John Treneglos grunted. ‘I’ll confess if you want me to, though it’s a thought unmannerly to need me to be so explicit.’ He put his hand firmly on the other’s shoulder. ‘You know how it is on these occasions. Damme, you of all people shouldn’t stand in a feller’s way. You’ve done enough tile-walking in your time. The little bud was oncoming tonight. As good as invited me, y’know. Can’t turn a good thing down. What with Ruth out of the way. Golden opportunity. I suggest you turn a blind eye and toddle off to bed.’
‘Blind eye!’ said Sir Hugh explosively. ‘I was going in there myself!’
Treneglos stared at his host in startled fashion. ‘What? What? You’re joking! Damn it! Don’t tell me she invited you too!’
Sir Hugh scowled. ‘Not invited in so many words. But a nod’s as good as a wink, man—’
‘Ah, you put too much store by these nods, my dear. No doubt she wished to be polite, as any woman would to a handsome old war horse like you, but—’
‘Well maybe she’ll go on being polite . . . And war horse be beggared!’ said Sir Hugh, as the second half of the sentence registered. ‘I’m inclined to suppose I’m just as good a man as you. What did she say to you – tell me that, eh? What did she say to you, sir?’
‘I misremember the exact words, but ’twas plain enough in the meaning. And half of it was the look. She has a very suggestible look when she sets herself out to it—’
‘Pshaw!’ said Bodrugan. ‘You’ve less claim to an invitation than I have. You thought to try your luck, that’s all. Confess it, man! She’s always been a tantalizing slut, and there must be an end of all things. How did you know which was her bedroom?’
‘What? Oh, I squeezed that wall-eyed maid you have, and she gave off the information. Now look, Hugh, it is plain enough I was here first, if only by a short head, so I have a certain priority in the matter, even if we discount the exact manner of the invitation. After all, you have your own doxy here in the very house, which is more than Ruth would ever put up with. Don’t be greedy. What do you say to giving me best? Then perhaps another time – ’
‘Rubbish!’ The injustice of the situation welled up in Bodrugan. ‘Who helped her in Bodmin two years gone and nothing for it but a few kisses? Who showed her how to use that new seed drill everyone’s talking about? Who’s sent her presents and called upon her regular? And who invited her here, sir? Whose house is this? Ecod, if ’twas in your house, I fancy you’d put in a substantial claim . . .’
‘Hush,’ said Treneglos. ‘If you argue in that tone, the whole house will be out in the corridor . . . I grant that ’tis your house and welcome to it; but you’re the host, Hughie, and it is your place to give way to a guest. Any book of behaviour will tell you that. The convenience of the guest should come first – always first. Damn it, you haven’t a leg to stand on! Manners aren’t what they were but—’
‘I stand where I stand,’ said Sir Hugh angrily. ‘And if you go in that room, I go with you!’
John sighed, and wiped the back of his sleeve across his forehead. ‘I don’t fancy we’ll win her that way . . .’ He was struck with a thought. ‘It may be she meant the invitation to apply to us both and that ’tis just ill fortune we have come together. But if we go in together, that will finish it. What do you say to tossing a coin? Winner goes in right away. Loser chances his arm in an hour or so. Ecod, it seems the only reasonable argument . . .’
Sir Hugh grunted. ‘You’re worse thoughted than I ever supposed, John. But no one shall say I wasn’t a sportsman. If it is the only way to settle the matter peaceable, I’ll accept it.’ With some difficulty he fished a coin out of his fob pocket. ‘Now if you’ll toss, I’ll call . . .’
‘Naw. Hold hard a moment. Let’s see the coin . . . Ah, just as I suspicioned: two heads. All’s fair in love, but let’s be fairer than that.’ With equal difficulty John Treneglos fumbled another coin into his fingers and showed it to his rival. ‘This one was born natural and has a top and tail. Now call, will you, while I spin.’
‘Heads,’ grunted Sir Hugh furiously, and at once bent and then went on his knees to see the result.
‘Tails!’ said John in triumph. ‘Tails it is, by the beard of Moses. You’ve lost, Hugh, and the filly’s mine!’
