BOOK THREE
Chapter One
I
Caroline came back to Cornwall in early July, and they had a reunion party. She was better in spirits and less flippant than usual; but she said she must return to London in October for a while, as her aunt planned some grand reception for the re-opening of Parliament and she had promised to help. Dwight also, she said, had promised to be present. Could she count on Ross and Demelza? Before there could be any hesitation Ross said of course. Demelza raised her eyebrows and smiled, but commented nothing.
‘Mind you,’ Ross added. ‘Your aunt is a Foxite, isn’t she?’
‘If you mean she’s at present much taken with the member for Bedfordshire, yes. But I don’t think she allows politics to influence her social fancies. My aunt,’ said Caroline in a pained voice to Demelza, ‘is a widow, and not very old. She is not without her men friends. The present one is staunchly opposed to the government. Ross is being perverse.’
‘That’s not unusual,’ said Demelza.
‘The reception, the ball, whatever it is going to be,’ Caroline said, ‘will not take place at my aunt’s house, but at that of a great friend of hers, another wealthy widow, Mrs Tracey, who lives in Portland Place, and whose present friend is Lord Onslow, so I don’t think it can be looked on as an opposition lobby.’
‘Shall you engage a locum?’ Ross asked Dwight.
‘I’m getting Clotworthy, the druggist. He knows a little but he’s not obsessed with theory, and uses his common sense. I shall only be gone about a month, and I hope it will serve.’
Caroline’s eyes went over her husband. ‘When Dwight comes back I hope he will engage Clotworthy as his permanent assistant.’
Dwight smiled at Demelza. ‘And while you are away, whom will you engage as a locum?’
‘You mean? . . . Well, I haven’t thought—’
Ross said: ‘Mrs Kemp can look after the children. She’ll be happy to live in for the winter months.’
‘Oh, I can’t be absent all the winter months, Ross!’
‘We’ll see. Until Christmas, then.’
As they rode home afterwards Demelza said: ‘Do you really want me to come with you? You’re not just – being polite?’
‘Polite?’ said Ross. ‘Am I ever – polite?’
‘Well, not in that way, perhaps. I just wanted to be sure.’
‘Well, you can surely be sure . . . That’s if you wish to come.’
‘I very much wish to come. I wish to be with you anywhere. But the thought of London makes me a small matter anxious.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Just anxious.’
‘D’you mean for the children?’
‘No, no. For all that London means. For myself, Ross.’
‘Don’t be. You’ve taken every other hurdle in your stride. Even to entertaining the de Dunstanvilles to dinner.’
‘It’s different.’
‘Every hurdle is different. This will be much easier. It’s not so personal a thing. London swallows everything.’
‘I hope it won’t spit me out,’ said Demelza.
Ross laughed. ‘Not if it likes the taste.’
‘When are you leaving for Canterbury?’
‘About the twenty-first. They want me by the end of the month. But it’s only for four weeks. I hope to spend all September at home.’
‘Leaving the children will mean making a lot of preparations.’
‘Well, make the preparations.’
Before he left for Canterbury Ross called to see Drake. They had met once or twice briefly but not for any conversation.
He found him digging in the garden of Reath Cottage, digging over, it seemed, ground already effectively turned, as if he could find nothing better to do. Sam was down the mine.
Drake looked up and pushed back the lock of black hair which always to Ross was disconcertingly like Demelza’s. They wished each other good morning, and talked briefly about the pilchard catch that had come in yesterday.
Ross said: ‘I’m off tomorrow and shall not be back till mid-September. When are you returning to your forge?’
‘Well, that I don’t rightly know, sur.’
‘D’you remember, many years ago I asked you to call me Ross and you said you’d do so after your twenty-first birthday? Well, that’s long past.’
Drake smiled slowly. ‘So tis . . . Cap’n – er – Ross.’
