“Then don’t believe it,” Demelza said. “If you’ve not the mind to ask her straight, leave it be and do no more. There’s always evil tongues in this district, and like serpents they are. Maybe you know the things that used to be whispered about me…”
“No,” said Mark, looking up. “I never took no heed of such talk…not—not before…”
“Then why take heed of it now? Do you know, Mark, that there’s whispers about that Captain Poldark is the father of Jinny Carter’s first child, all on account of them having scars similar placed?”
“No,” said Mark. He spat. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but ’tis a cabby lie. I know that, an’ so do any other right-minded man. A wicked lie.”
“Well, but if I chose to think there was truth in it, I might be just as miserable as you, mightn’t I, Mark?”
The big man looked at her, an uncertain but noticeable reassurance on his face. Then he looked down at his hands.
“I near strangled the man who told me. Maybe I was overhasty. I’ve scarce done a stroke at the mine these two days.”
“I know how you must have felt.”
Suddenly he sought justification and, finding it, found suspicion again.
“You see—you see, she’s that pretty an’ dainty, mistress. She’s far above the likes of me. Maybe I did wrong in plaguing her to wed me, but—but I wanted her for wife. She’s too good for a miner’s wife, and when I know that, I feel anxious. I get hard and overhasty. I get suspecting. And then when there’s whispers, and a man who belongs to call himself friend takes me aside and says—and says… It is easy to slip, Mistress Poldark, and feel there’s truth in what may be lies.” He considered the sea. “Dirty lies. If they bain’t… I couldn’t stand by. So ’elp me, I couldn’t. Not and see ’er go to another. No…” The muscles of his throat worked a moment. “Thank ye again, ma’am. I’m more in your debt. I’ll forget and start anew. Maybe I’ll come and see Cap’n Poldark when he is home, but maybe what you’ve said’ll put things straight in my mind. Good day to ye.”
“Good day,” said Demelza and stood watching his great figure striding east toward the sand hills and his home. She began to walk back the way she had come, toward Nampara. Who is Keren carrying on with? she thought, instinctively believing what she had sought to discredit. Who is there that she could carry on with? Keren, who affected to look down on all the cottage folk.
When Ross came back, she would mention it to him, see what he said. It looked as if someone ought to warn not Mark but Keren. She would be very sorry for Keren—and the man—if Mark found them out. Keren should be told that her husband was suspicious. It might just frighten her off someone and perhaps save a tragedy. She would remember to tell Ross when he came home.
Then, as she climbed the wall from the beach, she saw Ross dismount at the door of Nampara and go into the house, and she ran quickly up the slope calling him. Mark Daniel and Keren were forgotten and would stay forgotten for a long time.
Chapter Twenty-One
She found him in the parlor taking off his gloves.
“Ross!” she said. “I thought you was never coming home. I thought—”
He turned.
“Oh, Ross,” she said. “What’s to do?”
“Is Jinny here yet?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she can be.”
He sat down. “I saw Zacky early. Perhaps he was able to tell her before she left.”
“What is it?” she asked.
He looked up at her. “Jim is dead.”
She faltered and looked at him, then dropped her eyes. She came over and took his hand.
“Oh, my dear…I’m that sorry. Oh, poor Jinny. Ross, dear…”
“You should not come near me,” he said. “I have been in infection.”
For answer she pulled up a chair beside him, stared at his face.
“What happened?” she said. “Did you see him?”
“Have you brandy?”
She got up and brought him some. She could tell he had drunk a good deal already.
“He had been taken to Launceston,” he said. “We found him in jail with the fever. The place should be burned down. It is worse than an ancient pest house. Well, he was ill and we took him out…”
“You took him out?”
“We were stronger than the jailer. We carried him to a barn and Dwight did what he could. But a quack doctor had let blood while he was in the jail, and his arm had festered and gone poor. There was only one hope, which was to have it off before the poison spread.”
“His—his arm?”
Ross finished the brandy at a gulp.
“The king and his ministers should have been there—Pitt and Addison and Fox. And Wilberforce, who weeps over the black slaves while forgetting the people at his own door, and the fat prince with his corsets and his mistresses…Or perhaps they would have been entertained by the spectacle, they and their powdered and painted women. Heaven knows, I have lost hope of understanding men. Well, Dwight did his best and spared no effort. Jim lived until the early morning, but the shock was too great. At the end I think he knew me. He smiled and seemed to want to speak, but he had not the strength. So he went, and we saw him buried in Lawhitton Church and so came home.”
There was silence. His vehemence and bitterness frightened her. Upstairs, as from a homely world, was the sound of Julia grizzling. Abruptly he rose and went to the window, stared out over his well-ordered estate.
“Was Dr. Enys with you in all this?” she asked.
“We were so tired yesterday that we lay last night in Truro. That is why we are here so early today. I—saw Zacky on the way home. He was riding on company business but turned back.”
“It were better that you had not gone, Ross. I—”
“It is bad that I did not go a fortnight sooner. Then there would have been hope.”
“What will the magistrates and the constables say? That you broke into the jail and helped a prisoner to escape, Ross. Will there not be trouble over that?”