‘It struck the edge of the carpet! Just as it fell I saw it. I demand we should toss again! Why, damn me—’
‘Nay, fair’s fair. You’d not go back on your word, I take it?’
On hands and knees they eyed each other, and Sir Hugh perceived that if he quarrelled with the fall of the coin he would have a fight on his hands. And Treneglos was the second-best amateur wrestler in thirty miles. Grumbling, grunting, sweating, he got to his feet. He bitterly regretted having agreed to any such hazard now. He knew, in his bones he knew, that things had been propitious for him tonight; and now this clumsy, bungling fool had come along to spoil it all.
With seething resentment he watched the younger man tiptoe to the door of Demelza’s room, gently turn the handle, and slide inside. Unable to bear the sight of it, he turned sharply away and stumped off to the end of the corridor. But there he stopped. It would be a mistake to abandon his position too early. It did not after all turn entirely on the fall of a coin. There was the lady to consider. He flattered himself that she had a soft spot for him, and John Treneglos was the sort of bumptious ass who, given an inch, would assume a yard. He might well come out again at any minute with a cracked head. She was a quicktempered girl and if his advances were unwelcome . . . Sir Hugh decided to linger in the shadows at the end of the passage and wait a minute or two. To while away the time he took a pinch of snuff and dusted the loose powder away with the torn end of his cuff.
The sneeze that had been in gestation was stillborn with delight, for the very thing he had hoped came to pass. John Treneglos came sharply out of the bedroom with a dazed expression on his face and stared right and left. He spotted Sir Hugh and beckoned him. Preening himself, strutting, Sir Hugh came.
‘Is this the room, Hughie? I’ve made no mistake?’ ‘Nay, of course not. She wants me—’ ‘Well, there’s no one in it. See for yourself.’ ‘What!’ Sir Hugh pushed past him. A candle guttered in the draught between door and window. The bed was not disturbed. A chair was overturned, but no articles of clothing were to be seen about the room. Sir Hugh went straight to the great wardrobe and flung it open. The cupboard was bare. He pulled the curtains farther back from the bed. Then he went on his knees and looked under it. John Treneglos brought the candle over. United in adversity, they ransacked the room. All they found was a number of hairpins, some powder spilled before the dressing-table, and the sleeve of a lawn dressing-gown.
‘She’s maybe gone visiting herself,’ said Treneglos. ‘Ecod, I well call to mind a serving maid we had at Mingoose: you’d never be sure where she was to be found next. Once I remember—’
‘I conceit it’s different from that,’ said Sir Hugh, scowling. ‘Shut that pesty window, John; all the harmful night air’s blowing in . . . There’s McNeil, now. He was making a mighty fuss of her after supper . . . But he sleeps some way distant; and even if she went to him, she would surely leave some of her draperies behind.’
Treneglos had had his head out. ‘I suppose she wouldn’t be madcap enough to climb down this ivy, eh? What would be her purpose? Has it all been done to hoax us, d’you suspicion? I think she couldn’t have done it, could she? Or would our noise have scared her? If you flush a hen pheasant, it flies farthest.’
Bodrugan put his head out tentatively and then quickly withdrew it. ‘Bah, no, you’re dreaming, man. Why should she go that way and risk her neck? ’Tis all very confusing and provoking too. I’ve never known a woman like her for promising much and performing little. I could put her over my knee.’ He thought of that pleasurably for a moment, and then the long-delayed snuff-sneeze occurred. ‘Shut the damned window, I say. We shall both have a distemper in the morning.’
The window was shut, and the two men returned disconsolat
ely to the corridor. Sir Hugh was reflectively crumpling the gown sleeve in his fingers.
‘It is a mortal pity,’ said Treneglos. ‘With Ruth away and all . . .’
They tramped down the passage together, no longer on tiptoe or careful of creaking boards; the house might wake now for all they cared. In the distance at the head of the stairs a coat of mail armour glimmered in the light from below.
‘When’s her time?’ said Sir Hugh, trying to take an interest.
‘Whose?’
‘Ruth’s.’
‘Oh . . . it was to have been last Wednesday, but she’s always late in coming to the boil.’