Ross kicked a lump of the sandy soil with his foot. I know since you came to live here you’ve had one miserable stroke of luck after another. Don’t think I don’t sympathize. It has all stemmed from one unfortunate love-affair, but that makes it no easier to accept, nor to tolerate. I’m very . . . sorry.’
‘Why, thank ee, sur – Cap’n Ross, I mean. But you must not grieve for me. Tes no one’s doing but my own.’
‘Ah, well . . . I don’t think I would agree with that. But I think it’s time you returned to the shop. It’s nearly three months. You are losing custom. People are becoming used to going elsewhere.’
‘Yes . . . That I d’know.’
‘The framework of the roof has been rebuilt and part of the thatching is already done.’
‘Sam told me. Tis handsome of ee, but I can never repay you.’
‘Yes, you can. You have money in the bank.’
‘Tis all lost.’
‘It is all there. The deposit that you had in Pascoe’s Bank will soon be available to you at the Cornish Bank. It will likely not be enough, but you can repay the rest over the years.’
‘Ah, I didn’ know that.’
‘There is much to do at Pally’s Shop still. It will take you all winter. The walls need interior repair. And whitewashing. You’ll need to knock together some furniture until you can afford money to buy it or leisure to make it. But the place is habitable now. And while the weather is dry. . .’
Drake straightened up and shook some earth off his spade. ‘To tell the truth, Cap’n Ross, I don’t b’lieve I’ve the heart to try.’
‘In that case you’ll not be worthy of your sister.’
Drake blinked. ‘How do ye mean that?’
‘Do you think she would give up? Or your brother for the matter of that.’
Drake flushed. ‘I don’t know. But it is as if the centre of my heart . . . is destroyed.’
Ross looked at him. ‘Do you wish to sell the place? It is yours to sell.’
‘I dunno. Maybe twould be for the best.’
‘What does Sam say?’
‘He want for me to go back.’
‘We all do.’
Ross looked across at the chimney of Wheal Grace, the top of which was visible over the hill. It had just been re-coaled, and the chimney was sending up cauliflowers of smoke into the still sky.
He said: ‘Sam has been hard hit too.’
‘Yes, I d’know.’
‘But he hasn’t given up.’
‘Sam’s religious . . . But maybe that don’t make all that manner of difference. Seeing as twas his religion as . . .’
‘Quite so . . . None of us can know what another feels.’
‘Sometimes I think he like me here for comp’ny.’
‘But he wants you to go.’
‘Oh, yes. He want me to go. But Sam is always thinking of what would be best for the other man.’
Ross said: ‘I’ll tell you what is best for the other man, always, and that’s work. Work is a challenge. I’ve told you – I tried to drink myself out of my misery once. It didn’t succeed. Only work did. It’s the solvent to so much. Build yourself a wall, even if there’s hell in your heart, and when it’s done – even at the end of the first day – you feel better. That’s why you should go back to the shop. Even if you don’t know quite what you’re working for.’
‘That’s it! cried Drake. ‘That’s it! What am I working for?’
‘Your own salvation,’ said Ross. ‘Not Sam’s type at all – though that may come along after: I know nothing about that – but physic
al salvation, on this earth. You worked once to forget Morwenna. And it helped. You worked night and day. Then do it again.’
Drake hung his head. He looked a sick man. ‘Maybe you’re right. . .’
‘Then when are you going back?’
‘I’ll – think it over – Ross.’
‘The time is past to think it over. Three months is too long to think it over. Will you go tomorrow?’
‘I – cann’t say.’
‘Why not?’
‘I . . . look, I just cann’t say.’
‘Yes, you can. Next week, then.’
Drake took a deep breath. ‘All right. I’ll try.’
‘That’s a promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your hand on it then.’
They clasped hands.
Drake said: ‘I’m sorry. You think me a fool, mourning all the time for all that’s lost.’
