Ross Poldark

by Winston Graham

  Ross went up to his own room and ransacked the drawers, cursing himself for never thinking more than one move ahead. One could not keep the child shivering there in the yard forever. Finally he picked out a Holland shirt of his own, a girdle, and a short morning gown of his father's.

  When he went out he found her trying to cover herself with the cloth he had given her, while her hair still lay in wet black streaks on her face and shoulders. He did not give her the things at once but beckoned her to follow him into the kitchen, where there was a fire. Having just succeeded in shutting Garrick out of the house, he poked up the fire and told her to stand in front of it until she was dry and to put on the makeshift garments in what manner she chose. She blinked at him wetly, then looked away and nodded to show she understood.

  He went out again to unsaddle Darkie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  l

  DEMELZA CARNE SPENT THE NIGHT IN THE GREAT BOX BED WHERE JOSHUA Poldark had passed the last few months of his life. There was no other room where she could immediately go; later she could be put in the bedroom between the linen cupboard and the Paynters’ room, but at present it was full of lumber.

  To her, who had slept all her life on straw, with sacks for covering, in a tiny crowded cottage, this room and this bed were of unthought luxury and unimagined size. The bed itself was almost as big as the room she and four brothers slept in. When Prudie, grumbling and flopping, showed her where she had to spend the night, she guessed that three or four other servants would come in later to share the bed, and when no one came and it seemed she was to be left alone, a long time passed before she could bring herself to try it.

  She was not a child who looked far ahead or reasoned deep; the ways of her life had given her no excuse to do either. With a cottage full of babies she had had no time at all to sit and think, scarcely any even to work and think; and what was the good of looking for tomorrow when today filled all your time and all your energy and some times all your fears? So that in this sudden turn in her fortunes, her instinct had been to accept it for what it was, and as long as it lasted, glad enough but as philosophically as she had taken the fight at the fair.

  It was only this sudden luxury which scared her. The drenching under the pump had been unexpected, but its roughness and lack of concern for her feelings had run true to type; it fell in with her general experience. Had she then been given a couple of sacks and told to sleep in the stables she would have obeyed and felt there was nothing amiss. But this development was too much like the stories Old Meggy the Sumpman's mother used to tell her: It had some of the frightening, nightmare temper of those and some of the glitter of her mother's fairy tales in which everyone slept in satin sheets and ate off gold platters. Her imagination could gladly accept it in a story, but her knowledge of life could not accept it in reality. Her strange garments had been a beginning; they fitted nowhere and hung in ridiculous lavender-scented folds over her thin body; they were agreeable but suspect, as this bedroom was agreeable but suspect.

  When at length she found the courage to try the bed, she did so with strange sensations; she was afraid that the big wooden doors of the bed would swing quietly to and shut her up forever; she was afraid that the man who had brought her here, for all his air of niceness and kind eyes, had some Evil Design, that as soon as she went off to sleep he would creep into the room with a knife or a whip—or merely creep into the room. From these fears her attention would be turned by the pattern of the tattered silk hangings on the bed, by the gold tassel of the bellpull, by the feel of the clean sheets under her fingers, by the beautiful curves of the bronze candlestick on the three-legged wicker table by the bed—from which candlestick guttered the single light standing between her and darkness, a light which by now should have been put out, and which would very soon go out of its own accord.

  She stared into the dark chasm of the fireplace and began to fancy that something horrible might at any moment come down the chimney and plop into the hearth. She looked at the pair of old bellows, at the two strange painted ornaments on the mantelpiece (one looked like the Virgin Mary), and at the engraved cutlass over the door. In the dark corner beside the bed was a portrait, but she had not looked at it while the Fat Lady was in the room, and since the Fat Lady had left she had not dared to move out of the circle of the candlelight.

  Time passed, and the candle was flaring up before it went out, sending smoky curls like wisps of an old woman's hair spiralling towards the beams. There were two doors, and that which led she-didn’t-know-where held a special danger although it was tight shut every time she craned to look.

  Something scratched at the window. She listened with her heart thumping. Then suddenly she caught something familiar in the noise, and she jumped from the bed and flew to the window. Minutes passed before she saw how to open it. Then when a six-inch gap had been slowly levered at the bottom, a wriggling black thing squirmed into the room, and she had her arms round Garrick's neck, half strangling him from love and anxiety that he should not bark.

  Garrick's nearness changed the whole picture for her. With his long rough tongue he licked her cheeks and ears while she carried him towards the bed.

  The flame of the candle gave a preliminary lurch and then straightened for a few seconds more. Hurriedly she pulled across the hearthrug and another rug from near the door, and with these made on the floor an improvised bed for herself and the puppy. Then as the light slowly died from the room and one object after another faded into the shadows, she lay down and curled herself up with the dog and felt his own excited struggles relax as she whispered endearments in his ear.

  Darkness came and silence fell and Demelza and Garrick slept.

  2

  Ross slept heavily, which was not surprising, as he had had no sleep the night before, but a number of odd and vivid dreams came to disturb him. He woke early and lay in bed for a time looking out at the bright windy morning and thinking over the events of the past two days. The ball and the gaunt, wild Margaret: the aristocratic commonplace and the disreputable commonplace. But neither had been quite ordinary for him. Elizabeth had seen to that. Margaret had seen to that.

