George did not follow her. After a minute he said: ‘You know, don’t you, that you’re one of the loveliest women in England.’
The clock on the mantelshelf began to strike five. When it had finished, she said: ‘If what you say were even half true, it would be – kind of you; but I think, with Francis not here, a liberty. As I know—’
‘If the truth’s a liberty, then I’ve taken it,’ George brushed a hand down his embroidered waistcoat, not perfectly at ease but not at all in retreat, ‘because the truth it is. I move in society a great deal and I assure you I am neither flattering you nor presuming. Turn round. Look at yourself in the glass. Or perhaps you know yourself too well to realize. Men realize. Other men besides myself. And there would be many such, of both sexes, if you moved about more freely and were to be seen. Even now I hear people say, “D’you remember Elizabeth Poldark – Chynoweth that was? Now there was a beauty for you. I wonder what’s come of her.”’
‘Do you suppose—’
‘If,’ said George, ‘if Francis would let me, I could help him. Let him play with his mine if he wants to, but that need only be a side issue. Once before when I came here I mentioned sinecure positions. Today I could get him nominated for two. There is no disgrace in them. Ask your parson how he gained his church or your major his battalion – by having a friend speak for him at the right time. This – this existence is no existence at all for you. Your poverty is not only undeserved – it’s unnecessary!’
Elizabeth was silent. Whatever she thought of George’s compliments, it was a sore spot he touched. She was twenty-eight now, and her lease of beauty was not indefinite. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of her outings since her twenty-fifth birthday.
‘Oh, George, you’re very kind. Don’t think I don’t know that. The more so because I realize you have nothing to gain. I—’
‘On the contrary,’ said George, ‘I have everything to gain.’
‘I scarcely know quite what to say. You heap favours upon my mother and father, upon my son, and would on Francis if he would allow you. I wish I could see some end to this quarrel, I truly wish I could. But – in suggesting that it’s a trivial thing, don’t you deceive yourself? None of it’s as simple as you make it sound. I wish it were. I should be happy enough to see our friendship restored.’
He came over to the fireplace. ‘And will do your part to restore it?’
‘If you will do yours.’
‘How?’
‘Help to convince Ross that you are not his enemy.’
‘I am not interested in Ross.’
‘No, but Francis is Ross’s partner now. You’ll not reassure one without the other.’
George stared down at his riding crop. Perhaps the look in his eyes was not for her.
‘You credit me with supernatural powers. What do you want me to do?’
‘If you’ll do what you can,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘I hope I may hold you to that bargain.’
‘You may.’
He bent over her hand and this time kissed it, with a rather dated formality which yet conveyed what he meant it to convey.
He said: ‘Please don’t bother to show me out. My horse is at the door.’
He left the room, shutting the door after him, and crossed the great empty hall. The wind was rattling a loose window. As he reached the front door, Aunt Agatha came out of the small drawing-room and began tottering across in his direction. He tried to avoid being seen, but – although she was nearly stone-deaf – her eyesight was sharp enough.
‘Why, if it isn’t George Warleggan, or I’m a dunce! Don’t mumble now! People will mumble. ’Tis years since you put foot inside our place, I’ll swear. Getting too grand for us, are you?’
George smiled and bowed over the withered hand. ‘I salute you, old hag. The worms must be tired of waiting. It’s not seemly when people rot while they’re still above ground.’
‘Getting too grand for us, I b’lieve,’ said Agatha, one trembling claw going to join the other on her stick. ‘Look at that waistcoat. I remember you when you was a boy, George, not hardly bigger’n Geoffrey Charles. Quite overawed you was, coming here that first time. Different now.’
George smiled and nodded. ‘There should be a law to poison off old women, ma’am. Or a pillow pressed over the face would not take long. If you were the last of the Poldarks, I’d do it myself. But never fret, your great-nephews are digging their own graves. It won’t be long.’
A slow bead of water escaped from Aunt Agatha’s eye and slid diagonally down one of the furrows on her cheek. This was no sign of emotion, it just happened from time to time.