“Trouble, yes. The bees will hum if I do not plaster them with honey.”
“Then…”
“Yes, let them hum, Demelza. I wish them good fortune. I should be almost induced to go among ’em as arranged at tomorrow’s celebrations if I thought they might catch the fever from me.”
She came urgently up to him. “Don’t talk so, Ross. Do you not feel well? Do you feel you have caught it?”
After a moment, he put his hand on her arm, looking at her and seeing her for the first time since he came home.
“No, love. I am well enough. I should be well, for Dwight took strange precautions that seemed to please him: washing our clothes and hanging them over a burning pitch barrel to get out the stink of the jail. But do not expect me to dance and play with these people tomorrow when their handiwork is still fresh in my mind.”
Demelza was silent. Between the thankfulness that Ross was home—perhaps safe but at least home—and the sorrow for Jim and Jinny, a desolation was beginning to appear, a knowledge that all her own plans were in ruin. She might have argued, but she had neither the tongue nor the lack of loyalty to do so.
For it did seem to her just then a matter of loyalty. He must do as he chose and she, at whatever disappointment, must accept it.
• • •
He was not at all himself that day. She, who had known Jim little enough, wondered at the bitterness of his loss. For it was bitterness as well as sorrow. He had known Jim’s loyalty to himself and had given a greater loyalty in return. Always it seemed to him he had striven to help the young man and always his efforts had come too late. Well, that was the last effort and the failure was final. At five he went to see Jinny. He hated the thought of meeting her, but there was no one else to do it.
He was gone an hour. When he came back, she had a meal ready for him, but
at first he would not touch anything. Later, coaxingly, like tempting a child, she got him to taste first one thing and then another. It was a new experience for her. At seven Jane cleared the table and he sat back in his chair by the fire, stretching his legs, not appeased in mind but quieter in body and just beginning to relax.
And then the frock came.
Demelza frowned at the great box and carried it in to Ross, only just getting through the parlor door.
“Bartle has just brought this,” she said. “Over from Trenwith. They sent into Truro today for provisions, and Mistress Trelask asked would they deliver this. What can it be?”
“Is Bartle still there? Give him sixpence, will you.”
Ross stared at the box bleakly until Demelza came back. Then she too stared at it, between glances at him.
“I thought it was a mistake. I thought Bartle must have brought it wrong. Have you been buying something at Mistress Trelask’s, Ross?”
“Yes,” he said. “It seems like a year ago. On my way to Launceston I called in to order you a frock.”
“Oh,” said Demelza, her dark eyes widening.
“For the celebrations tomorrow. That was when I still thought we should go.”
“Oh, Ross. You’re that kind. Could I see it?”
“If you’ve the interest,” he said. “It will do for some time in the future.”
She fell on the box and began to pull at the cord. She at last wriggled it free and lifted the lid. She pulled out some sheets of paper and loose cloth packing and stopped. She put in her fingers and began to lift out the gown. It shimmered silver and scarlet.
“Oh, Ross, I never thought…”
Then she put it back and sat on her heels and began to cry.
“It will do for some other time,” he said again. “Come, you do not dislike it?”
She did not answer but put her hands to her face, and the tears trickled through her fingers.
He reached for the brandy bottle but found it empty.
“We could not enter with any enjoyment into the visit tomorrow, not now, with this fresh in our minds. Could you?”
She shook her head.
He watched her for some moments. His mind was fumed with brandy, but he could not see her crying like that without discomfort.
“There is something else in there if you will look. At least, I asked that a cloak should be sent.”
But she would not look. And then John showed Verity in.
Demelza got up quickly and went to the window. Without handkerchief, she stared hard at the garden and wiped her cheeks with her hands and with the lace cuffs of her frock.
“I am de trop,” Verity said. “Well, it’s no good to withdraw now. I knew I should not have come tonight. Oh, my dear, I am so sorry about Jim.”
Demelza turned and kissed her but did not meet her eyes.
“We—we have been a little upset, Verity. It is tragical about Jim, is it not…” She went from the room.
Verity looked at Ross. “Forgive me for being so intruding. I had intended coming over yesterday but have been busy getting Elizabeth off.”
“Off?”
“With Francis. They are sleeping for two nights at the Warleggans’. I stayed behind and thought you might allow me to ride in with you tomorrow.”
“Oh,” said Ross. “Yes, if we were going.”
“But I thought it was settled long since. You mean”—Verity sat down—“because of Jim.”
Somberly he reached out and kicked at the log on the fire. “Verity, I have a strong stomach, but the sight of a powdered head would turn it.”
Verity’s glance had several times strayed to the open box.
“This is what Bartle brought? It looks something like a frock.”
In a few words Ross told her. Verity pulled at her gloves and thought what a strange man Ross was, at once a cynic and a sentimentalist, a strange blend of his father and his mother and a personal x equation belonging to neither. Abstemious enough by the standards of the day, he was drinking himself into an ugly stupor over the death of that boy, who had not even been employed by him for a year or more before his imprisonment. An ordinary man in his station would have passed over the loss with a grunt of regret and not have ventured within two miles of a jail to prevent it. And the gesture of the frock… No wonder Demelza wept.
