Demelza

by Winston Graham

  “You’ve heard me speak of Harris Pascoe?”

  “Your bank person?”

  “Yes. He appears to be the best-informed man in the county. He had not even been to the Assembly last night, yet he knew all about your success there.”

  “My success?” Demelza said, looking for sarcasm just as Ross had done.

  “Yes, about how the ladies had said how beautiful you were and how the lord lieutenant had wished to know your name.”

  “Judas!” said Demelza, going very hot. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not at all.”

  “Whoever told him that?”

  “Oh, it would be on good authority.”

  “Judas,” said Demelza again. “I never even knew which the lord lieutenant was.”

  “So you see others were in good mood to appreciate you, even if I was not.”

  “Oh, Ross, I can’t believe it,” said Demelza, with a funny little lift in her voice. “No one could notice anything in such a crush. He was saying it to please you.”

  “Far from it, I assure you.”

  They reached the door of their house. It was open, but no one was there to greet them.

  “I’m… It seem queer to think of,” she said. “It must have been your lovely dress.”

  “A nice frame doesn’t make a nice picture.”

  “Phoo… It’s made me feel queer…”

  John Gimlett came trotting around the house, apologizing for not being there to greet them; his round, shining face was good-tempered and friendly and made them feel they were welcome home. Ross was going to hand him the baby, but Demelza protested and was helped down first.

  She took the kicking baby from Ross and stood for a moment gathering her more comfortably into her arms.

  Julia at once knew who was holding her, and a grin of welcome spread across her chubby face. She crowed and put up a clenched fist. Demelza kissed the fist and examined the child’s face for signs of change. Julia looked vaguely less comely than she had done thirty-six hours before. Demelza came to the view that at that age no child was tidy for long without its mother. (The ladies had said how beautiful, and the lord lieutenant had asked… “It must have been your lovely dress” but “A nice frame doesn’t make a nice picture,” he had said.) Demelza had known that when Julia grew up she would be proud of her father; it had not occurred to her that she might also be proud of her mother. A splendid thought, shining like that sun on the sea. She would do all she could. Learn to be a lady, learn to grow old with grace and charm. She was only young yet, so there was still a chance to learn.

  She raised her head and looked across at Ross just dismounting. The previous night and the night before that she had feared for him. But he had gotten back his balance. If she could persuade him to stay at home for a little while, she thought he would gain back his content. It was up to her really to see that he did.

  Julia wriggled and crowed. “Na—na—na,” she said. “Do—do—buff—war—na—na,” and laughed at her own absurdity.

  Demelza sighed, with a sense of the complexity of life but of its personal goodness to her, and turned and carried her baby into the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Keren had been hurrying for a very good reason. She had Mark’s supper, two salted pilchards for which she had paid twopence, in her bag, and she did not want to be late in cooking it. She reached home, running most of the way, burst into the cottage, began gathering sticks for lighting a fire. Mark had been doing a turn of work for Will Nanfan on his small holding to earn more money. All that week, while he had been on the night core, his routine had been: down the mine from ten until six in the morning, sleep from seven to twelve, hoe his own garden for an hour, then a mile’s walk to Nanfan’s, where he worked from two till seven. He had been getting home about half past seven, when he would turn in for another hour or so before it was time for supper and tramping off to the mine again. Hard going but necessary, for Keren was not a good manager. She always wanted to be buying something to eat instead of contriving something. It was an attitude of mind quite foreign to her neighbors.

  Down in Sawle she had stayed watching two men fight over a disputed net. She had found she was home in good time and need not have hurried. But she did not swear at herself or inwardly rail at Mark for keeping her so tied to time—and that for another very good reason. Dwight was home.

  She had not seen him for nearly a week. And he was home.

  She cooked the supper and woke Mark and watched him eat it, pecking at things herself like a bird. She was unstable in it as in all things, choosing to half starve herself when the food did not appeal, then when something tasty came along, she would eat until she could hardly move.

  She sat there watching Mark get ready for the mine, with a curious hidden tenseness in her body as she had done many times before, and always with the same reason. He had been more morose of late, less pliable to her moods; sometimes she thought he was watching her. But it did not worry her, for she was confident of always being able to outwit him and she was careful not to do anything suspicious when he was about. Only on those night cores of Mark’s was she really free, and up till then she had been afraid to make use of them—not afraid of discovery but afraid of Dwight’s opinion of her.

  The sun had gone down behind a mass of night cloud, and its setting was only to be noticed by a last flush in the sky before dark. In that room the shadows were already heavy. Keren lit a candle.

  “You’d be best to save your light till ’tis full dark,” Mark said. “What wi’ candles at ninepence a pound an’ one thing and another.”

  He was always complaining about the price of things. Did he expect her to live in the dark?

  “If you’d built the house the other way around, it would have kept a lot lighter in the evening,” she said.

  She was always complaining about the way the house faced. Did she expect him to pick it up and set it down again just as she fancied?