‘How many will this be?’
‘Four. If she keeps up her rate of fire, we shall soon have our share of livestock. And you’d never have thought it to look at her before she was wed.’
They stopped at the great black banisters and looked down into the littered hall. A footman yawned in his hooded leather chair. Treneglos seemed to expect his host to walk with him into the west wing, but Sir Hugh stopped.
‘You run along, dear boy. It will be daylight soon and the cocks crowing. The band’ll be waiting for their settlement. I promised they should have it prompt. It was the only condition on which they’d agree to come.’
‘Don’t forget your Margaret in the library.’
‘No,’ said Sir Hugh. He brightened a little at the thought and his brow cleared. ‘No, there is that. I’ll call in there on the way.’
Chapter Ten
Ross stayed three nights at Looe. Propositions were put to him, and he needed time to think them out.
Blewett, to Ross’s infinite surprise, was in a position to repay him the £250 loaned when the copper-smelting company smashed. The small boatbuilding business had been a moderate investment when they bought it; but with war came boom conditions, and in six months they had doubled their capital. So £250 was there for Ross’s taking. He had been invited to Looe because Blewett, well aware that Ross’s loan had saved him from bankruptcy and prison, was keen to repay the unwritten debt as well as the actual one and was prepared to offer Ross a share in their business. In order to judge fairly, he must see the yard.
Ross saw the yard. It was plain that money was being made there. His £250 would double itself in a year. As a business proposition it was first-rate.
But the yard was remote from where he lived. He could either find permanent lodging in Looe or he could allow the work to go on in his absence and look on the thing simply as an investment. Or he could take the £250.
And if he took the £250? Was he to put it aside for the emergencies of next Christmas? Or was he to pour it down the bottomless drain where £1,500 of his had already gone?
Buried under twenty fathoms of rock and broken props was a lode of tin. He knew that. That much was not a speculation any more. Captain Henshawe had sacrificed a hard-earned £100 to prove it. But it had been an unlucky venture from the start.
During the last weeks Ross had bitterly blamed himself for taking the risks which killed the two men. He knew that whatever the inducement he would never take those risks again. But if he let it be known that he was thinking of restarting work on the mine, all the men who had worked on it would flock back, eager to go down. Not one of them would bother to inquire the number of timbermen he was likely to employ. For them it was the luck of the game.
Although much had been agreed for the disposal of the headgear, scarcely anything had yet been moved. Two hundred and fifty pounds would by no means be an excessive sum to get the mine restarted. It might indeed be insufficient. He wondered what Henshawe would say. He knew what Henshawe would say.
He took the £250.
As he set out on the last stage of the journey home, his mind returned to the familiar devils, those which had occupied so large a part of his waking thoughts during the last week. He had not seen Elizabeth since his visit to her that night. He could not evaluate his own feelings yet and did not know hers. The only ones he was sure of were Demelza’s, and as he neared home he knew that some personal decisions had to be made and faced quickly if his own attitude was not to go by default. But how could he explain or justify what he did not understand himself?
Ever since he left Elizabeth in the early hours of the morning he had been tormented with new problems. What he had done had brought Elizabeth very much down into the arena. That might have simplified everything. In fact, he found it had not. All his old values had been overthrown and he found himself groping for new ones. As yet they were not to be discovered.
This might have been a useful corrective had he supposed himself to be finding a solution when he broke into Trenwith House six nights ago, but in fact the thing had blown up like a squall in his brain; there had been no time for calculated motives or reasoned intentions. Reason came after and reason was still out of its depth.
When he got home, Demelza was out. She had been out all day, Jane Gimlett said in a peculiar voice. Ross had his supper alone, and then when the sun set he asked which way she had gone, and Jane said across Hendrawna Beach. He went to see if there was any sign of her.
It was a good two miles to the Dark Cliffs on the other side. The tide was high, and in the orange afterglow the sea had become an unusual willow-pattern blue, so full, so overflowing, that it looked as if the land would never contain it. Halfway across he saw her coming. She was walking slowly, stopping now and then to examine some offering of the tide or stir a pile of seaweed with her foot. She was in an old dimity frock, and her hair was beginning to curl as if it had been wet. He remembered there had been a heavy shower not long since.
