He had at once retreated, fuming at her rudeness. Very well, it was a painful business and women suffered a great deal and sometimes they were driven to unwarranted comment; and of course as a woman of blue blood Harriet was accustomed to expressing herself coarsely; but it was inexcusable for her to address him thus in front of both surgeons and the midwife! Over the years he had become a man of whom all those with whom he mixed were wary and respectful; even a man like Behenna, who was used to riding roughshod over his patients, deferred to Sir George. Only his wife, his lady wife, could ever have dared to speak to him in this way, and he felt insulted and demeaned by her.
He passed little Ursula’s bedroom. Little Ursula was not there, being at school, and was no longer little, being a hefty, heavy-legged, tight-busted girl of sixteen. It had been her birthday last Sunday, and they had given her a party despite the imminence of her step-mother’s ‘time’. A select group, carefully chosen from among the best in the county; some had stayed overnight because of the distances involved. A pity Ursula was not a more becoming girl, with the blonde hair, frailty and long slender legs of her mother. Instead she was like her paternal grandmother in looks, and sadly looks counted for so much in a girl. She was a chip off the old Warleggan block. But fortunately not at all like her paternal grandmother in a practical or sagacious sense. George’s mother, born a miller’s daughter with simple beliefs and a country understanding, had never quite moved into the world of opulence her husband had made for her, had always preferred making jam and baking bread to riding in a carriage with two postilions or entertaining on a grand scale.
Such matters would not be likely to worry Ursula. If not intellectual – and who wanted her to be? – she was sharply intelligent and fascinated by commerce and money. An ideal child from George’s point of view, if only she had been a son. And, being a girl, it were better had she been more prepossessing.
All the same, he thought, it would really only be a matter of arrangement when the time came. An heiress would have plenty of suitors. It would be a question of his picking the right one; they’d all fall over themselves.
It did not occur to him to recap that the one chink in his own personal chain-armour of self-help had been his weakness for a pretty face. Yet he expected that Ursula would find the ideal husband chiefly on the strength of an enormous dowry, just as he had expected his son to match with a Trevanion in order to secure the land and the castle. And there had certainly been no lack of looks on the Trevanion side! Instead Valentine had maliciously and wantonly married a pretty widow ten years older than himself without his father’s knowledge or consent. George had made sure that not a penny of his money or property should ever go to Valentine. He had written him out of his will and out of his life.
Now, upstairs at this moment, another life was beginning and if, pray God, it was a son he could begin to reshape his plans all over again. Indeed he had already begun to reshape them. The boy should be called Nicholas after his father. Then he could be called anything Harriet fancied, some favourite family name of her own. Perhaps Thomas, after the first Duke. Nicholas Thomas Osborne Warleggan, that would do well enough.
The house was dark and cold at 2.15 on a December morning. Fires roared upstairs, especially in The Room, and fires roared downstairs, but the house was still draughty; if you crouched within the periphery of one of the fires it was warm enough, even scorching. But if you were too tensed up to remain in one position for any length of time you quickly became aware of the draughts and the dark. Even the candles guttered.
It was a time of night when spirits were low and human nature at its lowest ebb. As he paced about, George recollected that when he had last been in this situation, in December ’99, both his own parents had been alive and both Elizabeth’s. Now all were gone. Sixteen years spanned so much of his own life, which was fast slipping away. He would soon be fifty-seven. Many men died at such an age. He was filled with a sense of the impermanence of life, with a premonition of disaster. Trenwith was no longer his, had gone back to the Poldarks. This great house which he had bought and repaired and refurnished and extended a quarter of a century ago was now the centre of his life. How long would it remain in Warleggan hands after he was gone? The renegade Valentine was established on the north coast with his own rich widow and his two stepdaughters. Ursula might marry and live here. Perhaps, who knew, if he found the right sort of husband for her, he could persuade the young man for a consideration to take not only the Warleggan daughter but the Warleggan name.
But all that would be unnecessary if Harriet tonight produced a healthy son. A Warleggan who could come into everything he did not set expressly aside for Ursula, and who would, in addition to being the son of Sir George Warleggan, be also a grandson of the Duke of Leeds! It was a dazzling prospect. True, by the time he was eighteen he, George, would be seventy-five. But – rejecting the dark thoughts of a moment ago – he recalled that the Warleggans were a long-lived family; both his parents had been around eighty, and old Uncle Cary at seventy-six showed no signs at all of closing his last ledger.
Tock-tock went the clock in the hall. It wanted twenty minutes to three. This damned waiting seemed worse even than last time. Elizabeth had never been in labour long. That had never been the trouble. Harriet of course was thirty-four. It was late for a first child. How old had Elizabeth been when she bore Ursula? He could not remember. Thirty-five, was it? But Ursula had been her third.
The candles bobbed and ducked like courtiers. It was a fine night but windy, a big cold empty night with a scattering of stars among the clouds. Half his staff was abed, but the other half was alert for the slightest pull of a bell. At the moment Nankivell was making up the fires.
‘Sur, can I get you something?’
‘No.’ He had drunk enough brandy, and there was a half-glass unfinished on the end of the mantelshelf.
