And Ross. She had Ross. Or thought she had. But he was far away. And for too long had been far away. And here was the worm in the bud, the rot in the deeps of the heart.
To try to take her mind off it she sat on a granite stone – a part of the old Wheal Maiden house that had not been utilized by the Methodists – and stared again after the retreating figure of Rosina, so distant now as to be almost out of sight. The sky was brilliantly clear after the inflamed temper of yesterday; even the few dark clouds to the south over Sawle Church’s leaning spire were retreating with the advent of dusk. It was understandable that folk should suppose some similarity between themselves and the climate and imbue the wind and the storm with human characteristics. Yesterday the weather had been in a vile rage; it had cursed and sworn and quarrelled with everyone and thrown the crockery; now it had blown itself out, the temper was over and in the reaction it seemed tranquil in its exhaustion. You couldn’t believe it was the same person.
The trouble with Rosina, Demelza thought, was that she was betwixt and between. With the skill of her fingers she was able to dress in humble good taste; she had even taught herself to read and write; but these skills and small evidences of a wish to be difFerent set her above the ordinary miner or fisherman with his untutored manners and blunt approach to life. They were probably as much put off by her, thinking themselves inferior to her, as she by them, thinking the opposite; and it was hard on her for she met no one else.
Of course, Demelza thought, she herself had two brothers, both crossed in love. Sam, the elder, had fallen in love with the loud, jolly, lusty Emma Tregirls, and she with him; and only his religion stood between them. But she could not swallow his intense Methodism, which filled his whole life, nor, being an honest young woman, was she willing to pretend that she had. So she had moved and become a parlourmaid at Tehidy ten miles away. In some respects Rosina would suit Sam much better than Emma, if only he could be persuaded to see it that way.
But people never fitted into convenient pigeon-holes. Also, it had been at Demelza’s suggestion, seeing them in complete deadlock, that Emma had gone away, with the agreement that they should meet again in a year’s time. It had been through Demelza that Emma had got her new position. It would be anything but fair, therefore, to try to fit Sam up with another wife before even the year was out.
That left Drake, the younger brother. Drake was in a much worse state, having fallen in love with Elizabeth Warleggan’s cousin, Morwenna, and then seen her married off to the Reverend Osborne Whitworth, vicar of St Margaret’s, Truro, by whom she now had a two-year-old son. Drake was in a worse state, but because it was hopeless, he might be a more suitable subject for speculation. Morwenna was out of his reach for ever. The marriage bond, once undertaken, was indissoluble, and, however unhappy Morwenna might be as the vicar’s wife, one could never see her running away from him and setting up house with Drake in defiance of all the laws and conventions of the land.
So Drake’s case was hopeless, and for nearly three years he had known it to be, and for nearly three years he had lived in a state of utter depression and had never looked at another woman. And two years ago Ross had bought him a small property and a blacksmith’s shop a mile this side of St Ann’s, so now he was a respectable tradesman and one of the catches of the neighbourhood. But he never looked at a girl. At least he never looked at one in the way young men were accustomed to look. He was emotionally frozen, physically frozen, doomed to sterile bachelordom, his memory totally dominating his present thoughts so that they remained fixed on a girl long since lost. What was more, one couldn’t be absolutely convinced that it would have been a good match even had it ever been able to take place. Morwenna was a reserved, shy, genteelly educated girl, a dean’s daughter, far more ‘above’ Drake than Rosina was above the average miner. Could one have seen her as a blacksmith’s wife, cooking the meals, washing the clothes, scouring the floor? Surely it would all have gone stale very soon.
Of course Drake was still only twenty-two; three years was nothing in a man’s life at that age. But Demelza distrusted a vacuum; there seemed to be a risk in it; and she thought Drake might get set in his melancholy. He was always very pleasant but she terribly missed his gaiety. In the old days it had bubbled from him in an irrepressible way. Of all her brothers he was the most like her, seeking and finding pleasure in all the small things.
So. It was perhaps risky to try to play the matchmaker. It was also probably useless. The spark came from nowhere, and no one could supply the spark. But there was a long word that Demelza had heard used recently and, when she discovered what it meant, one she specially liked the sound of. It was propinquity. You didn’t actually do anything. Or nothing obvious, that was. Nothing that anybody could possibly object to. You just arranged things so that propinquity took place. Then you waited and watched to see if there was any result.
And she alone probably of all people in the district was in a position to contrive such propinquity. She must bend her mind on how best to achieve it.
A gentle breeze blew out of the west as she got up to go. A solitary horseman was coming across the moorland. She turned and began to walk home, her mind comforted by the thought of what she might arrange. Once before, long years ago, she had brought all sorts of trouble on herself by trying to arrange meetings between Ross’s cousin Verity and a Falmouth sea captain with a bad reputation. She really should know better than to meddle in other people’s lives. Yet hadn’t there been justification finally after all the trouble, at the very end? Wasn’t Verity now married to her sea captain, and happily married? Wasn’t that the best result of all?
