‘This is – contemptible! I shouldn’t have believed it of you! To force yourself . . . To insult me when – when I have no one—’
‘I don’t like this marriage to George, Elizabeth. I don’t like it! I should be glad of your assurance that you’ll not go through with it.’
‘I’d be surprised if you believed me if I gave it you! You called me a liar! Well, at least I do not go back on my promises! I love George to distraction and shall marry him next week—’
He caught her again, and this time began to kiss her with intense passion to which anger had given an extra relish, before anger was lost. Her hair began to fall in plaited tangles. She got her hand up to his mouth, but he brushed it away. Then she smacked his face, so he pinioned her arm.
She suddenly found herself for a brief second nearly free. ‘You treat me – like a slut—’
‘It’s time you were so treated—’
‘Let me go, Ross! You’re hateful, horrible! If George—’
‘Shall you marry him?’
‘Don’t! I’ll scream! Oh, God, Ross . . . Please . . .’
‘Whatever you say, I don’t think I can believe you now. Isn’t that so?’
‘Tomorrow—’
‘There’s no tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t come. Life is an illusion. Didn’t you know? Let us make the most of the shadows.’
‘Ross, you can’t intend . . . Stop! Stop, I tell you.’
But he took no further notice of the words she spoke.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.
Chapter Six
Demelza stayed awake till four and then woke again at six to hear him come into the house. He did not come upstairs, and that confirmed what she already knew. For she had known it from the moment he left.
Jeremy woke soon after and began to play and crow in his cot. Jeremy didn’t talk much yet, but his two favourite remarks were ‘Aberdare’ and ‘No anemone,’ which he employed in a system of his own to meet the varied circumstances of life. He had become a happier child recently as well as more robust, not so liable to fly off the handle if things didn’t come his way, but as full as ever of intense nervous energy. It was one of Demelza’s pleasures to wake early and lie in a drowsy contentment listening to the murmurs and chuckles of Jeremy in his cot.
Not so today. She got up at half past six, which was about the usual time, and went to the north window out of which she had climbed not many months ago. The sun had risen two hours since, and the rhetorics of dawn were long past. The morning was cloudy but very still, the sea a shadowy slate blue and deeply calm, having fallen away in the night. Sometimes there seemed to be no movement at all, it was a stretched silk cloth, but every now and then an apparent ripple would form under the surface and at rarer intervals one of the ripples would topple over, betraying its size by the crackling roar with which it broke the stillness of the day. Gimlett was already up and about, tirelessly and persistently busy in the farmyard. Demelza often wondered at his quietness in the morning, for he never woke them with the clatter of pails or other untoward noise.
This morning there was in her a pain so deep that it derived from some part of her she had not known of before. She had never known such despair. Everything was in ruin and in ashes. Whatever consolation her brain turned to crumbled at the first touch. Nothing would ever be the same again, for she had lost faith.
Not long ago, talking to Verity, she had said that trusting one’s husband . . . If one did . . .
Well, now the faith was gone. Of course it was not so clean-cut as that really. She had lived with Ross too long not to know his faults, his weaknesses; if you thought of your husband as godlike and perfect, you were a fool and asking for disillusionment. But it was the principle of trust that mattered. All his life Ross had been in love or partly in love with Elizabeth. The discontent had been more active since Francis died; but all the same Demelza had known him in and out of love with herself, more in than out, and had felt that that intense sense of loyalties which was one of the faults and one of the virtues of his nature would preserve him to herself in the last resort.
It was more than that, of course. The loss was more than that. However sane and civilized she might be, however she might reason it out, Ross had always been one step more than a husband to her. From the moment when, a little over nine years ago, he had taken her into his kitchen as a starving miner’s brat, he had represented a kind of nobility, not of birth but of character, a person whose standards of behaviour were always, and always would be, slightly better, surer than her own. Often she argued with him, lightly, flippantly, disagreeing with his views and his judgments; but underneath and on fundamental matters she gave him best.
So whether one expected complete fidelity from one’s husband or not, there was so much else lost besides. Demelza’s pride had been in him more than in herself. She had believed herself better than other women because a man like Ross had married her. In his visit to Elizabeth last night he had not only let himself down, he had let her down. It was a joint betrayal, something which destroyed the whole basis of her life.
Jeremy was waiting to be picked up, no longer content within the confines of his cot, becoming fretful. She ignored him and went to the other window while she brushed her hair. Somewhere within herself there was still a tiny thread of protest that perhaps this thing had not been; yet consciously she knew the truth. She had known it before he did, known what his purpose was before he rode away. And now? Why had he returned? Had he come to fetch his things and was he going to live at Trenwith with Elizabeth? Was the marriage between Elizabeth and George finally abandoned? Demelza was not a good hater, but she felt she could kill Elizabeth. Elizabeth had done her best to ill-wish the first years of their marriage. She had failed; but indirectly and innocently she was responsible for the death of Julia. That had been the first breach between Demelza and Ross. An estrangement, though barely perceptible, had grown from that day out of Ross’s grief, and Elizabeth had made the most of it. Now, since Francis’s death, she had had a free hand. One wondered if she had ever seriously meant to marry George, or if it had not been a gauntlet thrown down to provoke the reaction that she had in fact provoked.