  Then the fair and its outcome. It occurred to him this morning that his adoption of yesterday might have trouble some results. His knowledge of the law was vague and his attitude towards it faintly contemptuous, but he had an idea that one could not take a girl of thirteen away from her home without so much as a by-your-leave to her father.

  He thought he would ride over and see his uncle. Charles had been a magistrate for over thirty years, so there was a chance he would have some views worth hearing. Ross also gave more than a thought to the violent court being paid to Verity by Captain Andrew Blamey. After the first, they had danced every dance together up to the time of his leaving the ballroom. Everyone would soon be talking, and he wondered why Blamey had not been to see Charles before now. The sun was high when he rode over to Trenwith. The air was exhilaratingly fresh and alive this morning, and all the colouring of the countryside was in washed, pastel shades. Even the desolate area round Grambler was not unsightly after the greater desolation he had seen yesterday.

  As he came in sight of the house, he reflected again upon the inevitable failure of his father to build anything to rival the mellow Tudor comeliness of this old home. The building was not large, but gave an impression of space and of having been put up when money was free and labour cheap. It was built in a square about a compact courtyard, with the big hall and its gallery and stairs facing you as you entered, with the large parlour and library leading off on the right and the withdrawing room and small winter parlour on the left, the kitchens and buttery being behind and forming the fourth side of the square. The house was in good repair for its age, having been built by Jeffrey Trenwith in 1509.

  No servant came out to take the mare, so he tethered her to a tree and knocked on the door with his riding whip. This was the official entrance, but the family more often used the smaller door at the side, and
he was about to walk round to that when Mrs. Tabb appeared and bobbed respectfully.

  “Morning, sur. Mister Francis you’re wanting, is it?”

  “No, my uncle.”

  “Well, sur, I’m sorry but they’re both over to Grambler. Cap’n Henshawe come over this morning and they both walked back wi’ him. Will ee come in, sur, while I ast how long they’ll be?”

  He entered the hall and Mrs. Tabb hurried off to find Verity. He stood a minute staring at the patterns made by the sun as it fell through the long narrow mullioned windows, then he walked towards the stairs where he had stood on the day of Elizabeth's wedding. No crowd of bedecked people today, no raucous cockfight, no chattering clergymen; he preferred it this way. The long table was empty except for its row of candlesticks. On the table in the alcove beside the stairs stood the big brass-bound family Bible, now seldom used except by Aunt Agatha in her pious moments. He wondered if Francis's marriage had yet been entered there, as all the others had for two hundred years.

  He stared up at the row of portraits on the wall beside the stairs. There were others about the hall and many more in the gallery above. He would have had difficulty in picking out more than a dozen by name; most of the early ones were Trenwiths, and even some later portraits were unnamed and undated. A small faded painting in the alcove with the Bible, where it should not get too much light, was that of the founder of the male side of the family, one Robert d’Arqué, who had come to England in 1572. The oil paint had cracked and little was to be distinguished except the narrow ascetic face, the long nose, and the hunched shoulder. There was then discreet silence for three generations until one came to an attractive painting by Kneller of Anna-Maria Trenwith and another by the same artist of Charles Vivian Raffe Poldarque, whom she had married in 1696. Anna-Maria was the beauty of the collection, with large dark blue eyes and fine red-gold hair.

  Well, Elizabeth would be a worthy addition, would grace the company if someone could be found to do justice to her. Opie might be too fond of the dark pigments.

  He heard a door shut and a footstep. He turned, expecting Verity, and found Elizabeth.

  “Good morning, Ross,” she smiled. “Verity is in Sawle. She always goes on a Wednesday morning. Francis and his father are at the mine. Aunt Agatha is in bed with the gout.”

  “Oh yes,” he said woodenly. “I had forgotten. No matter.”

  “I am in the parlour,” she said, “if you would care to keep me company a few minutes.”

  He followed her slowly towards the parlour door; they entered and she sat down at the spinning wheel but did not resume what she had been doing.

  She smiled again. “We see so little of you. Tell me how you enjoyed the ball.”

  He took a seat and looked at her. She was pale this morning, and her simple dress of striped dimity emphasized her youth. She was a little girl with all the appeal of a woman. Beautiful and fragile and composed, a married woman. A black desire rose in him to smash the composure. He subdued it.

  “We were so pleased that you were there,” she went on. “But even then you danced so little that we hardly saw you.”

  “I had other business.”

  “We had no intention of being there,” she said, a little put out by the grimness of his tone, “it was quite on impulse that we went.”

  “What time will Francis and Charles be back?” he asked.

  “Not yet, I’m afraid. Did you see how George Warleggan enjoyed the écos-saise? He had sworn all along that nothing would persuade him to attempt it.”

  “I don’t remember the pleasure.”

  “Did you wish to see Francis on something of importance?”

  “Not Francis—my uncle. No. It can wait.”

  There was silence.