‘You was always Francis’s friend, I remember, never Ross’s. What’s that you say? Nervous you was, that first time, and hardly fledged, an’ Charles saying, what’s the boy brought home from school with him now? Well, times has changed. I mind the years when you couldn’t have rid over from Truro in all that falallery without being turned heel over tip by some footpad or needy tinner. Have you seen Francis?’
‘I’ve seen Elizabeth,’ said George, bowing again. ‘You remind me of forgotten things, old woman. Die soon, won’t you, and be forgotten yourself.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Aunt Agatha. ‘Come again and stop to supper. We’re uncommon short of company these days.’
Chapter Two
Francis reached home just before six. He found Elizabeth sitting by the window, embroidering a stool cover, and Aunt Agatha crouching over the tiny fire.
‘Whoo, it’s hot in here.’ He went across to one of the windows and opened it. ‘Really, old lady, you’d be better in bed than cramping your old bones there.’ But he did not say it unkindly.
Aunt Agatha screwed up her eyes at him. ‘You’ve missed our visitor, Francis. Missed him by a skin, I should say. ’Tisn’t often we’ve a visitor these days. You should have asked him to supper, Elizabeth.’
Francis looked at his wife and she flushed, furious that the old lady had forestalled her and furious that she cared.
‘George Warleggan came.’
‘George?’ The way Francis said the word was enough. ‘You saw him?’
‘Yes. He didn’t stay long.’
‘So I should think not. What did he want?’
Elizabeth raised her grey eyes, which at times like this could look especially candid and virginal. ‘I don’t think he wanted anything. He said he thought it unnecessary to go on with this quarrel.’
‘This quarrel . . .’
‘And very cordial he was too,’ said Aunt Agatha. ‘Fortune’s improved his manners, or I’m a dunce. Quite like old times, ’tis, having a man make a knee to you.’
Francis said: ‘I wonder if he knew my back was turned.’
Elizabeth went on with her embroidery. ‘He said he and you had been friends since childhood, he did not wish the estrangement to continue as it was. He had, he said, no desire at all to intrude on your private affairs or Ross’s, his only wish being to help us to a fuller enjoyment of our lives . . .’
‘You speak as if you have learned the lesson well.’
Elizabeth’s fingers flickered uncertainly over her work basket, selecting a new colour. ‘That was what he said. You may take it or leave it as you please, Francis.’
Aunt Agatha said: ‘I mind it was the year of that Du Barry scandal, or was it the year after, that you first brought him here. Stuggy little boy, he was, and the clothes they sent him in! Velvets and silks, you could see his mother’d no taste; and he staring about like a bull calf that had strayed from its stall.’
‘He has an easy, oily tongue,’ said Francis, ‘and a persuasive damned way of putting things. I know it to my cost. Does he suppose we shall live a fuller life because of the boon of his friendship? I don’t think his flatteries can convince you of that.’
‘I can form my own judgments,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Though I couldn’t but be aware that if it wasn’t for his forbearance in the matter of mor
tgages we should not be living a life at all.’
Francis bit his thumb thoughtfully. ‘I confess I don’t understand his forbearance. It’s out of character. Now that I’m in partnership with Ross . . . That’s why the adventure at Wheal Grace is in Geoffrey Charles’s name. But George makes no move.’
‘Except towards friendship,’ said Elizabeth.
Francis went to the open window and let the cool air waft on his face. ‘I can’t help but feel that I owe my immunity to you.’
‘To me? That’s silly. Really, Francis—’
‘Silly? Far from it. George has been making sheep’s eyes at you for years. I’d never supposed him to be sufficiently human to let any warmer feeling interfere with his business aims, but lacking a better explanation . . .’
Elizabeth got up. ‘I hope you’ll find a better. I must go and read to Geoffrey Charles.’
As she passed Francis, he caught her arm. The relationship between them had been kinder these last two years, though it was never warm. He said: ‘We may disagree, but I think his coming today has a plain enough reason. Whatever you may think he feels for me or I may think he feels for you, we can’t doubt what he thinks of Ross. If by befriending us he can put a new division between us and Ross, he will certainly have gained his object. Do you want him to do that?’
