Ross Poldark (35 page)

H
E WAS NOT BACK. SHE COULD NOT MAKE UP HER MIND WHETHER TO WISH for his coming. The clock showed eight. Very soon both Jud and Prudie would be in bed and asleep. It would be right for her to stay up and see to his supper. But if he did not come soon, he would be staying in Truro overnight. Zacky and Jinny were back. Jack Cobbledick had seen them and the news was about. Everyone was sorry for Jim, and feeling ran high against Nick Vigus. Everyone was sorry for Jinny and the two children. No man was the same when he came out of prison.

Demelza looked at the frock and bit her lip and looked at it again. Then she hastily threw bed linen over it as she heard Prudie flip-flopping laboriously up the stairs.

“I’m going to bed, dear,” said Prudie, a bottle of gin in her hand. “Ef I don’t I shall come over faint. Many's the time when I was a girl I used to swoon off without a breath o’ warning. If me mother knowed what I ’ave to bear now she’d stand up in ’er grave. She’d walk. Many's the time I’ve expected of her to walk. You can see for his supper, an?”

“I’ll see for it.”

“Not that he's like to be home tonight. I said so much to Jud, but the ole mule says, no, ’e’ll wait five and twenty minutes more, so wait ’e will.”

“Good night,” said Demelza.

“
Good
night? It will be a shock if I get so much as a wink.”

Demelza watched her through to her room, then turned back the linen to stare again at the frock. After some moments she covered it and went downstairs.

In the kitchen there was a savoury smell of pie. Jud was sitting before the fire whittling a piece of hard driftwood into a new poker for raking
out the burnt furze from the clay oven. As he whittled he quietly muttered his song:

There was an old couple and they was poor, Tweedle, tweedle go twee—

“It's been a handsome day, Jud,” she said.

He looked at her suspiciously.

“Too ’ot. All wrong for the time o’ year. There’ll be rain soon. Swallows is flying low.”

“You shouldn’t sit so near the oven.”

“What did Fathur say?”

“He wanted for me to go stay with them for a few weeks.”

Jud grunted. “An’ ’oo's to do your work?”

“I said I couldn’t go.”

“Should think as not. Start o’ the summer too.” He lifted his knife. “That a horse? Reckon it's Mr. Ross, just when I’d given un up.”

Demelza's heart gave a lurch. Jud set down the stick and went out to take Darkie to the stables. After a few seconds Demelza walked after him through the hall.

Ross had just dismounted and was untying from behind the saddle the parcels and goods he had bought. His clothes were thick with dust. He looked very tired, and his face was flushed. He glanced up as she came to the door and smiled briefly but without interest. The sun had just set over the western ridge of the valley and the skyline was lit with a vivid orange glow. All round the house the birds were singing.

“… extra feed,” he was saying. “The meal they gave her was skinny. Wugh, there's no air tonight.” He took off his hat.

“Will you be wanting me again?” Jud asked.

“No. Go to bed when you wish.” He walked slowly to the door and Demelza drew aside to let him pass. “You also. Serve my supper and then you can go.”

Yes, he had had a drink; she could tell that. But she could not tell how much.

He went into the parlour where the table was set for his meal. She heard him struggling to pull off his boots and silently entered with his slippers and helped him to be rid of the boots. He looked up and nodded his thanks.

“Not an old man yet, you know.”

She went out to take the pie from the oven. When she returned, he was pouring himself a drink. She set the pie on the table, cut him a piece, put it on
his plate, cut him some bread, waited without speaking while he sat down and began the meal. All the windows were open. The furnace glow over the hill had faded. High in the sky a ruffle of cloud was saffron and pink. Colours in the house and in the valley were flaunting themselves.

“Shall I light the candles?”

He looked up as if he had forgotten her.

“No, there's time enough. I’ll do them later.”

“I’ll be back and light ’em,” she said. “I’m not goin’ to bed yet.”

