stump and showing a lolling red tongue. As usual he had no respect for the decencies; Dwight had to duck out of the way, and Ross came off with a couple of muddy paw marks on the front of his shirt.
“The trouble with Demelza,” Ross said, brushing himself, “is that she adopts strange animals and then doesn’t sufficiently tame them. We had Sir Hugh Bodrugan over the other day.”
Dwight laughed. “Sir Hugh has never shown any special ambition to lick my face.”
“Not yours perhaps.”
“Oh, Ross,” Demelza said, “why could we not go to Trenwith?”
Ross looked at his empty yard. “D’you seriously ask that?”
“I know I should not; but…it is a pity to think too much in the past.”
How fail when it so much influenced the present? “Tell them that we will come when Verity and Blamey are invited and not before.”
“I don’t think it will be very long before that happens,” said Demelza. “Verity and Francis were reconciled at Bodmin.”
“We can all be reconciled together, then.”
After a minute Demelza said: “That’s what I should like too. But if we were to make the first move…”
Ross thought, Oh, God, what if my bankruptcy is Francis’s fault (and the chances are it would have happened in any case), perhaps Demelza is right. She often is. Reconciliation is what Verity wants. And Demelza wants it. And Elizabeth. The last thought wakened in him a desire, almost a need, to see Elizabeth again. He’d never got over his attachment, it was something fundamental, a weakness if you liked, overlooked but still there.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll think it over. At this present moment twenty or thirty pounds is more important than all the Christmas reunions. Perhaps you’d like to take out a mortgage on my property, Dwight. It would have to be a third mortgage and bear interest at a hundred per cent. There’s nothing like money lending for bringing in a fair return.”
“You may have ten pounds, which is all I own. It could go to no better cause.”
“Nor is it yet a lost cause, though we have moments of doubt. D’you remember Tregeagle who had to drain out Dozmare Pool with a sea shell? Mine’s the opposite task.”
They moved on. Dwight began to talk about his discovery of scurvy in Sawle, and this occupied them until they returned to the house, where John Gimlett was working on a library window, repairing the hinge of a shutter.
“If you’re short of turf we can let you have some,” Ross said. “There’s enough stacked for two winters almost.”
Garrick, having shown his overflowing affection, had galloped off again, but at this stage he was seen returning carrying something in his mouth. It proved to be the hindquarters of a rabbit which he laid at Demelza’s feet.
“Go away!” said Demelza in disgust. “Horrid dog! Take it away!”
Ross picked up the corpse and heaved it across the stream, the dog bounding in hot pursuit.
“I wonder what Garrick would be worth in the open market,” he said. “One overgrown mongrel. Carnivorous. Fights bulls and guards babies. Trained to sit on seedlings and scratch up flowers. Good crockery breaker. Suffers sometimes from bad breath. Results guaranteed.”
Dwight laughed. As they went into the house he said: “Shall you be able to keep the Gimletts?”
“They won’t leave. We can feed them, and that’s all they want for the time. And I can’t work the farm without Cobbledick.”
“Seriously,” Dwight said, “my ten pounds is yours if it’s any use.”
“Seriously,” said Ross, “it will have to be the clock; Demelza, and a few bits of furniture. Then the
re’s my father’s pistols and the old telescope.”
***
So it has all come round like in a circle, thought Demelza. Three years since we spent Christmas at Trenwith. And just such another day, cloudy and quiet. Then I was that frightened I hardly knew what I was saying. Scullery maid going to visit the gentry. Now it’s all changed. Nervous in a way, but not that way. They’re poor. Just as poor as we—and Francis is working on his own land, and Elizabeth…Elizabeth has lost her terrors, and is full of gratitude to me for what took place last Christmas. Dear Verity isn’t there. But I’ve no fear of doing the wrong thing or making a fool of myself. Yet I’m not near so happy as then. And the queer thing is I’m expecting another child, and again hiding it from Ross, though for a different reason—and it’s just about four months forward, the same as last time.
“D’you remember,” she said, “when we were walking this way before? Garrick kept following on and laying down when we spoke to him, just as if for once he was going to do as he was told.”
“Yes,” said Ross.
“And you remember we met Mark Daniel and he took Garrick by the ear and marched him home…D’you ever hear anything of Mark now, Ross?”
“I don’t know how he’s faring with all this upset, but Paul saw him last in Roscoff.”
“Don’t you think it would be safe enough for him to come home?”
“No. If things get too bad in France he should go to Ireland or America; but there’d be no peace of mind for him here, even under an assumed name.”
Last time there had been Verity at the door to greet them. Today Demelza noticed the weeds growing in the drive, the grass rank under the trees, the patched-up window and the unpainted gate leading to the orchard. Tabb let them in, and the old faded Trenwiths, in their dresses and cloaks of crimson and amber, stared coldly over the ringing empty hall. As they took off their cloaks Elizabeth came out of the winter parlour.