He had to wait some time before she came up with him. At length they were within speaking distance, and she smiled in a brilliant brittle fashion.
‘Why, Ross, how kind of you to come and meet me! Have you had a pleasant week-end? Did it come up to expectations? Mine did not. I went to the Bodrugans; but ’twas nothing in my line so I left early. Have you had supper? Yes, I suppose you have. Jane will have seen to that. Jane’s a rare good seer-to-things. I have been a long walk, miles beyond the Dark Cliffs. There’s other sandy coves beyond there, but none with any deep water so I suppose they’re no use to Mr Trencrom. Now—’
‘They’re no use to Mr Trencrom,’ he said. ‘You’re wet.’ He touched her arm, and noticed how she shrank away at his touch. ‘That shower. You’ll be taking a chill in the evening air.’
‘How thoughtful of you to think of it! But ’twas only a surface wetting. I have been wetter than that today. One of the little beaches was so pretty that I swam in the sea. There was no one to observe but the choughs. And how is Elizabeth? Is she still to wed George or have you fixed another arrangement? I do not suppose she meant seriously to marry him, do you?’
‘I haven’t seen Elizabeth this week-end,’ he said quietly enough but the muscles tight in his cheek.
‘Was there some hitch at the last moment? I thought ’twas all arranged.’
‘I was at Looe,’ he said, ‘with Tonkin and Blewett. I don’t lie to you, Demelza. When I go to Elizabeth, I will tell you of it.’
‘Oh, but does that not constrain you unfairly, Ross? Might it not be thought even a little pompous? To have to tell one’s wife every time one intends to visit one’s mistress . . . Is it not making a burden of one’s enjoyments—’
‘No doubt you feel entitled to these pleasantries. No doubt you are. Tell me when you have done, and then we can talk.’
‘No, Ross, you tell me when you have done. Isn’t that the way it should be?’
They faced each other. At that moment she hated him deeply – as she had done all week-end – so much more deeply because she knew she was bound to him by apparently unbreakable chains, which he it seemed could cast aside at will; because she had discovered it at great personal humiliation to herself – greater than she had ever imagined possible.
Ever since her escape from Werry House with its valise-burdened five-mile trek across broken country in the dark; the de
sperate haste to be home before daylight to be spared the final humiliation; the bruised knees and scratched hands of her climb made worse at every gate and hedge – ever since then the knife had been in her, turning hourly, the awful degradation of her struggle with McNeil, the utter disgrace of her flight. Had she yielded to McNeil, she would not have felt one quarter as bad, not one tenth as bad.
Ross’s adventures might have wounded her desperately, but the result of her own was not so much a wound as a goad.
Knowing nothing of this, he was taken aback by the hostility in her eyes. Especially because it had not been present – or not so noticeably present – after his return from Elizabeth.
He said: ‘You still think I’ve been at Trenwith this weekend. I haven’t. I never had an intention of going.’
‘You must do what you think best, Ross,’ she said. ‘Go and live with her if you want to.’
They began to walk again. A shag flew across the surface of the brimming sea so close that it might have been skating on it.
Ross said: ‘It is quite possible that Elizabeth’s marriage to George will still take place.’
‘Well, I’m sure you did your best to stop it.’
‘No doubt I did.’
She said: ‘Does she love George, then?’
‘No.’
She perceived suddenly that not she alone was in torment.
‘Did any good come of your visit to Looe?’
‘Blewett has paid back what he owes.’
‘What shall you do with it?’
‘It is enough to restart the mine.’
She laughed. That startled him too, for it was not a winning laugh. He had never heard or seen her like this before.
‘I can think of no better way to use the money. It is not enough by itself to discharge our liabilities.’
She would not answer.
‘Oh, I know this mining is some taint in the blood, inherited, a fever. I shall make the excuse that I am doing it for Henshawe’s sake, but it is not true. I do it for my own sake. If I did not do that, I should go to the war; and at the moment I have no special wish for that again.’