Jeremy began to cry, and Demelza at last picked him up, changed him, and dressed him. Then she carried him downstairs. Jane Gimlett was in the kitchen.
‘The master’s ’aving his breakfast. I put on the cold gammon. I thought you was sleeping, and he says not to disturb you.’
‘Is there tea?’
‘Yes’m. Not made ten minutes. Shall I cut ee some bread and butter?’
‘No . . . Can you keep Jeremy for a few minutes . . .?’
She went into the parlour. Ross had changed his clothes and shaved, had almost finished his tasteless breakfast. He looked up and they looked at each other. In that moment she knew finally, and he knew that she knew.
‘I thought you might be asleep,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d begin without you.’
She did not speak, but after a moment she came forward and sat at the table some distance from him. She poured herself out a cup of tea, added milk and sugar. The light from the window fell on her pale eyelids, the dark gloss of her hair.
‘It won’t be the last time, will it?’ she said.
He didn’t speak, but looked down at his plate and pushed it away.
She was suddenly visited with an overwhelming gust of anger. It came upon her and took her utterly by surprise. She had been afraid of crying, but now there was not a tear in her.
‘Is – their wedding to go on?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ His scar was very noticeable this morning. Often it was as if that chance sword-thrust in Pennsylvania remained with him and had become a symbol of the nonconformity of his nature, the unabiding renegade.
She found her lips were trembling with anger.
‘When are you seeing her – seeing her again?’
‘I don’t know.’
She swallowed, tried to
control her voice.
‘What time did you get back?’
‘I think it was about five.’
There was silence between them then. She would not ask anything more, and he could not explain the unexplainable.
Trying hard to make talk, to be matter-of-fact, as if this was like any other breakfast there had ever been, he said: ‘I called at Mistress Trelask’s yesterday about the ribbons for Jeremy. She says she will have cheaper ones in a month or two.’
Demelza did not speak.
‘I was with Harris Pascoe a good part of the morning and so did not have the opportunity to buy the other things you mentioned.’
She stirred the tea, took a sip, felt the hot liquid go down, stared out of the window with unseeing eyes. He picked up a fork, made twin marks on the tablecloth with it.
‘I supped with Richard Tonkin. He has bought a boatbuilding business in partnership with Harry Blewett in East Looe. It had prospered since the outbreak of war.’
‘Oh.’
‘They have more orders, he says, than they know what to do with. Small craft . . . At least it is satisfactory to hear of someone doing well.’
‘Is it?’
Ross looked at his wife. ‘You do not see that satisfaction?’
‘No, I do not.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’
‘You’re spilling your tea, Demelza.’
‘Yes,’ she said and deliberately dropped her cup on the floor. The most frightening blazing anger was alive in her now. It was not only Elizabeth that she could have killed but Ross. She could have thrown every piece of crockery at him, and knives and forks too. Indeed she could have attacked him knife in hand. Fundamentally there was nothing meek or mild about her. She was a fighter, and it showed now. She struggled with herself and gasped and met his grey gaze. Then she swung with her arm, knocking off teapot and milk jug and sugar basin and two plates, sweeping them all to the floor.
She went out.
Ross did not stir an inch until Jane Gimlett came running in.
‘My dear life! What happened, sur? The teapot’s scat all to jowds! And your rug . . .’ She bent to clear the mess.
‘I caught my coat,’ said Ross. ‘It jerked the tablecloth. Pity.’
‘Dear life, it is so! Where’s the mistress?’
‘She went out. She does not want breakfast this morning.’
All the week a great thunderbolt hung over the house. All her life Demelza’s principle, though she did not know it as such, had been never to let the sun go down on her wrath. But she could very well have been buried with this wrath, because it came from a wound that knew no cure.
It was not that she could not forgive. She did not know that he cared about her forgiveness, or in any case that that was of importance. You can forgive someone for cutting down a tree, for smashing a precious vase, for burning a picture; it makes no difference to the thing destroyed.
They met only at meals, and then often contrived an avoidance by beginning early or coming late. When they had to meet they spoke little, and of things about the house or farm. Ross had a bed made up in Joshua’s old bedroom, where Demelza had slept the first night she came. To him it seemed impossible after what had happened that he should force his presence on her upstairs; to her it seemed that one contact with Elizabeth had rendered his wife disgusting to him.
That so far he had made no effort to see Elizabeth again was rather a surprise, though of course he could have walked over every day for all she knew. At least he was continuing to eat and sleep in his own home. She would have died rather than ask him what he intended to do.
After that one outburst she was calm, though the anger had not left her. It had become a recognizable companion, colder, more deliberate, and she could not order it away. She didn’t want to. Sometimes afterwards she thought it was only her anger during that week that kept her alive. It was her opium, to which she turned when ordinary thought became intolerable. She knew he was busy all week over the sale of the mine gear. It was fetching about a quarter of what it cost. It would upset him when it began to go; but perhaps by then he would no longer be here. On the Thursday a letter came for him which he did not show her; but the following day he said:
‘I shall have to be away tomorrow night. I am going to Looe and cannot be there and back in the day. Harry Blewett has written and wants to see me.’
