Demelza

by Winston Graham

  “I wish you would go, Andrew,” she muttered. “I have a feeling that things would go wrong if you met here.”

  In the card room Ross and Francis had won five guineas of their opponents’ money.

  “You did not return my trump lead, Doctor,” said Sanson, taking snuff. “Had you done so we should have saved the game and the rubber for a breathing spell.”

  “I had only two trumps,” said Halse, austere. “And no suit to establish if they were cleared.”

  “But I had five,” said Sanson, “and a good suit of spades. It is an elementary principle to return one’s partner’s lead, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said Halse. “I am acquainted with the elementary principles.”

  “No one can question,” Ross said to Sanson, “that your partner has all his principles at his fingertips. It is a general misfortune that he does not make use of them.”

  Dr. Halse took out his purse. “The same might well be said of your manners, Poldark. Ignorance, which is the only excuse, can hardly be your plea. Several times you have been gratuitously offensive. One can only speculate on the bad humors that come of an ill-spent life.”

  “Offensive?” Ross said. “And to a justice of the peace, who compounds all the virtues of magistracy, except perhaps peace and justice, in his person. No, you do me wrong.”

  The doctor had gone very pinched about the nostrils. He counted out five gold coins and stood up. “I may tell you, Poldark, that this insulting attitude will do your case no good. No doubt the common people you mix with have blunted your faculties as to what may and may not be said in refined society. In such circumstances one is inclined to pity rather than to condemn.”

  “I agree,” Ross said, “that it alters one’s perspective. You should try such mixing, man, you should try. It would enlarge your outlook. I find the experience even enlarges one’s sense of smell.”

  Other people were listening. Francis grunted as he pocketed the money. “You’re drastic tonight, Ross. Sit down, Halse. What’s the point in life except to gamble. Come about, and cut for another rubber.”

  “I have no intention of cutting at this table again,” said the clergyman.

  Ross was watching him. “Have you ever been in a jail, Dr. Halse? It is surprising the variety and fullness of stench that thirty or forty of God’s creatures—I suppose they are God’s creatures, though I defer to an expert view—can give off if confined for weeks in a small stone building without drains, water, or attention. It becomes not so much a smell as a food. Food for the soul, you understand.”

  “The matter of your behavior at Launceston has not gone unremarked,” Dr. Halse said fiercely, like a dry, brittle, angry dog. “Nor will it escape our full attention very shortly. There will be a meeting of the justices concerned, of whom I may say I am one, to decide—”

  “Give them this message,” said Ross, “that I have shown greater forbearance sitting at table with one of their number and not breaking his head than they if they opened all the crawling fever jails in Cornwall and let the prisoners free.”

  “You may be sure they shall have a full account of your grossness and vulgarity,” the doctor snapped. All the room was attending. “And you may understand that if it were not for my cloth I would call you out for what you have said to me.”

  Ross got slowly to his feet, uncoiling himself from the low table.

  “Tell your fellows when you see them that it would give me pleasure to meet any of them who can spare the time from their high offices and have not the impedimenta of holy living to maintain. Especially those responsible for the upkeep of Launceston Jail. But let the invitation be catholic, for I feel catholic toward them.”

  “You offensive young drunkard!” The clergyman turned sharply on his heel and left the card room.

  A moment’s silence fell on the people he had left. Then Margaret Cartland broke into a peal of infectious laughter.

  “Well done, His Lordship! Let the church keep to its own offices and leave the rest to us. Never have I heard a prettier squabble over a mere game of trumps. What did he do, let you down with a revoke?”

  Ross took a seat opposite her at the faro table. “Get on with the game, Banker.”

  Margaret’s bold impertinent eyes traveled around the room.

  “Come, Mr. Francis, follow your cousin’s lead! Lay a stake on the spade queen; she is poorly backed and we should be patriotic tonight.”

  “Thank you.” Francis met her gaze. “I have learned never to stake on women. It is close in here; I will take a breath of air.”

  • • •

  There had been another minuet, and in the refreshment room Verity at last persuaded Andrew to leave. She had done so on the undertaking that she should talk to Francis within the week. A little incautiously, perhaps feeling the need to prove her sincerity to him, she walked with him around the edge of the floor, carefully avoiding the card room, until they reached the main doors of the hall. A footman opened them and they went out. Coming up the stairs from the street below was Francis.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Demelza was beginning to feel like a lion tamer who has been putting her pets through their paces and finds them getting out of hand. She didn’t know whether to brazen it out or run for safety. The smaller lions she could manage very well: men like Whitworth, William Hick, and St. John Peter. But the big beasts, like John Treneglos, and the old lions, like Sir Hugh Bodrugan, were a different matter. Relays of port had added courage to natural wit, but there was a limit to her resource and she was thankful it was all happening in a public room, where they couldn’t snarl over her more openly. If she had been the perspiring sort she would have perspired a lot.

  Recently Ensign Carruthers, whom Joan Pascoe had introduced, had come to swell the numbers. A young man named Robert Bodrugan had also put in an appearance but had quickly been sent off by his hairy uncle. The ball of conversation kept flying at her and she would toss it back at someone indiscriminately. They laughed at almost everything she said as if she were a wit. In a way it was all very enjoyable, but she would have liked it in smaller measure to begin. And occasionally she stretched her neck to peer over someone’s shoulder in search of Ross.

