Demelza

by Winston Graham

  “Oh, well, Mrs. Trencrom said they were full of it in Cherbourg, but of course it will have been magnified. She said that French prison—what is it called?—was overthrown by rioters about Tuesday or Wednesday last and the Governor and many of his men slaughtered.”

  “I query the truth of it,” Francis said after a moment.

  “I trust there is no truth in it,” Mr. Odgers said vehemently. “Mob law is always to be deplored. That man, Paynter, for instance, is a dangerous type. He would have the houses about our ears if we gave him half a chance.”

  Francis said, “When there are riots in this country, they are not led or incited by tipsy old men. There, Odgers, look at that field of oats. If the weather holds we shall begin to cut tomorrow.”

  • • •

  At Trenwith Francis led the little curate out into the garden while the ladies tidied themselves. When they went into the winter parlor for supper and Mrs. Odgers’s small, anxious gray eyes were glistening at the sight of all the food, Francis said, “Where’s Verity?”

  “I went to her bedroom as soon as I came back, but she was not there,” Elizabeth said.

  Francis put his mouth against Aunt Agatha’s long pointed ear.

  “Have you seen Verity?”

  “What? Eh?” Aunt Agatha rested on her sticks. “Verity? Out, I believe.”

  “Out? Why should she go out at this time?”

  “Leastwise, I fancy she be. She came and kissed me an hour gone and she had on her cloak and things. I didn’t gather what she said; folk mumble so. If they was learned to talk out like they was learned in my young days there’d be less trouble in the world. No mines working. I tell ye, Francis, ’tis a poor world for the old and aged. There’s some that would go to the wall. Nay, Odgers, I tell you myself, there’s little comfort in—”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “What? Verity? I tell you I could catch nothin’,” she said. “But she left some sort of letter for you both.”

  “A letter?” said Elizabeth, jumping at the truth far before Francis. “Where is it?”

  “Well, aren’t you goin’ to ask to see it? Damn, no curiosity these days. I wonder what I did with it. It was just here in my shawl.” She hobbled to the table and sat down, her wrinkled old hands fumbling in the laces and folds of her clothes. Mr. Odgers waited impatiently until he too could sit down, and begin on the cold fowl and the gooseberry pies.

  A couple of lice were all she disturbed at first, but presently one claw came trembling out with a sealed paper between finger and thumb.

  “I thought it smelled somewhat of an insult puttin’ wax on a letter I was to carry,” said the old lady. “Eh? What d’you say? As if I cared for Miss Verity’s secrets… I bring to mind well the day she was born. The winter o’ fifty-nine. ’Twas just after the rejoicings on the takin’ of Quebec, and me and your father had rid over to a bearbaiting at St. Ann’s. We’d scarce got home and inside the house when—”

  “Read this,” said Francis, thrusting the open letter toward Elizabeth. His small features were pinched with a sudden uncontrollable anger. Her eyes glanced swiftly over it.

  I have known and loved you all my life, dear Francis, and you, Elizabeth, more than seven years, so I pray you will both understand the grief and loss I feel that this should be our Parting. For three months and more I have been torn two ways by loyalties and affections that lived and grew in me with equal Strength, and that in happier circumstances could have existed without conflict. That of the two I have chosen to tear up the deeper rooted and follow after a Life and destiny of my own with a man whom you distrust may seem to you the height of folly, but I pray you will not look on it as a desertion. I am to live in Falmouth now. Oh, my dears, I should have been so happy if only distance were to separate us…

  “Francis!” Elizabeth said. “Where are you going?”

  “To see how she went—if there is time to bring her back!” He left the room with a sudden swing.

  “What’s to do?” asked Agatha. “What’s got him? What does the note say?”

  “Forgive me.” Elizabeth turned to the gaping Odgers. “There is—I am afraid there has been some misunderstanding. Do please sit down and have your supper. Don’t wait for us. I am afraid we shall be a little time.” She followed Francis.