Elizabeth was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘No.’
‘Nor I.’ He released her arm and she went slowly out.
Aunt Agatha said: ‘You should have asked him for supper. We’ve plenty as it happens. But ’tisn’t like it was when Charles was alive. I sadly miss your father, boy. He was the last one that knew how to entertain in a proper genteel way.’
On his way home, at Bargus Cross where the gibbet stood, George met Dwight Enys, who was coming from the direction of Goon Prince. Dwight would have saluted and ridden on, but George halted and the two horses closed together.
‘Well, Dr Enys, you ride far on your medical duties. Never to Truro, I suppose?’
‘Seldom to Truro.’
‘And when in Truro you do not venture as far as the Warleggans.’
Dwight made some show of quieting his horse while he thought out his reply. He decided to be frank. ‘I’ve had nothing but friendship from your family, Mr Warleggan, and feel nothing but friendship in return; but the Poldarks of Nampara are my chief friends; I live on the edge of their land, work among their mining folk, sup at their table, and share their confidence. In that event it seems better that I should not attempt to get the best of both worlds.’
George did not move his neck but allowed his eyes to explore Dwight’s shabby velvet coat with its gilt buttons.
‘Are the two worlds so divided that an independent man cannot pass from one to the other of his own free will?’
‘I have taken it so,’ Dwight said.
George’s face darkened.
‘Men’s tongues in some things outrun women’s. Your own affairs prosper?’
‘Well enough, thank you.’
‘I was at the Penvenens’ place last week, and gather that you are the regular physician there now.’
‘Mr Penvenen keeps in very good health. I don’t see much of him.’
‘They tell me that his niece is back.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I understand you did some clever operation on her throat and saved her life.’
‘I think men’s tongues have outrun the women’s in that also.’
George did not greatly appreciate having his own words turned back on him. He began to feel a growing dislike for young Enys, who spoke so bluntly and hardly bothered to hide his sympathies. George did not spend his time in company which cared nothing for his approval or disapproval.
‘For my part,’ he said, ‘I have no faith in physicians or apothecaries, I think they kill as many as they cure. My family is fortunate in not yet being effete, as so many of the older families are.’
He rode on, followed by his servant. Dwight stared after him, then tugged on his horse’s rein and went his way. That he had offended an influential man he knew. In his profession he would have preferred it otherwise, but he had long since chosen his friends. What did concern him was something else. ‘They tell me that his niece is back,’ George had said. If Caroline Penvenen was really home, it meant the destruction of his peace of mind.
Dwight’s business was in Sawle; and as he was leading his horse down the steep slippery lane to the fish sheds at the bottom, he heard a clatter behind him and saw that Rosina Hoblyn had fallen, on the stones. She had been carrying a bucket of water, and he looped the reins of his horse over a post and went to help her to her feet. But he could not get her up. Any tentative approaches he had made to the subject of why the nineteen-year-old Rosina walked with a bad limp had been headed off by her family, who seemed to be afraid of the subject. Now her pretty thin face was white with pain, and he had to lift her to her feet.
‘’Tis my knee, sur. ’Twill be all right in a moment. Sometime he go like this and I can’t move him at all. Thank you.’
Her younger sister Parthesia came skipping out of the house and retrieved the bucket and curtsied at the doctor and put an arm out to help Rosina.
‘No, not yet,’ she said, and to Dwight: ‘if I wait, ’twill ease off.’
After a few minutes they got her inside. Dwight was glad that Jacka the father was not there, as his moods could go all ways.
With his ‘no nonsense’ face, Dwight waved away Rosina’s and Mrs Hoblyn’s protests that it was really all nothing at all, that if she sat on the table and swung her leg it would pass off, and bent to examine the knee, half fearing to find heaven knew what scrofulous condition. He did not find it. Swollen certainly and a little red, but the skin was not shiny or hot to the touch.
‘You say this trouble began eight years ago?’
‘Yes, sur, ’bout that.’
‘Does it hurt all the time?’