‘I think nothing,’ Ross said, ‘except that I have satisfied myself – and Demelza – and Sam. And I hope you, in the end. You’re too capable to mope your life away. It should not be possible – nobody should be able to destroy a man like that.’
II
Towards the end of the month Demelza went to spend a few days with Verity, who was alone except for young Andrew. Verity had seen the announcement about the Cornish Bank in the Sherborne Mercury and was all excitement to know what it meant.
Demelza said: ‘Ross is very tiresome about it and pretends not to know, pretends that it means little. Of a certainty, if you know him, it was not of his contriving! It seems Lord de Dunstanville proposed it at the last minute, after Harris Pascoe’s name had been agreed and all, so I suspect he must have had a secret appreciation for the way in which Ross worked so – so tenacious to gain his ends.’
‘And Wheal Grace?’
‘Yielding again, but I think Ross and the others see the end of the kindliest lodes. All the trouble with Wheal Maiden, the disaster, has brought nothing in return. She seems, they say, a dead mine. But who knows? We are assured for the time of an income and work for all. And you cannot tell me – But perhaps you can. You are wiser than I am, Verity.’
‘What were you going to say?’
‘I was going to say that if I have a husband who starts a small mine on his own property and, after many failures, it begins to yield big profits, that is one thing. Isn’t it? But if you have that, and your husband comes to have an interest in a shipyard and in rolling mills and becomes a member of Parliament and then – a banker; that’s another, isn’t it? Even if four-fifths of his income still comes from the mine, there is a different feeling, Verity. I have a different feeling.’
‘You are quite right, my dear. And I believe there are other advantages.’
Demelza smiled at her and waited. Verity adjusted her cap.
‘Of course there are the financial advantages that must come to a man in his position. Knowing Ross, I know he is likely to reject any such advances that may directly come to him because of his position. But they will still come, and one here and there will be likely to slip under his guard because he will feel they will advantage other people as well. So if all goes favourable he should prosper now, whether or no. But I was thinking – when I spoke first I was thinking of more immediate, personal advantages – this year particularly.’
‘Of what sort?’
‘Last time he was in, Andrew told me there was a big concentration of troops between Deal and Canterbury – where Ross has gone. There is talk of an invasion of France. It is four years since any British soldier set foot in Europe. Everyone is very enthusiastic. Ross might be. The more responsibilities he has to hold him in England, the better it will be for us all.’
‘Yes,’ said Demelza. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
And then Verity wished she had not spoken.
During her stay Demelza thought more than once of trying to talk about her own relationship with Ross. On her last visit Verity had seen that all was not well, but her questions had been too tactful and tentative to produce frank discussion. More than anything Demelza wanted a frank discussion; and Verity had such sympathy and understanding. Sometimes Demelza took out Hugh Armitage’s poems and read them over. Had she inspired such passion? An educated young man, a lieutenant in the navy, who claimed he had known many women in his short life and loved only one . . . Well, that was gone for ever, and she did not want it back, with its pulling at her heartstrings, the agony of divided loyalties. But so much waste, to die so young. She had heard people say they didn’t want a future life, didn’t want to live again. This she could not understand. So far she had done so little, seen so little. She wanted an age, an aeon of life to plumb it and savour it to the last drop.
But she found she could not say anything of this to Verity. Verity knew nothing of Hugh Armitage; she had never met him and therefore would be unable to understand or even guess at his terrible attraction. Whatever her perception and sympathy, she could bring no understanding to this. Only Caroline knew and, Demelza thought, understood a little of what had happened.
Chapter Two
I
In late August an English army landed at the Helder, at the tip of the Zuyder Zee, and soon after an English fleet captured the entire Dutch fleet at anchor and without firing a shot: seven ships of the line and eighteen smaller ships with six thousand seamen who at once hauled down the Republican flag and offered themselves to fight for the House of Orange. Hopes for victory ran high everywhere.