He sat down at his desk, took some papers out of a drawer and irritably pulled a candelabrum nearer so that he could see. It was on a matter to do with his pocket borough of St Michael. Years ago he had reduced the number of voters in the borough from forty to thirty by the simple but drastic expedient of moving ten of them out of their derelict cottages and rehousing them two miles away in much better property which he had had restored especially to receive them. They could not plead hardship, since their new housing was much better than the old; but they were deprived of their sinecure living by no longer having to be bribed to vote. Their vote was gone, and so was their means of sustenance. As George had dryly observed at the time, some of them might even have to work. Since then gradually over the years the remaining number had been reduced to twenty-five, of whom six were members of one family. Mr Tankard, George’s legal steward, had called in at the beginning of the month to say that this family was now applying for a loan of three hundred pounds. It was supposed to be to erect a bakery, but everyone knew it was intended to tide them over until the next election, when they would expect the loan to be conveniently forgotten. George had no intention of submitting to this blackmail, in spite of the advice of his friend Sir Christopher Hawkins that he should do so. Hawkins had said: ‘It is the price you pay, my friend. Think nothing of it. Think rather of the benefits of having two members in the House to do your bidding.’ But George would have none of it. He was not to be held to ransom by a festering family of down-at-heel good-for-nothings, and he was determined to make them pay for their insolence. He felt very strongly about it, and this was why he had dragged out the correspondence, with Tankard’s notes, tonight. If anything would take his mind off events upstairs . . .
He pored over it for a minute or so, fumbling for his glasses and feeling the stirrings of old anger; but then he flung the papers down and got to his feet. Even this—
And then he heard a sound, it was a terrible sound, like a wail, like a howl, almost more animal than human. Sweat broke out on him. Supposing Harriet were to die. That would not matter quite so much if the boy lived. But they might both die. George found himse
lf confronting a great loneliness which opened up before him like a mining adit. In spite of Harriet’s infuriating habits she was a remarkable personality, whose very abrasiveness he would bitterly miss. And if the child were to go . . .
He strode out into the hall and stopped to listen. All was silent now. A log of wood crashed in the hearth and the resultant flames lit up the sombre room where many times there had been so much gaiety and light. Where Harriet and Valentine had organized that great party to celebrate Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow; where only a few days ago Ursula’s friends—
The same sound again but more muffled. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, started up the stairs toward the sound, then stopped, puzzled, angry, horrified, his heart thumping. A groom crossed the hall, seemed to be coming this way.
‘Smallwood!’
‘Sur?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Up the stairs, sur, beggin’ your permission. Lady Harriet said as I was—’
‘Never mind what she said, you’ve no damned business above stairs.’
‘No, sur. It was just that she did say I was to look to—’
That terrible sound again, loud now. George’s hair prickled.
‘Get out!’ he snarled.
‘Yes, sur. I just had the thought that the dogs making that noise might be disturbing to her ladyship—’
‘Dogs? What dogs?’
‘Castor and Pollux, sur. Her ladyship give me orders that they was to be lodged in the blue bedroom while she was – while she was in labour, as you might say. Her ladyship didn’t wish for them to be roaming the ’ouse while she was poorly and she thought they’d be best out of your – out of the way. I was to lock them in the blue bedroom and see they was kept fed and watered. That is why I was venturing—’
‘That noise, that howling,’ George said. ‘It was the dogs howling?’
‘Yes, sur. I thought I’d just go see—’
‘Go and see to them!’ George shouted. ‘Stop their damned mouths, stop their throats even if you have to cut them! Give them poison so long as you keep them quiet!’
‘Yes, sur.’ In fright Smallwood slid past his master and rushed stumbling up the rest of the stairs, then with anxious backward glances retreated down the passage towards the blue bedroom.
George went back slowly down, breathing out rage and relief, and more indignation with every breath. An outrageous thing to happen! Putting the dogs in a bedroom! He’d wondered where they had gone to – how typical of Harriet’s arrogance and thoughtlessness for him! He would tell her exactly how he viewed such a ridiculous act. Almighty God, for a moment – for some minutes – he had thought, he had feared . . .
A step behind him.
He swung round. Dr Behenna. Sleeves rolled up. Black waistcoat with gold chain. Grey hair en brosse. A silly look on his face.
‘Well?’
‘I am happy to tell you that her ladyship has been safely delivered of twins.’
‘What d’you say?’
‘I had thought this likely since before ten o’clock last evening, but did not wish to raise your hopes. Mother and babies are all doing well. There have been no complications. My sincere congratulations, Sir George.’
George stared at the doctor with astonishment and such a concentration of anxiety and anger as to disconcert him.
‘The second child is slightly smaller but in excellent condition,’ Behenna hastened on. ‘She was born half an hour after her sister.’
‘Sister?’ said George. ‘You mean . . .?’
‘You have two fine daughters, Sir George. I am sure you will be vastly proud of them. Lady Harriet has been very brave, and I will give her a further opiate as soon as you have seen them.’