‘Oh.’ So this was the excuse he must make. It lowered the relationship even further that he felt he had to lie about it. Why not say, I am going to Elizabeth?
‘If you like to, you can read what he says.’ Guessing perhaps, he pushed the letter across the table to her.
‘No.’ She pushed it back unread.
After a moment or two he said: ‘I do not know what his motive is. Richard Tonkin must have told him I have no money to invest in his shipbuilding. I wish he would pay me back some he already owes me.’
She nearly said: ‘Then you could give it to Elizabeth.’ But at the last she had just too steady a sense of proportion to be petty.
On the Friday afternoon a man rode over from Werry House with a verbal message. Sir Hugh had received no answer to his invitation. Were Captain and Mrs Poldark able to accept? Demelza almost laughed. Sir Hugh and his party. Who felt like partying? Not she. And Ross would be away partying on his own. Partying with Elizabeth. Perhaps she should suggest that Ross should take Elizabeth and then she, Demelza, could pair off with George Warleggan.
She was not sure whether Ross intended to visit Looe at all, but she knew he would spend the last part of his weekend at Trenwith House, in Elizabeth’s arms. He would not want to be bothered with attending a reception and dance. Elizabeth’s reception was all he cared about. Demelza wondered if Ross used the same endearments to Elizabeth as he sometimes had to her. No doubt she would be charmed with her new lover. She’d got what she wanted at last, at long last. In her own bed she was welcoming him. Slender as a lily in his arms. Patrician and well bred and distinguished in a way Demelza could never be. For a woman who traced her ancestry eight hundred years there were perhaps refinements of love of which a miner’s daughter knew nothing. It was impossible after such a union that Ross should ever come back to common clay. Impossible. Impossible. He could go his own path while she drooped and languished at home, and drudged and cared for his child and tramped through the muck of the farm.
He could, could he? A light like a flame fell upon Demelza and illuminated all the dark places of her heart. Captain Poldark could not attend Sir Hugh Bodrugan’s party. But Mrs Poldark could. An unrestricted Mrs Poldark. A Mrs Poldark bent on avenging herself upon her husband and salving her own hurt, on bolstering up her own pride in the only way she could at this time. Let Ross take the consequences, for the situation was of his creating.
She gave the appropriate message to the footman who was waiting, and saw him go off up the valley on his horse. The light was still playing in her mind and she knew it would not go out. She began to prepare for her visit on Saturday.
Chapter Seven
Werry House had been built at the time of Edward IV, when all the Bodrugan interests were at their peak. Later, when Richard’s lust for power had ruined the Yorkist cause, the main Gorran Bodrugans had come crashing down; but the Werry Bodrugans had managed to find some favour at Henry’s court and had preserved their inheritance. Now the stock was petering out of its own accord. Neither Sir Hugh nor his stepmother cared anything for appearances. They kept servants to wait on their needs but preferred to live in disorder. They liked to slop about the house in muddy boots and throw them anywhere when discarded, and Sir Hugh had been known to say that the sight of a tidy room or a polished floor put him in mind of his old grandfather, whom he was trying to forget.
But there had been some effort to better the place for the time of the party. The lawns were cut, some of the walls and ceilings brushed, and most of the menagerie of strange animals had been cleared out and herded into two rooms. If one were not too par
ticular or took more notice of the company than of the chair one sat in, the whole thing passed muster pretty well.
Much the biggest room in the house was the hall, and this had a stone-flagged floor, a great fireplace, a raised dais at one end, and a high hammer-beam roof. The lower half of the walls, below the windows, was covered with moth-eaten tapestry, and above were numerous candelabra usually not lighted. It was in this room that the ball was to take place.
It was fortunate for Demelza that her decision to go, and to go in such a mood, was taken with so little time to prepare, otherwise she might have wondered a good deal what to wear. Problems of transport she had been quickwitted enough to solve before she dismissed the footman yesterday. Knowing that Ross would take Darkie, she had sent a message to Sir Hugh asking him to send over a groom and a horse; and this he did about five. So she arrived at Werry House in stylish manner, followed by a liveried man on another horse carrying her bag.
The drive of Werry House led out upon a coaching road, so most of the guests who came from central and southern parts of the county had arrived in their carriages. Six was evidently the fashionable time, for Demelza had to wait her turn before she could ride up to the front door, and she was the object of numerous raised quizzing glasses. She bore the scrutiny coldly, sitting straight-backed in her dark riding habit and tricorn hat.
Hugh and his stepmother were just inside the door, having been lured into the hall from an interesting discussion with John Treneglos on farcy in horses. Demelza came just on the heels of Mr and Mrs Nicholas Warleggan and heard Mr Warleggan’s apology. George had very urgent business and presented his compliments and regrets. Following her were a couple whom she vaguely recognized as Lord and Lady Devoran. Lord Devoran was a friend of Ross’s.
Sir Hugh came up to her and said: ‘Ha! ma’am, so you’ve ventured to trust yourself to me care and left your husband by the fireside. Good. Good.’
‘Yes, Sir Hugh. I thought ’twas not the weather for firesides.’