Jeremy Poldark (3 page)

"Take no notice of his little foibles. He
often says these things to annoy. It is a way he has."

Unwin turned. "Well, I hope we have no more
elections for another seven years. It will, cost me upwards of two thousand pounds
just for the pleasure of being returned - and you know that doesn't end it or
begin it for that matter."

Sir John's eyes took on a cautious bloodless
look, as they always did when money was mentioned. "Your profession's of
your own choosing, my boy. And there's others worse off. Carter of Grampound
was telling me he would have to pay as much as three hundred guineas a vote
when the time came. He got up and pulled the bell. " Mistress Poldark was
asking me if I should be in Bodmin for the hustings. I wonder what her purpose
was in that?"

The morning was well gone when Demelza turned
Caerhays towards dinner and home. As she skirted the grounds of Trenwith House
she wished she could have dropped in for a few minutes' friendly chat with Verity.
It was something she greatly missed and could never get used to. But Verity was
in Falmouth, if not further afloat - happily married, it seemed, in spite of
all foreboding; and she, Demelza, had been the active conniver in the change,
so she could not complain. Indeed it was Verity's elopement which had caused a
sharper breach between the families, and, in spite of Demelza's self-sacrifice
of last Christmas, the breach was not properly closed. The responsibility was
not now Francis's. Since the illnesses of last Christmas and little Julia's
death he seemed most anxious to show his gratitude for what Demelza had done.
But Ross would have none of it. The failure of the Carnmore Copper Company lay
insuperably between them. And if what Ross suspected about that failure was
right, then Demelza could not blame him. But she would have been much happier
with it otherwise. Her nature always preferred the straightforward settlement
to the lingering bitter suspicion

Just before she lost sight of the house she saw
Dwight Enys coming along the track in her wake, so reined in her horse to wait
for him. The young surgeon took off his hat as he came up.

"A fine morning, ma'am. I'm glad to see you
enjoying the air."

With a purpose," she said, smiling. "
Everything I do these days is with some, purpose or another. Very moral, I
suppose, if you look at it that way."

He answered her smile - it
was difficult not to - and allowed his horse to, walk along beside hers. The
track was just wide enough for them to go abreast. He noticed professionally
how slight she had stayed since her illness of January. ,

I
suppose it depends whether the purpose was moral or not.'

She pushed in a curl that the wind had
dislodged. " Ah, that I don't know. We should have to ask the preacher. I
have been to Place House doctoring Sir John's cattle;"

Dwight
looked surprised. "I didn't know you were expert in that."

"
Nor am I. I only pray to God his Hereford cow takes a turn for the better. If
it dies I shall have advanced nothing." "And if it lives?"

She glanced at him. " Where are you bound,
Dwight?"

"To see some of the folk of Sawle. I am
increasingly popular with the patients who can afford to pay nothing. Choake
gets ever lazier."

"And
more unfriendly, like. What is at back of all this - this this trying to get
Ross convicted?"

The doctor looked uncomfortable. He flicked the
loose loop of the reins against the sleeve of his black. velvet coat. "The
law, I suppose'

"Oh yes, the law. But something else. Since
when has the law been so fussy about strippin' a wreck or rough-handling a few
excise men - even suppose Ross had any part in that, and we know he did not. It
is only what's been going, on since I was born and for hundreds of years before
that."

"
I'm not sure that that's true-not altogether. I'd do any thing to help Ross and
will do, you know that . .

" Yes, I know that."

"But
I don't think it's any good blinking that you can ignore the law ten times, but
the eleventh-if it gets you.

It will hold on like a leech, and no letting go
till the thing's thrashed out. That's the truth. Of course, in this case one
wonders if, now the law has moved, there may not be other influences at work
also-

"
There's men been round asking questions even of the Gimletts, our own
servants.' There can scarcely be a cottage in the district that hasn't had its
caller, all trying to pin the blame on Ross! It's the law, no doubt, but the
law wi' plenty of money to spend and time to waste - for there's none of his own
folk will give him away, and they might know it. Ross has his enemies but
they're not among the miners who helped him at the wreck!"