They are all sentimentalists at heart, the Poldarks, Verity thought, and she realized suddenly for the first time that it was a dangerous trait, far more dangerous than any cynicism. At that moment, she was happy among all the distress and discontent; life was full for her again, and she had no right to let it be on the strength of a mésalliance that might any time end in disaster, which was a deliberate closing of the eyes to one side of life, a forgetting of the past and a planning for an unrealizable future. Sometimes in the night she woke up cold at the thought. But in the day she went on and was happy.
Francis too. Half his ailments came from the same source. He expected too much of life, of himself, of Elizabeth. Especially of Elizabeth. When they failed him, he resorted to gambling and to drink. He wouldn’t come to terms. None of them would come to terms.
“Ross,” she said after a silence, “I do not think you are wise to stay away tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Well, you would disappoint Demelza desperately, for she has been building on this ever since the word came, and however much she may grieve for Jim and Jinny she will bitterly regret it if she does not go. And this frock you have rashly and beautifully bought will heap coals of fire on her disappointment. Then you would disappoint me, who would now have to ride in alone. But most important you should go for your own sake. You can’t help poor Jim now. You have done your most, and can’t reproach yourself for that. It will do real harm to sit and mope here. And your move in forcing the jail will not be popular. Your presence among people tomorrow will emphasize that you are one of their class, and if they contemplate any move it will, I think, give them pause.”
Ross got up and stood a moment leaning against the mantelpiece.
“Your arguments fill me with disgust, Verity.”
“Everything at the moment, my dear, no doubt seems disgusting. I know the mood too well. But being in that mood, Ross, is like being out in the frost. If we do not keep on the move we shall perish.”
He went over to the cupboard and looked for another bottle of brandy. There was none there.
He said suddenly, confusedly, “I cannot think straight tonight. Demelza said she did not wish it.”
“Well, she would say that.”
He hesitated. “I’ll think it over, Verity, and send you word in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When in the end, without consulting anyone further, Ross decided to go to the celebrations after all, and when, after an uneventful ride in, Demelza found herself shown up into one of the bedrooms of the Great House, the town house of the Warleggans, there were several worms of discomfort within her to spoil the first flush of excitement.
First, there was compassion for Jinny, who had tried to hang herself from a beam in her own kitchen the previous night; second, there was anxiety about Ross, who had not yet been entirely sober since his return and carried his drink like a gunpowder keg that any chance spark might set off; third, there was unease over Julia, who had been left in the care of Mrs. Tabb at Trenwith.
But all those reservations, vital though they were, could not quite destroy the pleasure of the adventure.
Some inherent good taste told her that that house had nothing to equal the Elizabethan charm of Trenwith, but she was overwhelmed by its bright furnishings, its soft carpets, its glittering chandeliers, its many servants. She was overwhelmed by the large number of guests and the easy familiarity with which they greeted one another, their expensive clothes, their powdered hair and patched faces, and their gold
snuffboxes and glittering rings.
They were all there; George Warleggan had seen to that. It was like a preliminary regal reception before the public entertainment of the ball. Or all were there who would come. The lord lieutenant and his family had politely declined; so had the Bassetts, the Boscawens, and the St. Aubyns, not yet ready to put themselves on a level with those wealthy upstarts. But their absence was unremarked except by the perceptive or the malicious. Demelza had a confused recollection of meeting Sir John This and the Honorable Someone Else and had passed in a dazed fashion in the wake of a servant up the stairs to her bedroom. She was waiting for the arrival of a maid, who was coming to help her put on her new gown and to dress her hair. She was in a panic about it and her hands were cold, but it was the price of adventure. She knew herself far better able to cope with John Treneglos, who traced his ancestry back to a Norman count, than to face the prying eyes of a saucy servant girl who, if she didn’t know what Demelza had been, would soon be ready to guess.
Demelza sat down at the dressing table and saw her flushed face in the mirror. Well, she was really there. Ross had not come up yet. Dwight Enys was there, young and handsome. Old Mr. Nicholas Warleggan, George’s father, big and pompous and hard. There was a clergyman named Halse, thin and dried-up but vigorous-looking and moving among the aristocracy like one of them, not cringing for a bone like Mr. Odgers of Sawle-with-Grambler. Dr. Halse and old Mr. Warleggan, Demelza knew, had been among the magistrates who had sentenced Jim. She was afraid for what might happen.
A knock came at the door and she checked an impulse to start up as a maid entered. “This has come, ma’am. I was telled to bring it up to you. Thank you, ma’am. A dressing maid’ll be along in just a few minutes.”
Demelza stared at the packet. On the outside was written Rs. Poldark, Esquire, and over that Ross had just scrawled in ink not yet dry: For delivery to Mrs. Demelza Poldark.
She pulled at the wrapping, took out a small box, parted some cotton packing, gasped. After a moment, gingerly, as if afraid of burning herself, she put in a finger and thumb and drew out the brooch.