Demelza

  They stopped at a tollhouse and bargained for some breakfast and rested. The sight of Mark’s clinking purse put Keren in a good humor again, and they set off brightly enough on the next lap with her arm linked in his. Only another eight or nine miles to go and they would be there well before noon. She was quite excited, for novelty always appealed to her, and though she had never in her darkest dreams thought of marrying a miner, there was something romantic in the idea of running away and in going to church and making solemn vows and going back with him to a house specially built for her, for them. It was like one of the plays she acted in.

  After a time came the discomfort of sore heels, and she went lame. They rested again and she bathed her feet in a stream. They went on, but not very far, and at length he picked her up and began to carry her.

  She enjoyed it for a time; it was so much easier than walking and she liked to have his great arms about her and to feel his lungs breathing in the air. People stared, but she did not mind until they came to a hamlet and walked down the winding muddy lane between the cottages, followed by a trickle of jeering, half-naked urchins. She was indignant and wanted him to lay about them, but he walked stolidly on without a glimmer of a change of expression.

  After that, he carried her in the open country and set her down when a cluster of cottages came in sight. So they made progress, but it was slow, and the sun, peering through a rift of cloud, was high as they reached the gates of Mingoose.

  A mile and a half to Mellin, then two miles to Sawle Church. If they were not there before noon, the wedding would have to wait another day.

  He hastened his steps and at last set her down on the Marasanvose track, with Mellin just over the next rise. They had no time to go and see his cottage. She washed her face in a little pool and he did the same. Then she combed her hair with a property comb she had “borrowed,” and they limped down into Mellin.

  Little Maggie Martin saw them first and went screaming in to her mother that they were there at last. When they reached the first cottage, everyone had turned out to meet them. Most of the able-bodied were asleep or at work, but the very old and the very young and one or two of the women did their best to make it a hearty welcome. There was no time to waste in talk, and Mark Daniel and his bride-to-be set off at once for Sawle. But they were the head of a comet with a tenuous tail, made up of Grannie Daniel and Aunt Betsy Triggs and Mrs. Zacky and Sue Vigus and a sputter of excited toddlers.

  They hurried, Mark with his great strides nearly outdistancing Keren in the last stages, but it was twenty minutes to noon when they reached Sawle Church. Then they could not find Mr. Odgers. Mrs. Odgers, confronted by a dark, gaunt, hollow-eyed, unshaven man with a desperate and ungenteel manner, confessed timidly that Mr. Odgers had given them up and she had last seen him going out in the garden. It was Aunt Betsy who flushed him from behind a blackcurrant bush, and by then it was ten minutes to twelve. He began to raise objections as to legality and haste, until Mrs. Zacky, flat-faced and spectacled and persuasive, took him by one thin arm and led him respectfully into church.

  So the spiritual bond was sealed, with the clock in the vestry striking twelve as Mark put a brass ring on Keren’s long slender hand.

  After the usual formalities (Mark Daniel, his mark; Kerenhappuch Smith, proudly written), they had to call in at Ned Bottrell’s cottage near the church and have their health drunk in cider and ale, and it was some time before they could begin the walk back to Mellin. Then the walk became a triumphal procession, for it was the end of the morning core. Something in “bachelor” Mark’s dogged courtship and his house-building had caught the imagination of the miners and bal girls, and a whole group of them joined on and escorted the newlyweds back to Mellin.

  Keren was not quite sure how to take all of it, how far she should unbend toward the people she was coming to live among. She took a dislike to old Grannie Daniel, and she thought Beth Daniel, Paul’s wife, a plain drudge who couldn’t open her mouth because of jealousy. But some of the men seemed nice enough and ready to be friendly in a rough but respectful way. She looked up at them out of the corners of her eyes and let them see that they were more acceptable than their womenfolk.

  As a special treat they had a big dish of tea and rabbit pasties with leeks and baked barley crusts, and it all passed off pretty well. There were bursts of conversation and as sudden silences, when everyone seemed to be watching everyone else, but it was the first time any of them except Mark had met her and it was bound to be strange.