  The four remaining house servants were in the big kitchen. The Tabbs, just back from church, were telling the Bartles about Jud Paynter. The laughter stopped suddenly when they saw Francis.

  “At what time did Miss Verity leave this house?”

  “Oh, an hour and a half gone, sur,” said Battle, glancing curiously at his master’s face. “Just after you’d gone church, sur.”

  “What horse did she take?”

  “Her own, sur. Ellery went with her.”

  “Ellery… Was she carrying anything?”

  “I dunno, sur. He’s back in the stables now, just giving the ’orses their fodder.”

  “Back…?” Francis checked himself, and went swiftly out to the stables. The horses were all there. “Ellery!” he shouted. The man’s startled face appeared around the door.

  “Sur?”

  “I understand you have been riding with Miss Verity. Is she back with you?”

  “No, sur. She changed ’orses at Bargus Cross. A gentleman was waiting for her there with a spare ’orse, and she changed over to ’is and sent me back.”

  “What sort of gentleman?”

  “Seafaring I should guess, sur. Leastwise, by his clothes…”

  An hour and a half. They would already be beyond Truro. And they could take two or three different routes. So she had come to this. She had made up her mind to mate herself with the wife-kicking drunkard, and nothing should stop her. Blamey had the Devil’s power over her. No matter what his record or his ways, he had but to whistle and she would run.

  When Francis got back to the kitchen, Elizabeth was there.

  “No, mistress,” Mary Bartle was saying. “I don’t know nothing about that, mistress.”

  “Ellery is back without her,” Francis said. “Now, Tabb, and you, Bartle, and you women: I want to hear the truth. Has Miss Verity been receiving letters through your hands?”

  “No, sur. Oh, no, sur,” they chorused.

  “Come, let’s talk it over quietly,” Elizabeth suggested. “There is little we can do at present.”

  But Francis was bitterly careless of appearances. He knew it must all come out in a day or two. He would be the butt of the district: the man who tried to stop his sister’s courting, and she calmly eloping one afternoon while he was at church.

  “There must have been some contact unknown to us,” he said sharply to Elizabeth. “Have any of you seen a seafaring man hanging about the grounds?”

  No, they had seen nothing.

  “She has been out and about visiting poor people in Sawle and Grambler, you know,” Elizabeth said.

  “Has anyone been calling here unknown to us?” Francis demanded. “Someone who saw Miss Verity and might have carried a message?”

  No, they had seen no one.

  “Mistress Poldark from Nampara has been over often enough,” said Mary Bartle. “By the kitchen way—”

  Mrs. Tabb trod on her toe, but it was too late. Francis stared at Mary Bartle for a moment or two, then went out, slamming the door behind him.

  Elizabeth found him in the large parlor standing, hands behind back, at the window, looking over the garden.

  She closed the door to let him know she was there, but he did not speak.

  “We must accept the fact of her going, Francis,” she said. “It is her choice. She is grown-up and a free agent. In the last resort we could never have stopped her if she had chosen to go. I could only have wished she had done it openly if she was to do it at all.”

  “Damn Ross!” Francis said between
his teeth. “This is his doing, his and that impudent brat he married. Don’t you see…he—he has stored this up all these years. Five years ago, knowing we disapproved, he gave them leave to meet at his house. He encouraged Verity in the teeth of all we said. He has never gotten over his defeat. He never liked to be the loser in anything. I wondered how Verity met this fellow again; no doubt it was at Ross’s contrivance. And for these last months after my quarrel with Blamey, knowing I had broken the link again, he has been acting as agent for Blamey, keeping the skunk’s interests warm and using Demelza as a postman and go-between!”

  “I think you’re a little hasty,” Elizabeth said. “So far we don’t even know that Demelza is concerned in it, let alone Ross.”

  “Of course,” he said passionately, still not turning from the window. “You will always stand up for Ross in all things. You never imagine that Ross could do anything to our disadvantage.”