  “Mind you bolt the door while I’m away,” he said.

  “But that means I’ve got to get up to let you in.”

  “Never you mind. You do as I say. I don’t fancy you sleeping here alone and unwatched like you was this morning. I wonder you fancy to sleep that way yourself.”

  She shrugged. “None of the local folk’d dare venture here. And a beggar or a tramp wouldn’t know you were away.”

  He got up. “Well, see you bolt it tonight.”

  “All right.”

  He picked up his things and went to the door. Before he went he glanced back at her sitting there in the light of the single candle. The light shone on her pale skin, on her pale eyelids, on her dark eyelashes, on her dark hair. Her lips were pursed and she did not look up. He was suddenly visited by a terrible spasm of love and suspicion and jealousy. There she sat, delectable, like a choice fruit. He had married her, yet the thought had been growing in him for weeks that she was not really for him.

  “Keren!”

  “Yes?”

  “And see you don’t open it to no one afore I git back.”

  She met his gaze. “No, Mark. I’ll not open it for no one.”

  He went out wondering why she had taken his words so calmly, as if the thought held no surprise.

  After he left, she sat quite still for a long time. Then she blew out the candle and went to the door and opened it so she could hear the bell at the mine ringing the change of core. When it came, she shut the door and bolted it and lit the candle again, carrying it into her bedroom. She lay down on the bed, but there was no danger of falling asleep. Her mind was crammed with thoughts and her nerves and body atingle.

  At length she sat up, combed her hair, scraped around the box to find the last of the powder, put on a shabby black cloak, and tied up her hair with the scarlet kerchief Mark had won. Then she left the house. As she went she hunched her shoulders and
walked with a careful hobble, to deceive anyone who might see her.

  There was a light in the Gatehouse as she had expected, in the window of his living room. There was also a glimmer in one of the turreted windows. Bone was going to bed.

  She did not knock at the door but tiptoed around among the brambles until she reached the lighted window facing up the hill. There she stopped to take off her scarf and shake out her hair. Then she tapped.

  She had some time to wait but did not knock again, for she knew how good his hearing was. Suddenly the curtains were drawn back and a hand unlatched the window. She found herself looking into his face.

  “Keren! What is it? Are you well?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I—I wanted to see you, Dwight.”

  He said, “Go around to the front. I’ll let you in.”

  “No, I can manage here if you help.”

  He stretched out a hand; she grasped it and climbed nimbly into the room. He hastily shut the windows and pulled the curtains across.

  A fire crackled in the grate. Two candelabras burned on the table, on which papers were spread. He was in a shabby morning gown and his hair was ruffled. He looked very young and handsome.

  “Forgive me, Dwight. I—I couldn’t come at any other time. Mark is on night core. I was so anxious…”

  “Anxious?”

  “Yes. For you. They told me you’d been with the fever.”

  His face cleared. “Oh, that…”

  “I knew you were home Tuesday, but I couldn’t get across and you didn’t send me any word.”

  “How could I?”

  “Well, you might have tried somehow before you left for Truro again.”

  “I did not know what work Mark was on. I don’t think there was any reason to worry about me, my dear. We disinfected ourselves very thoroughly before we came home. Do you know that even my pocketbook stank after being in that jail and had to be burned?”

  “And then you say there was no danger!”

  He looked at her. “Well, you are good to have worried so. Thank you. But it was dangerous to come here at this time of night.”

  “Why?” She met his gaze through her eyelashes. “Mark is down the mine for eight hours. And your servant is in bed.”

  He smiled slightly, with a hint of constraint. All the way into Truro the day before and at times in the middle of the Assembly, Keren Daniel had been before him. He saw plain enough where their way was leading, and he was torn between two desires, to halt and to follow. Sometimes he had almost decided to take her, as he saw she wanted him to, but he knew that once begun no man on earth could predict where it would end. The thought was bulking between him and his work.

  He had been grateful for the ball the night before and the sudden refreshing contact with people of his own class. It was helpful to meet Elizabeth Poldark again, whom he thought the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It had been helpful to meet Joan Pascoe and to contrast her poised, clear-skinned, clean-thoughted maidenhood with the memory of that wayward, impulsive little creature. He had come back sure that the fantastic playing with fire must stop.

  But faced with Keren, the choice was not so easy. Joan and the other girls were “at a distance”; they were remote, they were young ladies, they were people who made up the world. Keren was reality. Already he knew the taste of her lips, the melting touch of her body.

  “Well,” she said, as if reading his thoughts, “aren’t you going to kiss me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And then you must go, Keren.”

  She slipped her cloak off quickly and stood up to him with her hands behind her back, her attitude one of odd urgent demureness. She put up her face and half closed her eyes.

  “Now,” she said. “Just one.”

  He put his arms about her and kissed her cool lips, and she made no attempt to return his kiss. And while he was kissing her, the knowledge came that he had missed it during the previous week, missed it more than anything in life.