She slipped out of the room, went through the low square hall into the kitchen. So the way was open that she might return. She didn’t now know what to do. She wanted to pray for something that she knew the Widow Chegwidden's God disapproved of. She knelt and stroked Tabitha Bethia and went to the window and stared across at the stables. She chopped up some odds and ends for Garrick and by that means lured him into an outhouse and locked him up. She returned and raked out the fire. She picked up Jud's wooden poker and slipped a shaving off it with his knife. Her knees were weak and her hands ice cold. She took a bucket to the pump and drew fresh water. One of the calves was crying. A group of seagulls were winging their way slowly out to sea.

This time Jud followed her back into the kitchen, whistling between his two big teeth. Darkie was fed and watered. He put away the knife and the stick.

“You’ll not be astir in the morning.”

She knew very well who was not likely to be astir in the morning, but for once did not answer him. He went out and she heard him climbing the stairs. She followed. In her room she stared again at the dress. She would have given anything for a glass of brandy, but that was barred. If he smelt anything on her breath, that would end it. There was nothing for it but a cold, hard face, or else to run like a badger to her hole. The bed looked fine. She had only to shed the decision with her clothes and drop into it. But tomorrow would come. Tomorrow offered nothing to hope for.

She took out her broken bit of comb and went to the square of mirror she had found in the library, and began to tug at her hair.

The frock was one she had found at the bottom of the second tin trunk, and from the outset it had enticed her as the apple did Eve. It was made of pale blue satin, the bodice cut low and square. Below the tight waist the gown billowed
out at the back like a blue cabbage. She thought it an evening gown, but really it was one Grace Poldark had bought for a formal afternoon. It was the right length for Demelza, and other alterations she had contrived on wet afternoons. There was a thrill in trying it on, even though no one would ever see her wear it…

She peered at herself in the half light and tried to see. Her hair she had combed up and parted at the side and drawn away from the ears to pile it on top of her head. At any other time she would have been pleased with her looks and preened herself, walking up and down peacock fashion to hear the
rough-rough
of the silk. But now she stared and wondered and stared. She had no powder, as a real lady would have; no rouge, no scent. She bit at her lips to redden them. And this bodice. Ross's mother might have been made different, or perhaps she had worn a muslin fichu. She knew that if the Widow Chegwidden saw her she would open her tight little mouth and scream the word “Babylon!”

She stiffened. She had set to go. There was no more to do, no drawing back.

The flint and steel were clumsy in her hands, and she was hard put to it to light the candle. At last a flame flickered, and the rich blueness of the gown showed up more vividly. She rustled as she moved to the door, then slowly, candlestick in hand, went down the stairs.

At the door of the parlour she paused, swallowed something foreign in her throat, licked her lips, went in.

He had finished his meal and was seated in the half darkness in front of the empty fire grate. His hands were in his pockets and his head was down. He moved slightly at her entry but did not look up.

“I’ve brought the light,” she said, speaking in a voice unlike her own, but he didn’t notice.

Slowly she walked round, conscious of the noise her skirt was making, lit the two candle sconces. With each candle she lit the room grew a shade lighter, the squares of the windows a shade darker. All the sky over the hill was an ice blue, bright and clear and empty as a frozen pool.

He stirred again and sat more upright in his chair. His voice came as a shock to her ears. “You heard that Jim Carter has gone to prison for two years?”

She lit the last candle. “Yes.”

“I doubt if he’ll survive it.”

“You did all you could.”

“I wonder.” He spoke as if he were talking to himself rather than to her.

She began to draw the curtains over the open windows.

“What else could you’ve done?”

“I’m not a good pleader,” he said; “being too infernal conscious of my own dignity. The dignified fool, Demelza, gets nowhere beside the suave flattering rogue. Gentle obsequious compliments were the order of the day, and instead I tried to teach them their business. A lesson in tactics, but Jim Carter may pay the bill with his life.”

She pulled the last curtain. A moth came fluttering in, wings beating the green figured damask.

“No one else’d ’ve done what you did,” she said. “No other squire. It was none of your fault that he went poaching and was caught.”

Ross grunted. “To be frank, I don’t think my interference greatly altered the situation. But that is no matter for—” He stopped. He stared. This was the moment now.

“I haven’t brought the other candles,” she got out. “We was short and you said you’d get some today.”