She stopped to lift her skirt and look at the back of her knee where something was tickling. Sure enough, it was an ant who had wandered off his stone wall and was exploring impermissible regions. She flipped him off with her finger and let her skirt fall. But she did not go on. A peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach. What horseman would come this way at dusk? And was there not something familiar about the way he sat his horse? Oh, rubbish, he would have written. He would have sent word. Gimlett would have had to meet him in Truro. Parliament did not end its sittings for weeks yet. It was one of the Trenegloses. Or some visitor they had invited. There was nowhere else to go on this track at all. The hamlet of Mellin? Nampara House? Mingoose House? That was all before the waste of sandhills to the north-east.
She turned back to the brow of the hill. She stood on the brow of the hill beside the chapel, shading her eyes, though what light there was was behind her. The figure was appreciably nearer. She had never seen the horse before. The rider she had.
She began to run down the hill, shoes scuffing on the rough track, hair flying, to meet him.
Chapter Two
I
Some hours before the second weary traveller reached home, the first one had arrived at his destination, St Margaret’s vicarage, Truro; but no light-footed, long-legged, eager young woman had come running to greet him.
This was not a disappointment, for he had not expected it. Nor would he ever expect it from his wife, for she, alas, was insane.
It was a terrible cross the Rev Osborne Whitworth had to bear. Having been bereaved at a very early age of his charming if feckless, but doting first wife, he had married quickly again, anxious not only to provide a new mother for his two orphaned little girls but to furnish a new life-companion for himself, a young woman who would be at his side for his mutual society, help and comfort in prosperity and adversity, a young woman, moreover, who would help him to avoid the sin of fornication and be of one flesh with him as an undefiled member of Christ’s body; and in so doing, no doubt, conceive and bring forth more children – particularly a son – in the fear and nurture of the Lord and to the praise of His Holy Name. In making his choice it had not seemed anything but natural to him to look also for a girl with some connections and money to her name.
So, reverently, discreetly, advisedly and soberly, he had picked on Morwenna Chynoweth, a tall, shy, dark
-skinned creature of eighteen; short-sighted, not pretty by any ordinary standards, but with a perfectly beautiful body. She was genteelly born, too, the daughter of the late dean of Bodmin, and her cousin was George Warleggan’s wife. The Warleggans being not at all genteel, in spite of all their efforts to appear so . . . but they were very rich and becoming ever richer, and after some hard bargaining George had settled a sufficient sum on Morwenna to make the marriage a practical proposition. Quite clearly he was aware of the advantages to himself of being associated with a family as distinguished as the Whitworths, who themselves were related to the Godolphins.
So the marriage had been arranged and had taken place, and the small matter of Morwenna’s objections had been confidently set aside. After all, no girl of that age knew her own mind; and for a creature virtually without expectations the offer of such a union was like opening a gate to a new life. No person in her senses could refuse. And as for the physical side of the matter, Ossie had been confident enough of his own male charms to be sure that her awakening would rouse in her a quiet adoration. Of course it didn’t much matter if it did not, for carnal desire and pleasure were male characteristics and the female was sufficiently gratified by the attention she received without further reward.
So it had begun, and for a while Ossie had not noticed any danger signals. She had submitted five times a week, and, although on occasions her attitude and her facial expressions had been far from flattering, he had not taken too much notice of them. Then she had borne him a child, and a male child at that, a healthy, vigorous, thrusting, heavy, greedy baby whom Osborne had instantly recognized and acknowledged as his very own son and spiritual heir, but she herself had suffered at the birth, and it was at this stage that the first signs of insanity began to show. Her slight aversion to the procreative act had become a rabid one, and, aided in the first place by the advice of that insufferable charlatan, Dr Dwight Enys, she had begun to refuse her husband his appropriate and proper rights.
But worse, far worse, was to come. She had persuaded him to hire her youngest sister Rowella, to come to the house to help look after the children, and then, delusive insanity growing hourly, had imagined that some sort of a liaison was developing between Rowella and Osborne himself and had screamed at him one night with lunatic eyes and hair hanging like seaweed that he must never – never, mark you! – lay hand on her again. When he was about to ignore this demented command she had shrieked at him that if he were to take her against her will she would the next day – the very next day, mark you! – kill, murder, put to death the child of her own womb, John Conan Osborne Whitworth.
It was a cross heavier than any man should be asked to bear, and the Rev Mr Whitworth was seriously considering what steps might be taken to lift the weight from him. A rich man – a really rich man without religious obligations – would no doubt easily find a way. But he, Osborne, was in the wrong calling. When one worked in God’s service one was supposed to bear unhappiness bravely, and it would be no aid to his further career if it was thought by his brother clerks in holy orders that he had acted prematurely or selfishly in having her – well – put away. One of these days he must go to Exeter to see the bishop, pour out his heart and see if he could get the bishop on his side. That would be the great step forward, but it must be approached cautiously. That fool, Dr Behenna, was no help, arguing as he did that Mrs Whitworth suffered nothing worse than depressive spells of melancholia.