  It was in doing that that she caught sight of Verity reentering the ballroom from the outer door. She knew instantly by her eyes that something was seriously wrong.

  After a moment, Verity slowed her steps and was lost to view by the dancers forming up for a gavotte. Demelza rose to her feet also.

  “No, no,” she said to several men and moved to pass through them. They parted deferentially and she found herself free. She looked about.

  “Come, miss,” said Sir Hugh at her shoulder, but she moved on without answering him. Verity had turned, was walking quickly away from her toward the ladies’ withdrawing room. Demelza followed, walking around the floor by herself with her usual long-legged stride and with a confidence she would not have known an hour before.

  Near her quarry, she found her way barred by Patience Teague and her sister Ruth Treneglos and two other ladies.

  “Mistress Demelza,” said Patience, “permit me to introduce two of my friends who are anxious to meet you. Lady Whitworth and the Honorable Mrs. Maria Agar. This is Mistress Poldark.”

  “How d’you do,” said Demelza, sparing a moment to eye Ruth warily, and curtsying to the ladies in the way Mrs. Kemp had taught her. She instantly disliked the tall Lady Whitworth and liked the short Mrs. Agar.

  “My dear child,” said Lady Whitworth. “We have been admiring your dress ever since the Assembly began. Quite remarkable. We thought it had come from London until Mrs. Treneglos assured us to the contrary.”

  “’Tisn’t the dress,” said Mrs. Agar. “’Tis the way it’s worn.”

  “Oh, thank you, ma’am,” Demelza said warmly. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m that gratified to have your praise. You’re all t
oo kind. Much too kind. And now, if you’ll forgive me, I am this moment hurryin’ to find my cousin. If you’ll—”

  “By the way, dear, how is your father?” Ruth asked and tittered. “We have not seen him since the christening.”

  “No, ma’am,” Demelza said. “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but Father is overparticular who he meets.”

  She bowed to the ladies and swept past them. Then she entered the withdrawing room.

  There were two maids in the little stuffy room and three ladies and piles of cloaks and wraps. Verity was standing before a mirror, not looking into it but looking down at the table in front of her, doing something with her hands.

  Demelza went straight across to her. Verity was pulling her lace handkerchief to shreds. “Verity. What is it? What is it?”

  Verity shook her head and could not speak. Demelza glanced around. The other women had not noticed anything. She began to talk, about anything that came into her head, watching Verity’s lips tremble and straighten and tremble again. One lady went out. Then the other. Demelza pushed a chair up behind Verity and forced her to sit down.

  “Now,” she whispered, “tell me. What is it? Did they meet? I was afeared they might.”

  Verity shook her head again. Her hair, as hard to confine as dark thistledown, was coming undone in her distress. As three more women came chattering in Demelza stood up quickly behind Verity’s chair and said, “Let me tidy your hair. It is all this dancin’ has loosed the pins. Sit quite still an’ I’ll have it right in a jiffy. How warm it is in there! My hand is quite exhausted wi’ working my fan.”

  She went on talking, taking out pins and putting them in again, and once or twice, when Verity’s head began to tremble, she put her fingers, cool and firm for all the port, on Verity’s forehead, resting them there until the spasm passed.

  “I can’t go through it all again,” Verity said suddenly in an undertone. “Not all that again. I knew it might come, but now I can’t face it. I—I can’t face it.”

  “Why should you?” Demelza said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “They—they met as he was going. At the top of the stairs. I knew it would be wrong tonight. I have been waiting for an opportunity, but Francis has been cross-grained for weeks. They had another terrible quarrel. Andrew tried to be conciliatory, but there was no arguing with him. He struck Andrew. I thought Andrew was going to kill him. Instead of that, he just looked at Francis—I felt somehow that his contempt was for me as well…”

  “Oh, nonsense…”

  “Yes,” said Verity. “I did. Because I wanted the best of both worlds. Because I had wanted to keep Francis’s affection as well as Andrew’s and had been afraid to tell Francis. If I’d told him before, this would never have happened—not like this. I’ve been afraid to come out into the open. I’ve been—timid. I think it’s the one weakness Andrew cannot countenance—”

  “You’re wrong, Verity. Nothing matters if you feel for each other like you do…”

  “—So he went. Without a glance or a word for me. That was worse than last time. I know now I shan’t ever see him again…”

  • • •

  In the card room Ross had lost thirty guineas in as many minutes and Francis nearly as much in half the time. Francis had come back to the room after his airing with a face gray with anger.

  He had sat down at the faro table without speaking, and no one had addressed him, but the expressions of the two cousins were casting a blight over the game. Even the banker, a man named Page, seemed ill at ease, and presently Margaret Cartland yawned and got up, slipping a few pieces of gold back into her purse.

  “Come, Luke, we’ve been in the saddle too long. Let’s take a little stroll around the ballroom before the reels begin.”

  Her new lover rose obediently; he glanced uneasily at Francis, but Francis ignored them as they went out.