  “Verity said you were going to Redruth Fair yesterday. Did you get all the stock you wanted?”

  “Some of it. It was on a question of unexpected stock that I wished to see my uncle.”

  She looked down at the spinning wheel. “Ross,” she said in a low voice.

  “My coming here upsets you.”

  She did not move.

  “I’ll meet them on the way back,” he said, rising.

  She did not answer. Then she looked up and her eyes were heavy with tears. She picked up the woollen thread she had been spinning and the tears dropped on her hands.

  He sat down again with a sensation as if he was falling off a cliff.

  Talking to save himself, he said: “At the fair yesterday I picked up a girl, a child; she had been ill treated by her father. I needed someone to help Prudie in the house; she was afraid to go home; I brought her back to Nampara. I shall keep her as a kitchen maid. I don’t know the law of the matter. Elizabeth, why are you crying?”

  She said: “How old is the girl?”

  “Thirteen. I—”

  “I should send her back. It would be safer even if you had her father's permission. You know how hard people are judged.”

  “I shall not come here again,” Ross said. “I upset you—to no purpose.”

  She said: “It's not your coming—”

  “What am I to think, then?”

  “It only hurts me to feel that you hate me.”

  He twisted his riding crop round and round. “You know I don’t hate you. Good God, you should know that—”

  She broke the thread.

  “Since I met you,” he said, “I’ve had no eyes and no thought for any other girl. When I was away, nothing mattered about my coming back but this. If there was one thing I was sure of, it wasn’t what I’d been taught by anyone else to believe, not what I learned from other people was the truth but the truth that I felt in myself—about you.”

  “Don’t say any more.” She had gone very white. But for once her frailness did not stop him. It had to come out now.

  “It isn’t very pretty to have been made a fool of by one's own feelings,” he said. “To take childish promises and build a—a castle out of them. And yet— even now sometimes I can’t believe that all the things we said to each other were so trivial or so immature. Are you sure you felt so little for me as you pretend? D’you remember that day in your father's garden when you slipped away from them and met me in the summerhouse? That day you said—”

  “You forget yourself,” she whispered, forcing the words out.

  “Oh no I don’t. I remember you.”

  All the conflicting feeling inside her suddenly found an outlet. The mixed motives for asking him in; the liking, the affection, the feminine curiosity, the piqued pride; they suddenly merged into indignation to keep out some thing stronger. She was as much alarmed at her own feelings as indignant with him; but the situation had to be saved somehow.

  She said: “I was wrong to ask you to stay. It was because I wanted your friendship, nothing more.”

  “I think you must have your feelings under a very good control. You turn them about and face them the way you want them to be. I wish I could do that. What's the secret?”

  Trembling, she left the spinning wheel and went to the door.

  “I’m married,” she said. “It isn’t fair to Francis to speak as you—as we are doing. I’d hoped that we could still be good neighbours—and good friends. We live so close—could help each other. But you can forget nothing and forgive nothing. Perhaps I’m expecting too much… I don’t know. But, Ross, ours was a boy-and-girl attachment. I was very fond of you and still am. But you went away and I met Francis, and with Francis it was different. I loved him. I’d grown up. We were not children but grown people. Then came the word that you were dead… When you came back I was so happy; and so very sorry that I’d not been able to—to keep faith with you. If there’d been any way of making it up to you, I’d gladly have done it. I wished that we still should be close friends, and thought… Until today I thought that we could. But after this—”

  “After this it's better that we shouldn’t be.”

  He came up to the door and put his hand on it. Her eyes were dry enou
gh now and exceptionally dark.

  “For some time,” she said, “this is goodbye.”

  “It's goodbye.” He bent and kissed her hand. She shrank from his touch as if he was unclean. He thought he had become repulsive to her.

  She went with him to the front door, where Darkie whinnied at the sight of him.

  “Try to understand,” Elizabeth said. “I love Francis and married him. If you could forget me, it would be better. There's no more I can say than that.”

  He mounted the mare and looked down at her.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “There's no more to say.”

  He saluted and rode away, leaving her standing in the dark of the doorway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  l

  WELL, HE TOLD HIMSELF, THAT WAS OVER. THE SUBJECT WAS CLOSED. IF that queer perverted pleasure which came from striking with his barbed tongue at her composure—if that were satisfaction, then he had found some in the interview.

  But all he felt was an ashen desolation, an emptiness, a contempt for himself. He had behaved badly. It was so easy to play the jilted lover, the bitter and sarcastic boor.

  And even if he had upset her by his attack, yet her defence had more than levelled the score. Indeed, their positions being what they were, she could in a single sentence strike more surely at him than he at her with all the ingenuity his hurt could devise.

  He was past Grambler and nearly home before he realized he had not seen either Charles or Verity, and the two questions he had gone to Trenwith to ask remained unanswered.

  He rode down the valley, too full of a deadly inertia of spirit to find satisfaction in the sight of his land, which was at last beginning to show signs of the attention it was receiving. On the skyline near Wheal Grace he could see Jud and the boy Carter busy with the six yoked oxen. At present they were not used to working as a team, but in a week or so a child would be able to drive them.