  By the time it was all over, the day was done. At Mark’s request there was to be no joking or following them to the new house. He’d earned his quiet.

  The evening sun was warm on their backs as they climbed the rise out of Mellin, and it had lit up all the west with a gold light. The contrast of color was vivid where the bright sky met the cobalt sea.

  They went down toward their cottage. Presently she stopped.

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited.

  “Oh,” she said and went on.

  They came near to the door. He thought how commonplace and rough it was, seeing the house he had built behind the figure of the girl he had married. Everything was so crude, made with loving hands maybe, but crude and rough. Loving hands were not enough; you had to have skill and time.

  They went in, and he saw that someone had lit a big fire in the open chimney he had made. It burned and crackled and roared and made the rough room cheerful and warm.

  “That’s Beth’s doing,” he said gratefully.

  “What is?”

  “The fire. She slipped out; I wondered why. She’s a rare good one.”

  “She doesn’t like me,” said Keren, rustling the clean straw underfoot.

  “Yes, she do, Keren. Tedn that but only that she’s Methody and don’t hold wi’ play-going an’ such like.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t,” said Keren ominously. “What does she know about it, I’d like to know.”

  Mark stared around.

  “It’s…awful rough for you, Keren. But it has all been builded in four days and ’twill take weeks to make it just so as we shall want it.”

  He looked at her expectantly.

  “Oh, it’s nice,” said Keren. “I think it’s a nice house. Fifty times better than those old cottages over the hill.”

  His dark face lighted up. “We’ll make it betterer as we go along. There’s—there’s much to be done. ’Twas only giving you a roof that I was about.”

  He put his arm around her tentatively, and when she put up her face, he kissed her. It was like kissing a butterfly, soft and frail and elusive.

  She turned her head. “What’s in there?”

  “That’s where we’ll sleep,” he said. “I’d intended for a room upstairs, but tedn near finished yet. So I made this for the time.”

  She went into the next room and her feet again felt straw underfoot. It was like living in a cattle shed. Oh, well, as he said, it could be changed.

  He went across and pushed open the shutter to let the light in. There was a big wooden shelf across one corner of the room, raised about a foot from the floor. On it was a sack mattress stuffed with straw and two thin blankets.

  “You should have built the house facing west,” she said, “then we’d have had the evening sun.”

  “I didn’t think o’ that,” he said, crestfallen.

  It was hers. Hers alone to do with as she chose; that was something.

  “D’you mean you made all this house since I saw you last?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Lord sakes,” she said, “I can scarcely credit it.”

  That delighted him and he kissed her again. Presently she wriggled out of his arms.

  “Go leave me now, Mark. Go sit by the fire an’ I’ll join you presently. I’ll give you a surprise.”

  He we
nt out, bending his great height in the door.

  She stood for a time staring out of the window, at the barren prospect of the gully with the dried-up stream and the mining rubble all around. Up the other side of the valley the ground was better; there was the turret of a house and trees. Why hadn’t he built up there?

  She went across and put her fingers on the bed. Well, the straw was dry. It wasn’t so very long since she’d slept on wet straw. And it could be made so much better still. After the first disappointment, her spirits rose. No more wrangling with Tupper or smelling Otway’s drunken breath. No more hunger or dismal treks across moors and bogs. No more playing to empty pigsties and half-wit yokels. It was home.

  She moved to the window again and closed one of the shutters. A group of seagulls flying high looked gold and pink in the sunlight against the cloudy eastern sky. The light was failing in the shallow rift in the moor, especially in the house—always it would be dark early in that house with all the windows facing the wrong way.

  She knew he would be waiting for her. She did not shirk her part of the bargain but looked toward it with a faint sensuous lassitude. She slowly undressed, and when she had taken everything off, she shivered a little and closed the other shutter. In the semidarkness of the new room she passed her hands caressingly down her smooth flanks, stretched and yawned, then put on her black-and-pink faded smock and fluffed out her hair. That would do. He’d be overcome as it was. That would do.