  “Or a thousand,” she said under her breath.

  “What?” he asked.

  She glanced sidelong away. “The fire’s nice. Why should I go?”

  Dwight knew then he was lost. And she knew too. There was nothing he could do about it. He would follow. He would follow.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “Or a thousand. Or twenty thousand. Or a million. They’re yours for the asking.”

  He put his hands up to her face, pressed it between his hands. There was a sudden tender vehemence in his touch.

  “If I take there’ll be no asking.”

  “Then take,” she said. “Then take.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  On Saturday the second of May in the morning, in one of the upper rooms of the Great House, there was a meeting of the three chief business members of the Warleggan family. Mr. Nicholas Warleggan, large and deliberate and hard, sat with his back to the window in a fine Sheraton armchair; Mr. George Warleggan lounged by the fireplace, tapping occasionally with his stick at the plaster ornamentations; Mr. Cary Warleggan occupied the table, looking over some papers and breathing through his nose.

  Cary said, “There’s little from Trevaunance. There was no official ceremony, according to Smith. At noon, Sir John Trevaunance and Captain Poldark and Mr. Tonkin went down to the works, Sir John said a few words, and the workmen lit up the furnaces. Then the three gentlemen went into one of the tin huts that have been set up, drank each other’s health, and went home.”

  Mr. Warleggan said, “How is it situated, this works?”

  “Very convenient. At high tide a brig can come into Trevaunance Cove and edge right alongside the quay, and the coal is unloaded beside the furnaces.”

  George lowered his stick. “What are they doing for rolling and cutting?”

  “At present they’ve come to an agreement with the venturers of Wheal Radiant for the use of their rolling and battery mill. That is about three miles away.”

  “Wheal Radiant,” said George thoughtfully. “Wheal Radiant.”

  “And what of the ticketing?” asked Mr. Warleggan.

  Cary rustled his papers.

  “Blight tells me the meeting was very crowded. That was to be expected, for the news has gotten around. Things went much as planned and the Carnmore Company got no copper at all. The high prices of course pleased the mines. It all passed off very quiet.”

  George said, “They bought enough last time to keep them going three months. It is when they begin to run short that we shall have the fireworks.”

  “After the ticketing,” Cary said, “Tremail discreetly sounded Martin on his loyalty to the company. However, Martin became very unpleasant and the conversation had to be broken off.”

  Mr. Nicholas Warleggan got up. “I don’t know if you are party to this, George, but if so it is not a departure that I view with any pleasure. I have been in business for forty years, and much if not all you have been able to do has been built on the foundations laid by me. Well, our bank, our foundry, our mills have been raised on principles of sound business and honest trading. We have that reputation and I am proud of it. By all means fight the Carnmore Copper Company with the legitimate means to hand. I have every intention of putting them out of business. But I do not think we need to descend to such measures to gain our end.”

  Having said so much, Mr. Warleggan turned his back and stared out over the lawns and the river. Cary sorted his papers. George traced the moldings with the point of his stick.

  Cary said, “This absurd secrecy is no better than a sharp practice, contrived to mislead and confuse.”

  “I do not think we can hold that against them,” Mr. Warleggan said ponderously. “They have as much right as we have to use agents and figureheads.”

  Cary breathed through his nose. “What does George say?”

  George took out
his lace handkerchief and flicked away a little plaster that had floated down upon his knee. “I was thinking. Isn’t Jonathan Tresidder the chief shareholder in Wheal Radiant?”

  “I believe so. What of it?”

  “Well, does he not bank with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And has some money on loan. I think it could be made clear to him that he should choose which side of the fence he wishes to come down on. If he helps the Carnmore with his mill let him go elsewhere for his credit. We can’t be expected to subsidize our competitors.”

  Cary said rather sarcastically, “And what does Nicholas think of that?”

  The old man by the window clasped his hands but did not turn. “I think if it were gone about straightforwardly, it could be considered a legitimate business move.”

  “It’s certainly no worse than the way you treated the owners of the paper mills at Penryn,” Cary said.

  Mr. Warleggan frowned. “They were holding up all our projects. Expediency will often justify severity.”

  George coughed. “For my part,” he said, “although I don’t condemn these maneuvers of Cary’s—they’re too unimportant to concern us much—yet I’m inclined to agree with you, Father, that we’re too big to stoop to them. Let’s defeat this company by fair means.”

  “Fair means,” said Cary.

  “Well, business means. We’ll have all the smelters and merchants backing us. There should be no difficulty in squeezing these interlopers out once we know who they are—”

  “Exactly,” said Cary.

  “And we shall know, never fear. Don’t tell me a secret can be kept for very long in these parts. Someone will begin to whisper to someone else. It is just a question of not being too impatient and of knowing enough not to go too far.”

  Cary got up. “You mean you wish these inquiries stopped?”

  Mr. Warleggan did not speak, but George said, “Well, keep within the limits of dignity. After all, we shall not be ruined even if the company establishes itself.”