Contrary to Demelza’s fears Ross returned safely from Barham Downs on the 6th of September, looking fit and bronzed but with the news that, because of these victories, and in order to rush a militia bill through Parliament, the House was to reassemble on the 24th of that month, so they must be away in nine or ten days.
Everything then was bustle and haste. Caroline was leaving almost immediately, Dwight a day or two after the Poldarks. Demelza was uneasy that her absence from Cornwall was going to coincide with his and that her two children, if ill, would be left to the fumbling mercies of John Zebedee Clotworthy. Ross would have joked her out of it if it had not been for the loss of Julia.
Dwight brought Clotworthy over one day before they left. He was a pimply, down-at-heel, earnest man of about forty who had come originally from St Erth and set up in opposition to Mr Irby, the druggist in St Ann’s; and Dwight, who had had various passages with Mr Irby for selling him adulterated drugs, had transferred his custom to the new man and had had honest if uninspired service ever since. Honest and uninspired would be his treatment of all Dwight’s ailing patients, but at least anything he attempted would come from his own observation and not from some pet theory. Dwight was dead against theory. The followers of William Cullen had had too long a run. The great Boerhaave, who taught that empirical treatment was all and that one must help the body to defeat its own enemies, had been everywhere despised, and the patient treated with ever more violent purging, more blood-letting, more sweat causers and more powerful drugs. Dwight wondered sometimes if even he did not prescribe too much – often to please the patient – and thought he would be neither surprised nor offended if some of his patients had improved, when he returned, from being treated by someone who had never heard of Boerhaave or William Cullen – or perhaps even Hippocrates.
Ross and Demelza left on the 14th. Their coach left Falmouth at six a.m. and they were due to pick it up in Truro at eight-thirty. It meant rising in the dark, last-minute, hasty arrangements and re-arrangements, a talkative, absent-minded breakfast, then kissing the children goodbye – Clowance not minding because she didn’t realize how long a month was, but Jeremy a bit tremble lipped though putting a good face on it. Then both of them racing off up the hill with Jane Gimlett in vain pursuit, so that when Ross and Demelza reached Wheal Maiden they were there to wave goodbye and to stand in the dawn light waving and waving and gradually becoming smaller and smaller until they were little pin figures and so merged into the background of the pines.
‘Oh dear
,’ said Demelza, ‘I believe I am a small matter distraught.’
‘Try to forget them,’ Ross said. ‘Remember that in twenty years they will be likely to ride away and forget you.’
Demelza looked at Ross. ‘You must’ve been keeping some bad company.’
‘Why?’
‘To say a thing like that.’
He laughed. ‘It was half in jest, half in earnest. I mean nothing derogatory.’
‘What a big word for a mean thought.’
He laughed again. ‘Then I take it back.’
‘Thank you, Ross.’
They jogged on a few minutes. He said: ‘But it is partly true. We have to lead our own lives. We have to give freedom to those we love.’
Gimlett was catching them up. He was coming on a third horse to bring theirs back.
‘Between husband and wife also?’ Demelza asked.
‘That depends on the sort of freedom,’ Ross said.
II
They left Truro ten minutes late because the coachman made difficulty about the amount of luggage they brought, but arrived at St Austell in time for dinner at the King’s Arms, took tea at the London Inn, Lostwithiel, and supped and slept at the White Horse, Liskeard. Including their ride in, they had covered the first forty-five miles of their long journey.
Over supper Demelza said: ‘I’ve been thinking, Ross, what you said about the children. I suppose in a way you’re right – but does it matter? Isn’t it what you give in this world that’s important, not what you get back?’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘No, don’t agree so easy. I mean even if you look at it in the most selfish way: isn’t there more actual pleasure in giving than in getting back?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Yes. But I just wished you to keep a sense of proportion. So long as you’re aware of that – that the giving is all. It’s easy to say, but hard to carry out.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I thought if I reminded you of the way human nature operates, it might help you to grieve less now at the parting.’
The Angry Tide Page 31