  Bare feet rustling in the straw, she passed through to the kitchen and thought for a moment he had gone out. Then she saw him sitting in the shadows on the floor, his head against the wooden bench. He was asleep.

  She was angry in a moment.

  “Mark!” she said.

  He did not reply. She went over and knelt beside him and stared into his dark face. He had shaved at Mellin, but already his strong beard was beginning to sprout again. His face was hollow and shadowed with fatigue, his mouth half open. She thought how ugly he was.

  “Mark!” she said again, loudly.

  His breathing went on.

  “Mark!” She grasped the collar of his jacket and roughly shook him. His head tapped against the bench and his breathing halted, but he showed no signs of waking.

  She got up and stared down at him. Anger began to give way to contempt. He was as bad as Tupper, lying there so limp and so foolish. What had she married, a man who fell dead asleep on his wedding night, who hadn’t the spark to be excited? It was an insult to her. A great insult.

  Well, it was as he chose. She was not all that particular. If he wanted to snore away there like a great black dog, well…it was his loss, not hers. She’d not defaulted. Let him be. She gave a short laugh and then began to giggle as she saw the funny side of it. She giggled and giggled as she moved slowly away from him toward the other room. But her laughter was softer so she should not wake him.

  Chapter Nine

  On his daylight visit to the cottage at Reath, Ross had also noted the turret among the trees on the farther slope. It was one of the gatehouses of Mingoose and was in a bad state, but there were a number of usable rooms still and Ross had an idea.

  He took it to Mr. Horace Treneglos, who tramped across regularly to inspect their mine since it was showing a return.

  “Who is this Dwight Enys, what?” Mr. Treneglos shouted. “Think you he’s worth encouraging? Think you he’s experienced at his profession?”

  “Enys is eager, sharp, and keen. It is good to encourage youth, and Choake has no intention of serving us since I quarreled with him.”

  “I wisht we’d found a quieter place for our lode,” said Mr. Treneglos, clutching at his hat. “It is always so damned windy up here. For my part, as you know, I’ve no great fancy for these physical people, young or old. But I’m out to please you, and if the Gatehouse would satisfy the stripling he may have it at some nominal rent for the repairing.”

  A fortnight later there was a ticketing at Truro, to which Wheal Leisure Mine was sending two parcels of ore, so Ross rode in early and called on the Pascoes before the auction began. Dwight Enys was away, but he wrote him a note and left.

  Samples of the ore to be marketed had already been examined and tested and whispered over by agents of the copper companies, and at those ticketings it was left only for the various companies to put in a bid for the ore. Not for them the vulgar excitement of a common auction, where one buyer ran another up higher than he wanted to go. Instead, each company put in a bid in writing, the chairman opened those offering tickets, and the consignments of copper went to the company that had put in the highest bid.

  The bidding that day was even poorer than of late, and some parcels of ore went for less than half their real value. It was the custom of the companies when they did not want a particular parcel to put in a very low bid nevertheless, and if, as not infrequently happened, every other company did the same, one of those low bids made the sale. It meant a heavy loss for the mine concerned, and in the present state of trade no mine could afford it.

  A great dinner at the inn always followed the ticketing, given by the mines, at which buyers and sellers—the lions and the lambs, as a wry humorist called them—sat down together, but there was a noticeable lack of good spirits among the feasters. Ross had been surprised to see Francis at the sale—usually the manager of Grambler came—and he knew it to be a sign that his cousin was making a last bid to keep Grambler Mine on its great unwieldy feet.

  For all his poise, he looked harassed and inept, and as if threatened by specters that existed in half-ignored corners of his mind.

  On his left, Ross had Richard Tonkin, the manager and one of the shareholders in United Mines—the largest tin- and copper-producing combine in the county—and halfway through the meal Tonkin whispered in Ross’s ear, “I trust you have made some progress with your scheme.”

