Warleggan (16 page)

Verity, Francis's sister, had written inviting, Ross and Demelza to stay with them over Christmas; but with ruin coming apace, there had been no alternative to a refusal. This sudden reprieve changed the situation, and Ross agreed they should go over on Christmas Eve and stay the night. He did not feel he could leave the mine longer than that. Verity, so closely tied always to Francis, had taken his death hard; and as Demelza pointed out, it was their duty to be with her on this first Christmas after. Elizabeth was going
with Geoffrey Charles, so that
the family could be all together, in this way, yet in a hous
e and locality with no memories.

At
the last moment, to everyone's
surprise and to De
melza’s
private relief, Elizabeth changed her plans. Her mother had been ill again, and she decided she, must spend it at Cusgarne, her old home outside Truro, She told Ross of this when he paid
her his weekly visit four days before Christmas.

His call, was later than usual and he found her at supper, eating by herself in the winter parlour. He sat at the table talking to
her,
noticing how scanty the food was, refusing some himself. This room, the most
used,
was the most shabby.
She
looked tired and ill tonight, her delicacy suddenly, fragile. Aunt Agatha was no better and seemed likely to become bed
-
ridden. An added strain of carried meals and all the other
sickroom attentions. Tabb worked eighteen hours a day in

the fields, and Mrs. Tabb looked after the few animals
they had retained. Ross could estimate the amount Elizabeth
would have to do.

Afterwards he w
ent upstairs, treading the dark
corridors to Aunt Agatha's room, By the light of two candles Aunt Agatha was interviewed, propped up in bed, her bright beady eyes, winking in
the candlelight,
plying him with ceaseless questions whose answers she could not hear, ru
nning off into long strings of
reminiscence out of a
past dead and buried
for everyone
but herself.. She told Ross she was ninety-seven and was determined to live
to be a hundred.
Whether the age was right or not, he didn't at all put it past her, to have a good try. She might be sinking, as Elizabeth thought, but she still had a long way to sink.

So
Christmas came, Christmas Day being on a
Tuesday
and very windy and cold. In the night there had been flakes of snow, but these cleared before the day came. A fateful season, with Pitt calling out the militia, and associations of yeomen and gentry and shopkeepers everywhere being formed. And the French in Antwerp now, glowering across the Scheldt estuary, held in check only by a British, guarantee of the Nether
lands.

Ross, eating his Christmas dinner with the Blameys - Andrew,
Verity's husband, on leave from his ship, and the two children
of his first marriage, James a midshipman, boisterous and warmhearted, and Esther as reserved as her brother was open -
Ross stared across the grey -wind-flecked water of Falmouth Harbour, pondered on, the-prospects of war and whether h
e should go to France himself
to find Mark Daniel while there was still peace; and
who his benefactor was; and how he might discharge his
own ethical debt
to Elizabeth,
and to Geoffrey Charles.

And
fifteen miles away his benefactor was eating an even quiet
er meal of roast beef and plum—
pudding in company with her uncle, her crisp auburn hair subdued into a tight coil, as her nature had been subdued these last weeks. When she came back from Truro, Ray Penv
enen had told her of his inter
view with Dwight.
They had quarrelled, uncle and
niece,- as he
had expected that they should; b
ut, rather to his own surprise, she had suddenly capitulated and there had been a semi
-
affectionate reconciliation. No definite undertaking on her,
part,
he did not expect it - but the outcome was as he desired. For a time be, was a trifle suspicious of his victory, and he still kept a watch on her movements through one or another of the servants; but he had slowly come to, the conclusion that he had stamped on the attachment just in time. He expected to go to London in early February, and he proposed that Caroline should accompany bum. She showed no splendid enthusiasm for the idea, but at least she raised no objection; and Mr. Penvenen was privately determined tha
t she should not return, He had
a sister in London, married to a
rich merchant, with seven children of her own. It would do
her no harm in the world to have an eighth for a while.

And Dwight Enys dined alone and later than the rest, having been out
and making the
most of his time while the daylight lasted.
Lotti
e Kempthorne,
Charlie's eldest girl, who
was nine, had developed the smallpox and was very ill. An ominous occurrence. This year,
except for a
high mortality from an outbreak
of measles in June, there had been no serious epidemics. A disagreeable way of entering the new year, with one of the worst plagues to combat, While Dwight was in the cottage, he noticed Lottie's younger sister May playing with a new kind of story book. It was called
The History of Primrose Prettyface
and was printed on good stiff paper and bound between covers of horn. As he ate his dinner, he tried to remember where he had seen another such book; but his mind soon turned to thoughts of Caroline.

Among presents which had come to him today was one from the, Hoblyns: - a finely woven scarf: On an old piece of ruled exercise paper was printed : `From Rosina, with love.' He wondered who had done this, for he knew none of them could write. Other gifts had come in, kind today: eggs; a
piece of bacon; two loaves of
bread, a cake; six tallow
candles; a woven mat-tokens of gratitude from people from whom each gift meant a real sacrifice.

. . . And Elizabeth. Elizabeth did not spend
Christmas
Day at Cusgarne after all
.