  “I am not standing up for anyone,” Elizabeth said, a spark of anger in her voice. “But it is the merest justice not to condemn people unheard.”

  “The facts shout aloud for anyone with half an ear. There’s no other way Blamey could have arranged her flight. She has had no post. I’ve seen to that. Demelza alone could not have done it, for she never knew Blamey in the old days. Ross has been riding about all over the countryside on his damned copper concerns. What more easy than to call in at Falmouth from time to time and bear a message both ways.”

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now. She is gone. I don’t know what we shall do without her. The busiest season of the year, and Geoffrey Charles will miss her terribly.”

  “We’ll get along. Be sure of that.”

  “We should go back to the Odgers,” Elizabeth said. “They’ll think us very rude. There’s nothing to do tonight, Francis.”

  “I want no supper just yet. They’ll not mind my absence so long as they’re fed themselves.”

  “What must I tell them?”

  “The truth. It will be all over the district in a day or two anyway. Ross should be pleased.”

  There was a tap on the door before Elizabeth could open it.

  “If you please, sir,” said Mary Bartle. “Mr. Warleggan has called.”

  “Who?” said Francis. “Devil take it! I wonder if he has some news.”

  George came in, well groomed, polite, heavy in the shoulders, and formidable. A rare visitor those days.

  “Ah, well, I’m glad to find you have finished supper. Elizabeth, that simple dress suits you to—”

  “Good God, we haven’t yet begun it!” Francis said. “Have you brought news of Verity?”

  “Is she away?”

  “Two hours since. She has gone to that skunk Blamey!”

  George glanced quickly from one to the other, sizing up their moods, not pleased by his brusque greeting. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, it’s hopeless,” Elizabeth said. “I have told Francis we must swallow it. He has been quite raving since. We have the Odgers here and they’ll think we have all gone crazy. Forgive me, George, I must go and see if they have begun supper.”

  She swept past George, whose admiring glance flickered after her. Then he said, “You should know, Francis, that women can’t be reasoned with. They are a headstrong sex. Let her have her bit, dear boy. If she falls at a fence it will be none of your doing.”

  Francis pulled at the bell. “I can’t face those two agreeable sheep for supper. Your arrival on a Sunday evening was so unexpected that for a moment I hoped… How I hate the thought of that fellow getting his way with her after all!”

  “I have spent the day at the Teagues’ and was feeling monstrous tired of the old lady’s chatter, so I thought of an agreeable duty to perform at Trenwith. Poor Patience. There she sits on the hook, waiting for me to bite; a nice enough girl in an oncoming sort of way, but no true breeding about her. I’ll swear her legs are on the short side. The woman I marry must not only have the right blood but show it.”

  “Well, you have come to a household that’ll offer you no graces tonight, George. Oh, Mrs. Tabb, serve supper in here. Bring half of one of the boiled fowls if the Odgers have not yet picked ’em clean, and some cold ham and a pie. I tell you, George, there is that in this flight that makes me more than commonly angry.”

  George patted down the front of his silk flowered waistcoat. “No doubt, dear boy. I see I could not have called on a more untimely night. But since we have you so seldom in Truro these days I’m compelled to wait on you and mix duty with pleasure.”

  It reached Francis’s taut and preoccupied mind that George was leading up to something. As his chief creditor George was in a dangerously powerful position and feelings had not been too good between them since the gambling affray in April.

  “An agreeable duty?”

  “Well, it may be considered so. It has to do with Sanson and the matter you raised some time since.”

  So far neither Francis nor anyone else had gotten anything out of the miller. He had left Truro the day following Ross’s exposure and was believed to be in London. His mills, it turned out, belonged to a company and that company to other companies.

  George took out his gold-mounted snuffbox and tapped it. “We have talked this over several times, my father and I. While there’s no obligation in it, Sanson’s conduct is a stain we feel rather deeply. As you know, we have no ancestors to bring us repute; we must make our own.”

  “Yes, yes, you are clear enough,” Francis said briefly. It was seldom that George mentioned his humble beginnings.