“Have you been drinking again?”

She said desperately: “I’ve never touched nothing since you told me. Honest. I swear to God.”

“Where did you get that dress?”

“From the library—” Her ready lies were forgotten.

“So now you wear my mother's clothes!”

She stammered: “You never told me that. You told me that I mustn’t drink, an’ I’ve never touched nothing since. You never told me not to touch the clo’es!”

“I tell you now. Go and take those things off.”

It couldn’t have been worse. But in the depths of horror and despair one comes to a new steadiness. There is no farther to fall. She moved a foot or two into the yellow gleam of the candlelight.

“Well, don’t you like it?”

He stared at her again. “I’ve told you what I think.”

She came to the end of the table, and the moth fluttered past the candles and across the blue of her dress and pattered its reckless wings against the cupboard by the wall.

“Can I not… sit and talk for a while?”

Astounding the change. The hair combed up gave her face an altered, a more oval shape. Her youthful features were cleancut and wholesome, her look was adult. He felt like someone who had adopted a tiger cub without knowing what it would grow into. The imp of a sturdy disrespect for his own position tempted him to laugh.

But the incident wasn’t funny. If it had been, he would have laughed with a clear mind. He didn’t know why it wasn’t funny.

He said in a withdrawn voice: “You came here as a maid and have been a good one. For that you’ve been allowed certain liberties. But the liberty of dressing yourself in those things is not one of them.”

The chair on which he had been sitting at the table was still half out, and she subsided on the edge of it. She smiled nervously, but with more brilliance than she thought.

“Please, Ross, can’t I stay? No one’ll ever know. Please—” Words bubbled to her lips, overflowed in a whisper. “I aren’t doing no ’arm. ’Tis no more’n I’ve done many and many an evening before. I didn’t mean no ’arm putting on these clothes. They was rotting away in the old tin box. It d’ seem a shame to leave all they pretty things there rotting away. I only meant it to please you. I thought you’d maybe like it. If I stay ’ere now till tis time to go—”

He said: “Get off to bed at once and we’ll say no more of it.”

“I’m seventeen,” she said mutinously. “I been seventeen for weeks. Are ee always going to treat me like a child? I’ll
not
be treated like a child! I’m a woman now. Can I not please myself when I d’ go to bed?”

“You can’t please yourself how you behave.”

“I thought you liked me.”

“So I do. But not to let you rule the house.”

“I don’t want to rule the house, Ross. I only want to sit here and talk to you. I’ve only old clo’es to work in. This is so—to have somethin’ like this on—”

“Do as I say, or you’ll go home to your father in the morning.”

From the first desperately shy beginning she had succeeded in working up a feeling of grievance against him; for the moment she really believed that the issue was whether she should be given certain privileges.

“Well then,” she said, “turn me out! Turn me out tonight. I don’t care. Hit me if you want to. Like Father used to. I’ll get drunk an’ shout the house down, an’ then you’ll have good reason!”

She turned and picked up his glass from the table. She poured out some brandy and took a gulp of it. Then she waited to see what effect it would have on him.

He quickly leaned forward and picked up the wooden poker and rapped her sharply across the knuckles with it, so that the glass broke and spilled its contents down the disputed frock.

For a moment she looked more surprised than hurt, then she put her knuckles into her mouth. The mature and defiant seventeen became a desolate and
unfairly rebuked child. She stared down at the frock where the brandy was soaking through the skirt. Tears came into her eyes, beading upon her thick dark lashes till she blinked them away, beading again and trembling at the rim without falling. Her attempt at coquetry had been a painful failure, but nature was coming to her help.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

He didn’t know why he had spoken or why he should apologize for a just and necessary rebuke. Quicksands had moved under his feet.

“The frock,” she said. “You shouldn’t ’ve spoiled the frock. It was that pretty. I’ll go tomorrow. I’ll go as soon as the light comes.”

She got up from the chair, tried to say something more, then suddenly was kneeling by his chair, her head on his knees, sobbing.

He looked down at her, at the head with its tumble of dark hair beginning to come awry, at the gleam of her neck. He touched her hair with its light and dark shadows.