She found her mother less ill than she had expected, but did not on that account feel any less obliged to stay. with them
as planned.

But at noon a message came from George Warleggan saying he had just heard of her being there and inviting them all to t
he new Warleggan country house,
Cardew, where he was entertaining a few close friends over the week-end. Mrs. Chynoweth, reluctant to venture out, pressed acceptance on Elizabeth with glowing descriptions of its magnificence. Elizabeth struggled with her sense of duty and turned the invitation down
At two George himself arrived,
having come to f
etch her. So, rather to her own
surprise, on this gusty cheerless day with a half-gale blowing itself out,
she found herself sharing his
carriage, having left Geoffrey Charles in the care of her parents.

Cardew, begun to
Nicholas Warleggan's requirements only ten, years ago, she found all that it was reputed, to
be
a house with an enormous Ionic portico, lavishly furnished public rooms with massive fireplaces and moulded ceilings, and thirty
-
five bedrooms, beside staff quarters, gun
rooms, workshops, still
rooms, stables, greenhouses, an
d walled, gardens. In the front
of the house the grounds had been laid out to give an uninterrupted view of an artificial lake with a rolling parkland beyond -

The house made Trenwith look like a country cottage and Cusgarne more down-at-heel than ever. And after Cusgarne
,
it was so warm and draughtless. George, derived enormous pleasure from showing, Elizabeth over it all, a fact not unremarked by the other members of the Warleggan clan. There were about two dozen guests in the house, people carefully chosen by Mr. Nicholas Warleggan for their likely value to him in
his business or social
dealings; and he would have been better pleased if George had not gone off in the middle of the day, to return with this young woman and devote the whole of, his attention to her.

Had there bee
n anything `in it' for George, he would have felt differently.
It was high time George was married, and the
r
ight time. There were three or four young women in their late teens whom Mr. Warleggan had picked over, all eligible for one or more -reasons but chiefly for title or blood connections
-
since, George
could provide the money
-
and Nicholas would have been pleased to see his son making some recognisable movement towards one of them. This long-standing sentimental infatuation for a delicate uninfluential widow was all wrong
-
especially for a woman who, even by marriage, bore the name of Poldark.

In any, case, even, supposing that some sort of a match were made of it
-
and Nicholas, knowing Elizabeth, thought the chances remote-and supposing one swallowed the disappointment of such
a
poor match, Elizabeth, with only one child by her former marriage and he eight years old, was unlikely to be fecund; and, above all things Nicholas wanted
to see several stout grandchildren about the house. He wished
that it had
been Elizabeth who had fallen down the mine instead of
Francis.

Tho
ught of the Poldarks took his ey
e round to his brother
Cary, talking in a corner to the younger Boscoigne. Cary was becoming a responsibility to the more respectable members of the family. Being closely concerned in much of the Warleggan financial structure, he could not be pushed into the background like Grandfather Warleggan, yet in his dress and in his manners he refused to advance with Nicholas and George. He could not be induced to wear a wig or to discard his skullcap or to keep his old coats free from snuff and ink
stains.
By his presence he brought one down to his level. Tony Boscoigne must be secretly laughing at him now, perhaps taking note of his peculiarities so that he could ape them afterwards to his friends. It was useless having a fine house and
all the splendour that money could buy if one had to countenance such relatives.

And Cary's influence on George, was constantly a bad one. Neither of them realised as, he, Nicholas, did the tremendous importance of
personal
and commercial probity. Establish that name, that reputation, and
within
the limitations of ordinary
finance you could accomplish anything. Cary's only concern was to gain his end and let the principles go hang.

Nicholas thought of their recent meeting when Harris Pascoe had called upon them with young Poldark's draft in settlement of the promissory note. As it happened they had all bee
n in the building, and Cary had
stormed in to him with a face so white
he had supposed him
ill. There and then, with Harris Pascoe waiting in an outer office, they had had a passionate scene. Cary had fairly ranted, and George, though he controlled himself
better, had really felt little different.
It had taken all his own personal influence to calm Cary down, to persuade
them
both that this was nothing more
than a normal business setback and should be treated as such. In
deed, not money was lost at all,
money was made, for Mr. Pearce had parted with th
e bill; at a
discount; and it would be beneath their dignity as men of affairs to be put out of countenance over some loss of revenge on an impoverished' and unimportant country squire. They had, long been too
big for that. It did not become
them.

So far as George was concerned, Nicholas was satisfied he had won his point; but with Cary one could never be certain. One supposed he was conforming to an agreed line, and then
suddenly he would do something quite heterodox which showed he, had never had any intention of acquiescing at all.

Ross nursed his own special problem through Christmas and nearly into the New Year. Then he went to see Harris Pascoe. He wanted first of all, he said, to sell his remaining thirty shares in Wheal Leisure. He had made six hundred pounds out of the last and expected no less from these. Pascoe grunted and shook sand over a document. `I supp
ose you have to do it? It's a
pity now. War's almost certain; This bringing of the King to trial will inflame tempers on both sides. Copper will be rising in price all the time.'