So plodding down on his heavy legs behind his manservant, down almost to the river’s brim where the ancient church and its vicarage seemed to stand with their feet in the tree-lined mud, he made no conversation, and when he entered the drawing-room on the first floor he found Morwenna sitting by the window sewing in the slanting sunlight.
She rose when she saw him. ‘Osborne. You are a little earlier than I expected you. Will you take tea?’
‘The coach left earlier.’ He walked across to the mantelshelf on which stood three letters that had come for him in his absence. ‘Where is John?’
‘In the garden with Sarah and Anne.’
‘You should not leave him unattended. There is the hazard of the river.’
‘He is not unattended, Lottie is with them.’
(Lottie was the girl engaged to take the place of Morwenna’s slut of a sister, who had been married off in disgrace to a local librarian called Solway. Rowella Solway. Lottie was pockmarked and inefficient but anything was better than the impudent, debased creature who preceded her.)
Ossie took out his watch. ‘I suppose you’ve finished dinner,’ he said grudgingly. ‘What have we in the house? Nothing, I’ll be bound.’
‘We have spring chicken and a tongue. And part of a leg of mutton. And custards and some tart.’
‘And all very ill-cooked and totally lacking in flavour,’ said Ossie. ‘I know. It is not until one has dined at one of the great houses that one realizes the uncouthness of the food one is expected to eat in one’s own home.’
Morwenna looked at her husband. ‘Did things not go well with you at Tregrehan?’
‘Well? Of course they went well! Why should you suppose different?’ Ossie turned his letters over. One, he knew from the copper-plate writing, was from that gout-ridden old buffer, Nat Pearce, no doubt inviting him to whist. A second was from one of his churchwardens, probably voicing some pettifogging complaint. On the third the name and address was printed in copper-plate lettering with a fine pen, the seal on the back of plain sealing wax and bearing no impress. He looked up and met his wife’s gaze. She was so untidy these days, her hair not properly combed; her frock looked as if it had been slept in. Another sign of the creeping dementia. He really must bring pressure to bear on Behenna. Ossie was not sure if he really believed her threat to kill John if provoked by his husbandly attentions; but – but – he had never dared to call her bluff. However, if she continued to go downhill and began to suffer delusions – such as her wild fantasy that he had been carrying on with her repulsive sister – if that happened she might well imagine that she had been molested against her will, and then was John safe?
‘Did you have a tiresome journey?’ Morwenna asked, forcing herself into a solicitude she did not feel, seeking some reason for his being so out of temper.
‘Tiresome? Yes, indeed it was tiresome.’ Reminded, Ossie scratched himself. ‘Those coaches are a disgrace, they’re alive with fleas and silver fish and wood lice. They never use a fumigant or even seem to brush the cushions. Next time I shall hire a post-chaise . . . And that impudent squireen, Poldark, was aboard.’
‘Poldark? Do you mean Ross Poldark?’
‘Who else? There’s only one, isn’t there? God be praised. As arrogant, as presumptuous, as ever.’
‘I suppose he was returning from London, from Parliament.’
‘Of course, and home too soon. George was not so neglectful of his duties when he was a member. No doubt Poldark has trouble in his mine, or something of that sort.’ Ossie broke the seal on the third leter.
‘Did he say so?’
‘Did he what?’ Ossie stared at the letter.
‘Say that it was something wrong with his mine?’
‘No, of course not. Not in so many words.’ The writing was not printed and he knew it very well. It was as tidy and precise as Mr Pearce’s, though not so ornate. Against all reasonable judgment, his heart began to beat noticeably.
Dear Vicar,
I hope you will forgive me for addressing you after so long an interval; but I am in hope – indeed I mention the hope each night in my prayers – that the passage of two years will have brought about an amelioration of those hard feelings that you once had for me. (Though never, I assure you, did I ever feel anything but gratitude towards you and my sister for the kindly and comfortable home you gave me, nor to you for the Attention and Affection you showed.)
But I have tried many times to see Morwenna and every time she has refused me admission, and once when I attempted to speak to her in the street she turned c
oldly away. I do not suppose, judging from this, that I shall ever again be welcome in your house or in your church. I appreciate, too, that having married so far beneath me, this is an added bar to any full Reconciliation. Yet we live in the same town and must continue to, and I would so like to feel that any real enmity that existed is at an end. (My cousin, Mrs Elizabeth Warleggan, receives me from time to time, and should we chance one day all to meet there together, embarrassment would be avoided if we could greet each other without obvious coldness or distaste.) If you have influence with Morwenna, I pray you will use it to this end.
Vicar, it is two years now since I left your house to marry Arthur, and at the time, inadvertently, I carried away some books of yours among my own. These are two volumes of Latimer’s discourses and the collected sermons of Jeremy Taylor. I have often wanted to return them but have wondered how best I might do this without seeming to presume. If I come to your door I know I shall be turned away. If you would write me a line I could leave them with Arthur in the Library, or, since you are often in the town and passing by my door at number seventeen Calenick Street, could I ask you to call in for them? I am usually at home in the afternoons and would look on this as a special sign of your condescension and forgiveness.