  Ross looked at him.

  “You mean the extension at Wheal Leisure?”

  Tonkin smiled. “No, sir. The project for forming a copper smelting company to promote the interests of the mines.”

  Ross’s look became a stare. “I have no such project in hand, Mr. Tonkin.”

  The other man was a little incredulous. “I hope you are joking. Mr. Blewett told me…and Mr. Aukett…that there was some prospect of such a scheme. I should have been very happy to lend my aid.”

  “Mr. Blewett and Mr. Aukett,” said Ross, “made much of a chance discussion. I have not given it another thought.”

  “That comes as a very great disappointment to me. I was in hope—others too were in hope—that something would arise from it. There can surely be little doubt that we have need of such a company.”

  The dinner broke up with men going off in twos and threes to find their horses and ride home before dusk, some staying at the table to sup a last glass of port or nod tipsily over a snuffbox, others talking in groups on the way downstairs or at the door of the inn.

  Ross stayed behind to talk with Francis. Though there was no ill will between them, they saw little of each other. Ross had heard that Grambler Mine had been reprieved for the time being, but he kept the conversation to family topics, being afraid of treading on Francis’s sensitive corns.

  Chatting amiably, they went downstairs, where the innkeeper touched Ross on the arm.

  “Beg your pardon, sir, but would you oblige a man by steppin’ this way, just for a small matter of a moment or two? An’ you too, sir, if ’tis agreeable an’ convenient.”

  Ross stared at him and went down two steps into his private parlor. It was a gloomy little room, for the windows looked out upon a high wall, but occupying it, in varying positions of comfort, were fourteen men.

  Francis, following him in, stumbled over the house cat, swore and raised his foot to kick away the obstruction, then saw what it was and picked the animal up by its scruff, coming into the room close behind Ross and elbowing him farther i
n.

  “God’s my life,” he said, looking around.

  It was not until Ross recognized Tonkin and Blewett and Aukett among the men that he smelled what was in the wind.

  “Sit down, Captain Poldark,” said Harry Blewett, vacating a chair by the window. “Glad we was able to catch you before you took your leave.”

  “Thanks,” said Ross. “I’ll stand.”

  “Damn,” said Francis. “It looks like a pesky Bible meeting. Here, beast, you shall be chairman, and mind you call us to order.” He leaned forward and dropped the cat on the empty seat.

  “Captain Poldark,” Tonkin said, “it was fortunate that you were late in coming down, for we have had the chance of talking together here in private, those of us you see around you, and no doubt you have an idea what our subject has been.”

  “I have an idea,” said Ross.

  “Sink me if I can say the same,” remarked Francis.

  “We would like your word, sir,” a big man named Johnson leaned across and said to Francis, “that anything that passes here is in the strictest confidence.”

  “Very well.”

  “We may take it that you find no satisfaction in the business done today?” Richard Tonkin asked.

  Grambler had been one of the worst sufferers. “You may take that,” said Francis, “and pin it where you will.”

  “No, well, there’s many of us here feels quite the same. And we’ve met here and now to say what’s to be done by it.”

  Francis said, “Then we’re here to set the world to rights. It will be a long session.”

  “Not so long as might be,” Tonkin said quietly. “For we have a plan in mind, Mr. Poldark, which is to form a copper company of our own, one that will exist outside the ring, will give fair prices for the ore, will smelt the copper in this county, and will market the refined product direct. All of us here, more than a dozen, are willing to join together, and between us we stand for a fair share of the mines in this area. And between us, even in these hard times, we can lay our hands on a measure of cash. But this is a small beginning, Mr. Poldark, to what will surely come to us when the project gets about—if it can be done privately and in the right way. And there’s some of the richest mines not here today. In good times unfair prices can be borne because there is a margin for all, but in bad times like the present, there’s only one way out short of bankruptcy for half of us here!”