Chapter Three
I
Demelza rode back on the 14th from visiting Clowance again. Cuby was out walking on the beach with Isabella-Rose, Henry was with Mrs Kemp. Demelza found Ross in the garden.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I did not know you knew one plant from another. I hope you have not been digging up my new bulbs.’
‘Cuby saw to that,’ Ross said, kissing her. ‘I believe since she brought them she has been watching every day for them to come up.’
Demelza knelt and stirred the soil with her finger. ‘These are late tulips, she says. They do not flower until May.’
Ross crouched beside her. ‘Clowance?’
‘Better. Eating at last. She has lost a lot of weight. I do not think she will come home for Christmas, Ross.’
‘Ah.’
‘She said to me: “Mama, I will come – of course I will come with pleasure if you wish me to, if you wish this Christmas specially to have all your family round you,” she said. “But if it were my own choice I would, I believe, better prefer to remain here with Verity. I do not know quite how to explain it,” she said, “but it is certain that this Christmas cannot be a Christmas like last year or any other year we have ever known. So I think it would affect me less if I could look on it as just the 25th of December, another day of the month,” she said, “like any other day of any month and try to forget it is happening.” ’
Ross straightened up, aware that his ankle did not like a crouching position. He had had reservations about Clowance coming back too soon for another and altogether particular reason – that is, that in her first bereavement she might see too much of Ben Carter. It was a strange perception for him, and more worthy of Demelza. But under no circumstances would he mention such a feeling to her.
‘Shall you mind so much?’
‘Not if she is with Verity.’
‘How is she dealing with the business?’
‘Both ships were out. The boy, this nephew of his, was away in the Adolphus, which was being captained by a man called Carter. The Lady Clowance was sailing for the Thames with a cargo of china clay. At home, in the port, a strange little man called Hodge is helping her. He is almost horrid to look at, but she seems to trust him. He can read and write and do accounts. And the Naval Bank is also helping: Stephen has left quite a lot of money, it seems, all from this privateering adventure.’
‘I’ll go over myself next week; spend a night or two.’
The wind was tugging at Demelza’s hat. She put a hand up to it.
‘She has changed, Ross. I – I think she has been deeply injured – of course by her bereavement, of course, but I suspicion something more than that. It is as if she no longer has confidence in her own judgment – as if she is confused as well as desperately heart-sad. I cannot make it out . . . She is harder than she used to be. I feel she will need careful handling – specially careful handling.’
‘By us?’
‘I hope so. And by life . . .’
Ross frowned out at the sea.
‘Even with the war over,’ he said, ‘the ships should fetch a good price. If, then, she doesn’t want to make her home permanently with us she could travel. She has no family and is still so young . . . It’s a grim travesty that we should find ourselves with two young widows on our hands.’
‘I do not know that she wishes to sell the ships – at least for the time being. She seems to feel Stephen would have wanted her to keep them. I think they would give her a sense of independence greater than she would have just with the money they would fetch. Also she wants to look after Stephen’s nephew, for a few months at least. She says he is utterly lost.’
‘She must have time to adjust herself. It will take months, perhaps years. Of course there will be other men in the world. But not too soon.’
‘Do you know what she said to me? It was the strangest thing!’
‘What?’
‘We were just talking, just talking, and I said like you said, that she was so young, she had all her life ahead of her. I’d never’ve dreamed of saying anything about her marrying again. ’Twould have been premature and improper and impertinent. But she must’ve read my thoughts, or ’twas in the air in some strange way.’ Demelza took off her hat and let the wind r
uffle her hair. ‘She said: “I married once for love, Mama. If I ever come to marry again,” she said, “it will not be for love, it will be for wealth or position.” ’
Ross was silent.
Demelza said: ‘Does that not surprise you?’
‘It astounds me. You are right to say she has changed. But it means . . .’
‘It surely means that her marriage was not altogether successful.’
‘A lot of marriages are not altogether successful. Look around. But it is sad if she discovered it so early. And it is the bitterest thing for her to say.’
‘Yet she clearly loved Stephen. I cannot fathom it.’
Ross took her hat from her and they walked towards the house.
Demelza said: ‘Lady Harriet has had twins, I hear. All are well. They are both girls.’
‘George will be beside himself with annoyance,’ said Ross, not without satisfaction.
‘I s’pose he laid great store by having another son. There has been no reconciliation between him and Valentine, has there?’
‘Nor ever like to be,’ said Ross.
Demelza glanced up at him sharply as they went in. ‘Valentine called here once while I was away?’
‘Who told you?’
‘Mrs Kemp just mentioned it.’
‘It was in October. He did not come in. We walked down from Grace together and talked for a few minutes.’
‘Did he say they could never be reconciled?’
‘He gave me that impression.’
‘Never is a long time. I think I rather hope they will . . . Did he want anything when he came?’
‘It was just to say goodbye before they left for Cambridge.’
Demelza thought this one through. ‘Why did you say they would never be reconciled?’
‘A feeling I have.’
‘Something he said.’
‘Just a feeling I have.’
She was very perceptive of nuances in Ross’s voice, but after a moment she decided she should not pursue it.