‘No, sur, only when it d’go stiff like this.’
‘And have you had the same trouble with your hip?’
‘No, sur, there’s nothing amiss wi’ that.’
‘Do you ever have a discharge from the knee?’
‘No, sur. ’Tis just as if someone turn a key and lock it,’ said Rosina, pulling down her skirt.
‘Has any other physician seen it?’
He had the feeling that they were exchanging glances behind his back. Rosina said: ‘Yes, sur – when it first went wrong in ’84. But ’twas Mr Nye, and he’s gone dead since then.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Didn’t say nothing ’bout it,’ Mrs Hoblyn put in hastily. ‘Didn’t know what ’twas at all.’
The feeling of the house was so obviously discouraging that Dwight told the girl to use a cold compress and said he would see her again next week when the pain had gone. When he came out, dusk was almost falling and he had his most unpleasant call still to make.
At the bottom of the hill was a flat green triangle of grass and weed above the shingle, and on one side of it were fish sheds with cottages and shacks built over them. You crossed a narrow humped bridge to reach them. Dwight stood for a moment staring out to sea. The wind was rising and the farther cliffs were hardly visible in the gathering dusk. It was still possible to see the grim jaws of the narrow inlet. An old man fumbled with a net over one of the boats. Seagulls fought for a fish head behind the inn. A candle glimmered in a window.
Above the rush of the waves Dwight fancied he could hear the whispered voices of the villages. ‘’Ere, heard about John James Ellery, ’ave ee? Had toothache, that was all – went to the surgeon over to Mingoose: surgeon took three teeth away. John James has been in mortal pain ever since, and like to die! I’d fight shy of ’e, if I was sick!’
Dwight turned to go, and as he did so a man came quietly from behind the inn and seemed to want to avoid him. But Dwight stopped and the man stopped. It was Charlie Kempthorne, whom Dwight had cured of miner’s consumption, and who was laying suit to
Rosina Hoblyn, though he was a widower of forty-odd with two children and she only nineteen.
‘You’re out an’ about late, sur, aren’t ee? ’Tis no eve to be anywhere but home by the fireside – that’s for them as is lucky t’ave a fire to sit by.’
‘What I was about to say to you.’
Kempthorne grinned and coughed. ‘There’s business best done in the half-light, y’understand. When the Customs men don’t see ee.’
‘If I were a Customs man, I should be at my busiest in the half-light.’
‘Ah, but they d’like their firesides, like other sensible folk.’ There was a trace of uneasiness in Charlie’s expression as he slid past.
Phoebe Ellery opened the door for Dwight and led him upstairs. You climbed to John James Ellery’s room by a wooden ladder from the room below where sacks of potatoes and nets and oars and cork floats were stacked. It was impossible to stand upright in the bedroom, and this evening the ‘chill’ had just been lit to fend off the encroaching night. Most of the glass had gone from the window, and the wind beat through, plucking at the sacking and bringing in a spatter of rain. A great black-and-white cat stalked about the room, scarcely ever still for a moment and making ominous purple shadows of his own. The sick man had his face wrapped in an old cloth and kept muttering: ‘Lord, ’ave mercy on me, Lord, ’ave mercy on me.’
Phoebe stood in the doorway watching Dwight with relentless, reproachful eyes. ‘’E’ll be better in a while,’ she said. ‘The pain last for an hour, maybe, and then d’go off for a space, see.’
There was little Dwight could do, but he stayed half an hour and administered laudanum and listened to the noisy waves, and by the time he left the spasm was passing.
It was a wild night and Dwight spent it restlessly, lost in a sense of his own failure and in the futilities of his profession.
Chapter Three
Ross and Demelza were among the last to arrive at the Trevaunances on the evening of the twenty-fourth of May, having been forced to borrow a horse from Francis, who still had three in his stables; and a company of about twenty people were already talking and laughing in the big drawing-room as they went upstairs. It took Demelza half an hour to change, and Ross, who had little to do for himself, read the latest copy of the Sherborne Mercury which had been obligingly left in the bedroom.