  At the door, her hand possessively on Vosper’s arm, she surveyed the scene of the dance. It came to an end as she watched, the formal arrangements broke up into knots that themselves gradually dispersed as people moved off toward the refreshment room or to corners under the ferns.

  “These dainty dances bore me excessively,” she said. “All that posturing with no result.”

  “You prefer your posturings to have some result,” said Vosper. “I’m glad to learn it.”

  “Oh, tut, naughty,” she said. “Remember where we are. Oh, damn, I believe it is the interval.”

  “Well, no matter. I can use my elbows as well as the next, sweet.”

  Margaret continued to survey the floor. There was one knot that refused to break up. It was largely men, but she saw a woman or women somewhere in the middle. Presently the knot, like a swarm of bees, began to move toward a few vacant chairs, occupied them, and then a section of the drones moved off in search of food and drink. She was able to see that there were two women concerned, a pleasant-faced, sad-looking person of about thirty and a striking girl with a mass of dark hair and very clear-cut shoulders above a shimmering frock with crimson ornaments.

  “Sit in the card room, my sweet,” said Vosper. “I’ll bring you something there.”

  “No, let ’em fight. Tell me, who’s that young woman over there? The one in silver with her chin tilted. Is she from this district?”

  Vosper raised his quizzing glass. “No idea. She has a pretty figure. Hm, quite the belle. Well, I’ll go get you some jellies and heart cakes.”

  When he had gone, Margaret stopped a man she knew and found out who the two women were. A little surprised smile played on her lips at the news. Ross’s wife. He playing faro with a bitter and angry face while she flirted with half a dozen men and paid him no attention. Margaret turned and looked at Ross as he staked money on a card. From that side, she could not see the scar.

  She wasn’t sorry the marriage was a failure. She wondered if he had any money. He had all the aristocrat’s contempt for small amounts, she knew that, but it was the income that counted, not the small change. She remembered him five years before in that hut by the river and wondered if she had any chance of offering him consolation again.

  Luke Vosper came back, but she refused to go in, preferring to stand at the door and watch the scene. Some ten minutes later the banker drew out the last two cards of a deal and Ross saw he had won. As he gathered in his winnings he found Margaret Cartland stooping beside him.

  “Me lord, have you forgot you have a wife, eh?”

  Ross looked up at her.

  Her big eyes were wide. “No joke, I assure you. She’s quite the sensation. If you don’t believe me, come and see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No more than I say. Take it or leave it.”

  Ross got to his feet and went to the door. If he had thought of Demelza at all during the past hour he had thought of her in Verity’s safekeeping. (It never occurred to him to think of Verity in Demelza’s.)

  The first dance after the interval was to begin shortly. The band was back on its platform, tuning up. After the quiet of the card room, the talk and laughter met him. He looked about, aware that both Margaret and Vosper were watching him.

  “Over there, me lord,” said Margaret. “Over there with all those men. At least, I was told it was your wife, but perhaps I was misinformed. Eh?”

  It was to be another gavotte, less stately and sedate than the minuet and popular enough to get most people on the floor. Competition for Demelza was still strong. During the interval and fortified by some French claret for a change, she had put forward all her talents in conversation to take notice from Verity, who was sitting mute beside her.

  It was her own fault that at that stage the snarling grew worse; for, what with thinking of Verity and her anxiety for Ross, she had been careless what she said, and no less than three men thought she had promised the dance. John Treneglos had been dragged away for a time by his fu
rious wife, but Sir Hugh Bodrugan was one of the three, trying by weight and seniority, she thought, to carry her off from Whitworth, who was relying on his cloth to support him in the face of Sir Hugh’s scowls; the third was Ensign Carruthers, who was sweating a lot but was sticking to the navy’s tradition and not striking his flag.

  First they argued with her, then they argued with each other, and then they appealed to her again, while William Hick made it worse by putting in remarks. Demelza, a little overwrought, waved her glass and said they should toss a coin for her. That struck Carruthers as eminently fair, only he preferred dice, but Sir Hugh grew angry and said he had no intention of gaming on a ballroom floor for any woman. All the same, he was not willing to give up the woman. Demelza suggested he should take Verity. Verity said, “Oh, Demelza,” and Sir Hugh bowed to Verity and said, “Thank you. A later dance. Certainly.”

  At that moment a tall man showed at the back of the others and Demelza wondered with a sinking feeling if it was a fourth claimant. Then she raised her head and saw it was indeed.

  “Forgive me, sir,” said Ross, pushing a way in. “You’ll pardon me, sir. You’ll pardon me, sir.” He arrived on the edge of the ring and bowed slightly, rather coldly, to Demelza. “I come to see if you were in need of anything, my dear.”

  Demelza got up. “I knew I’d promised this dance to someone,” she said.

  There was a general laugh, in which Sir Hugh did not join. He had been drinking all evening and did not at first recognize Ross, whom he saw seldom.

  “Nay, sir. Nay, ma’am. This is unfair, by heavens! It was promised to me. I tell you it was promised to me. I tell you it was promised. I’ll not have it! I’m not accustomed to have my word called in question!”