Sawle Church, its tower leaning like Pisa, was
reached, and Dwight halted, at the head of Sawle Combe. On the hill some women
were cutting a sloping field of corn; it was stacked round the edge but as yet
uncut in the middle, and looked like an embroidered handkerchief.

You will not come down this way?"

"No, Ross will be expecting me back."

"In so far," said Dwight; " in so
far as there is any influence at work beyond the law, I should not put it down
to pompous nobodies like Surgeon Choake who have neither the money nor the
venom to do serious harm."

"Nor do I, Dwight. Nor do we."

"No „

He
said : " For your information, I have not visited the Warleggans for
twelve months."

She
said : " I have only met George properly. What are the others like?"

"I know them very little. Nicholas,
George's father, is a big hard domineering man, but he has a reputation for
honesty that is not lightly to be had. George's uncle, Cary, is the one who
keeps in the background, and if there is anything shady to be done I should
guess he does it. But I confess they have always been gracious enough to
me."

Demelza stared across at the silver-blue
triangle of sea blocking up the end of the valley. "Sanson, who lost his
life in the wreck, was a cousin of theirs. And there are other things between
Ross and George - even before the smelting company.. It is a good time to pay
off old scores."

"I
should not worry overmuch about that. The law will only take account of the
truth."

"I'm
not so sure," she said.

On
Hendrawna Beach the scene was quite different from Trevaunance Cove. Although
there was little ebb and flow about the rocks, on the flat sandy beach the sea
roared,. and a low mist hung over it in the still mild air. Coming back from
his usual morning walk as far as the Dark Cliffs, Ross glanced across at the
cliffs where the shacks of Wheal Leisure were built, and could hardly see them
through the haze. It was like walking in a vapour bath.

Since
the loss of Julia and the opening of the prosecution against him, he had forced
himself to make this walk daily. Or if the mood took him and the weather was
favourable he would go out in the new dinghy and sail as far as St. Ann's. Such
activity didn't lift the cloud from his mind, but it helped to set it in
proportion for the rest of the day's tasks. His daughter was dead, his cousin
had betrayed him, his much laboured over smelting scheme was in ashes, he faced
charges in the criminal court for which he might well be sentenced to death or
life transportation; and if by some chance he survived that, it would be only
a matter of months before bankruptcy and imprisonment for debt followed. But
in the meantime fields had to be sown and reaped, copper had to be raised and
marketed, Demelza had to be clothed and fed and perished-so far as it was in
his scope to cherish
anyone at
this stage.

It
was Julia's death which still hit him hardest. Demelza had grieved no less than
he, but hers was a more pliant nature, responding involuntarily to stimuli that
meant little to him. A celandine flowering out of season, a litter of kittens
found unexpectedly in a loft, warm sunshine after a cold spell, the smell of
the first swathe of hay these were always temporary reliefs for her, and so
sorrow had less power to injure her. Although he didn't realise it, much of the
cherishing this year, had been on her side.

After
the storms of Christmas it had been a quiet winter; but there was no ease in the
district, Ross thought, any, more than there was ease in himself. Copper prices
had risen only enough to bring a slight increase of profit in the mines now
open, nothing to justify the starting of new ventures or the reopening of old.
Life was very close to survival level.

As
he left the beach and climbed over the broken wall he saw Demelza coming down
the valley, and she saw him at the same time and waved, and he waved back. They
reached the house almost at the same time, and he helped her down and gave the
horse to Gimlett, who had come hurrying round.

"You've
dressed up for your morning ride to-day, he said.

I
thought twas bad to get slovenly and be seen about as if I didn't care for
being Mrs. Poldark."

"There
are some who might feel that way just at present."

She
linked his arm and put pressure on it to get him to walk round the garden with
her.

"
My hollyhocks are not so well this year," she said. -" Too much rain.
All the crops are late too. We need a rare hot September.''