  “Well, as I told you in May, many of your bills given to Matthew Sanson have found their way into Cary’s hands. He has always been somewhat the treasurer of the family, as Matthew was the black sheep, and your bills were accepted by Cary in exchange for cash advances made to Matthew.”

  Francis grunted. “I take that as no advantage.”

  “Well, yes, it is. We have decided between us as a family to cancel one half of all the drafts that came into Cary’s hands from Matthew. It will not be a crushing matter, but it will be a token of our will to undo what wrong has been done. As I say, not a big thing. About twelve hundred pounds.”

  Francis flushed. “I can’t take your charity, George.”

  “Charity be hanged. You may have lost the money unfairly in the first place. From our viewpoint we wish it, to reestablish our integrity. It is really nothing at all to do with you.”

  Mrs. Tabb came in with the supper. She set up a table by the window, put her tray on it and two chairs beside it. Francis watched her. Half his mind was still battling with the desertion of Verity, the perfidy of Ross—the other half facing the princely gesture from a man he had begun to distrust. It was a princely gesture, and one that no stubborn prickly pride must force him to refuse.

  When Mrs. Tabb had gone, he said, “You mean—the money would be put to reducing my debt to you?”

  “That’s for you to decide. But I’d suggest one half of it should go to reducing the debt and the other half should be a cash payment.”

  Francis’s flush deepened. “It is very handsome of you. I don’t know quite what to say.”

  “Say nothing more about it. It’s not a comfortable subject between friends, but I had to explain.”

  Francis dropped into his chair. “Take some supper, George. I’ll open a bottle of my father’s brandy after, in honor of the occasion. No doubt it will loosen up my anger over Verity and make me a more easy companion. You’ll stay the night?”

  “Thank you,” said George.

  They supped.

  In the winter parlor Elizabeth had just excused herself and left again. Mr. Odgers was finishing up the raspberry syllabub and Mrs. Odgers the almond cake. With only the old lady’s eyes on them their manners had eased up.

  “I wonder if he means to do the honest thing by her,�
� Mrs. Odgers said. “They could not get married tonight, and you never can tell with these sailors. He may well have a Portuguese wife for all she knows. What do you think, Clarence?”

  “Um?” said Mr. Odgers, with his mouth full.

  “Little Verity,” said Aunt Agatha. “Little Verity. Imagine little Verity going off like that.”

  “I wonder what the feeling will be in Falmouth,” said Mrs. Odgers. “Of course in a port morals are always more lax. And they may go through some marriage ceremony just to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Anyway, men who kill their first wives should be forbidden ever to marry again. Don’t you agree, Clarence?”

  “Um,” said Mr. Odgers.

  “Little Verity,” said Aunt Agatha. “She was always obstinate like her mother. I bring to mind when she was six or seven, the year we held the masquerade ball…”

  In the large parlor the brandy had come.

  “I can’t bear these sneaking underhand dealings,” Francis said bitterly. “If he had had the guts to come here and face me out maybe I should not have liked that, but I shouldn’t have held him in such dead contempt.” After his estrangement from George, the reaction was carrying him back beyond the old intimacy. As good as in his pocket was six hundred pounds he had never thought to see again—and the same amount cut from his debts. Never could it have been more welcome than then. During the coming months it might just make all the difference. It meant an easing of their life and the strain of bitter economy. A grand gesture that deserved the grand recognition. Adversity showed up one’s friends.

  “But all along,” he continued, “that has been his way. At the outset he went sneaking behind our backs and meeting the girl at Nampara—with Ross’s connivance. All the time it has been this sneaking, sneaking. I’ve half a mind to ride to Falmouth tomorrow and flush them from their love nest.”

  “And no doubt you’d find he had just left for Lisbon and she with him.” George tasted the brandy on his lips. “No, Francis, leave them be. It is no good putting yourself in the wrong by trying to force her to return. The harm is done. Maybe she’ll soon be crying to come back.”