"It
would make it stuffy in the court."

'We
' shall not be in court all the month. Only one day. Then you'll be free"

"'Who
says so? Have you been consulting your witches?"

She
paused to pick a snail from under an old primrose leaf. She held it
distastefully between gloved finger and thumb'.

I
never know what's best to do with 'em."

Drop
it on that stone."

She
did so and turned away while he crushed it. "Poor little bull-horn. But
they're so greedy; I shouldn't mind if they were content with a leaf or two....
Talking of witches, Ross, have you ever heard of a cow illness called
Tail-Shot?"

"No."

"The
back legs are paralysed and the cow's teeth come loose:"

A
cow's teeth are always loose," Ross said.

"And
the tail has a queer unjointed look - as if it were broken. That gives it its
name. D'you think twould cure the disease to open up the tail and put in a
boiled onion?"'

Ross
said " No."

"
But it would do no harm if the cow was going to get better anyhow, would
it?"

"'What
have you been up to this morning?"

She
looked into his distinguished bony face.

"I
met Dwight on the way home. He is going to be at assize."

"I
don't see what need there'll be of him. Half Sawle and Grambler will be there,
it appears to me. It will make quite a Roman holiday."

They
walked round in silence. The garden was motionless under the lowering clouds,
leaf and flower taking on the warmer, firmer substance of permanent things.
Ross thought, there are no permanent things, only fleeting moments of warmth
and companionship, precious stationary seconds in a flicker of troubled days.

The
clouds broke in a shower and drove them in, and they stood a minute in the
window of the parlour watching the big drops pattering on the leaves of the
lilac tree, staining them dark. When rain came suddenly Demelza still, had the
instinct to go and see if Julia were sleeping outside. She thought of saying
this to Ross but checked herself. The child's name was hardly ever mentioned.
Sometimes she suspected that Julia was a bar between them, that though he tried
his utmost not to, the memory of her courting infection to help at Trenwith
still rankled.

She
said: "Is it not time you went to see Mr. Notary Pearce again?"

He
grunted. " The man frets me. The less I see of him the better."

She
said quietly: "It is my life, you know, as well as I yours that's at
hazard."

He
put his arm, round her. "Tut, tut. If anything happens to me you will have
much still to live for. This house, and land will be yours. You will become
principal shareholder in Wheal Leisure Mine. You will have a duty to people and
to the countryside "

She,
stopped him. "Nay, Ross, I shall have nothing. , I shall be a beggar
again. I shall be an unfledged" miner's wench.

You'll
be a handsome young woman in your first twenties with a small estate and a load
of debts. The best of your life will be ahead of you "

I
live only through you. You made me what I am. You think me into being handsome,
you think me into being a squire's wife,"

Stuff.
You'd surely marry again. ' If I were gone there'd be men humming round here
from all over the county. It isn't flattery but the sober truth. You could take
your pick of a

dozen----

'I
should never marry again Never!"

His
hand tightened on her. " How thin you are still’

I'm
not. You ought to know I'm not.’

‘Well,
slim then. Your waist used to have a more com

fortable
feel."

Only
after Julia was born. That was different then."

There,
the name was, out now.

"Yes,"
he said.

There
was silence for a minute or two. His eyes were lidded and she could not read
his expression.

She
said : "Ross." "Yes?"

"Perhaps
in time it will seem different. Perhaps we shall have other children."

He
moved away from her. " I do not think any child would be grateful for
having a gallows bird for a father... I wonder if dinner is ready."

When
Dwight parted from Demelza he rode down the steep narrow track to Sawle
village, into the bubble of the stream and the clatter of the tin stamps. It
was a short enough time since he had come to this district, a callow young
physician with radical ideas about medicine; but it seemed a decade in his
life: In that time he had earned the confidence and affection of the people he
worked among, had inexcusably broken his Hippocratic oath, and since then had
painfully re-established himself-entirely in the eyes of the countryside, who
laid the blame on the girl, very partially in his own, which at all times were
self-critical and self-exacting.