A half-hour’s conversation might be all Ross needed with Mark Daniel; but the arrangements for such a conversation, and its venue on one of a group of wind-swept islands well out in the Atlantic in mid-winter, needed a margin on either side to allow for delays. Ross estimated he would be away a week.
A message had arrived from Mark that he was willing to come. Ross had suggested the twenty-ninth of January as an approximate date, because Trencrom had said the One and All would leave on the twenty-eighth and they could drop him off at St Mary’s the following day and pick him up on their return. Mark had agreed to the twenty-ninth, but, with his own journey in an Irish ketch even more dependent on wind and weather than Ross’s, he might well be days early or late.
With such news Ross decided to risk his last £75 on the purchase of coal. What had seemed a useless gesture now looked a fair business risk.
As the month neared its end political crisis again overshadowed the personal worries of men. The long-drawn trial of Louis the Sixteenth had ended in a sentence of death. There was still chance of a reprieve, but few really believed it would come about. The Convention could hardly retract now. Changes took place in England overnight. The noisy Jacobin clubs silently closed their doors. Arguments which had gone on for years in taproom and in coffee shop came to an end. Men waited. Some went home and looked out old fowling pieces and rubbed up relics of earlier wars.
On the twenty-fourth it was known that the execution had been carried out. That settled it. Few people in England had much admiration for Louis beyond the manner of his dying; and it was less than one hundred and fifty years since they had cut off the head of their own king; but sentiment does not derive from logic. Theatres closed, crowds demonstrated outside the Palace. The French ambassador was given his papers. Now it was only a question of time.
It was in this atmosphere that Ross took leave of Demelza on Sunday the twenty-seventh and made his way by easy stages to St Ives, where the One and All had been undergoing repairs. Her crew, mainly St Ann’s men, had found their own way down the coast in ones and twos; and soon after six on the following morning the seventy-ton cutter slipped out on the flood tide. A thin layer of powdered frost lay on her decks and did not melt until the sun rose. It seemed to Ross, standing in the bows with the small waves lipping at the yellow gunwales as she went about, that the sun came up directly above where Nampara would be. To feel a deck under his feet again after so long was unfamiliar and exciting.
To Demelza, rising early and knowing that if things went according to plan he would be at sea before dawn, the wintry day was charged with apprehension. No study of the battered old linen map, showing the Scilly Isles far out of reach of the French regicides, was a complete reassurance. As she went about her daily work, she blamed herself for getting into the habit of worrying. It was entirely outside her nature so far as her own safety went, but with Ross the tendency had grown on her. She must check it; she must correct it. One could only wish that he was a man less prone to attract trouble.
Determined to be practical, she hummed and sang at her work all morning, and in the afternoon for the first time for months opened her spinet and played a few airs. Once she had taken lessons from Mrs Kemp, but that was in the happy days of moderate prosperity when Julia was alive. She wished she could find time and interest to take it up again. Just playing a chord sometimes gave her exquisite pleasure, it struck down into her soul, not merely heard but felt, emotion of a new kind. In the middle of this exercise Dwight Enys arrived.
When she opened the door to him he said: ‘Was that you playing? I’m sorry, I’d no wish to disturb you. Is Ross in?’
His cloak was flecked with hail, though she had not noticed the shower.
‘No, Dwight. He’s … from home for a day or two. Won’t you come in?’
He took off his cloak and hat on the threshold and shook them. Over the hills the sky was as brown as an old blanket with the passing storm.
‘Did you walk?’ she asked as he followed her into the parlour.
‘Yes. I came about five because I thought Ross was usually back then. I should have come days ago but have been putting it off.’
‘You’ll take tea? It’s that cold. I wish ‘twould snow and then the cold might come down.’
‘Do you know when Ross will be back?’
‘By Saturday, I believe. Is it something urgent?’
‘Oh … no, not urgent. Not in the ordinary sense.’ Hesitating, nonplussed, Dwight sat on the edge of a chair. ‘Jeremy is well?’
‘Yes. Can you hear him? He has Jinny Scoble’s two little boys in to play, and Jinny is minding them for me.’ She turned to watch the kettle, which was making some preliminary, intermittent noises. ‘I’ll go fetch the teapot. I forgot to bring it in.’
When she came back, he was staring out of the window. Dusk had come suddenly, as if the sides of the valley had closed in, and the firelight flickered and glowed across the room. She thought, I wonder if he’s safely there now; I wonder what the Scillies look like. She pictured them as high barren rocks. Dwight helped her to light the candles.
As the light flickered on her skin, she said: ‘I know Ross wouldn’t mind you knowing. You have all our other secrets, almost, so another makes small difference. He has gone with Mr Trencrom and is dropping off at the Scilly Islands to meet Mark Daniel, who has been found at last. The One and All will pick Ross up again and bring him home about Friday or Saturday, when they will – anchor off our cove.’
Friday was the first of February. Too late for him. ‘I hope Daniel has some good news for you.’
The candles had died down to tiny pearls of light, and these now began to melt the tallow and to burn lozenge-shape.
‘It seems a century since that night,’ said Dwight. ‘When you stood between us, you only, and Mark would have killed me. I’d have welcomed death, then, because I’d betrayed all the things I valued most and the people who trusted me.’
‘We were all overwrought that night. I’m glad nothing worse happened.’
In a distant part of the house there was a bump and after a pause a giggle of children’s laughter. Demelza, who had expected tears, relaxed again.
Dwight said: ‘The last thing I want is to remember that time. Because I came today to see Ross to tell him that I am leaving this district very shortly …’
She waited for him to go on. ‘Is it to do with Caroline?’
‘Yes. We’re to be married. But because of her uncle’s opposition it must take place in secret. So we’re leaving together late on Saturday night.’ He went on to explain why any other solution was impossible, why they could not live here, why he owed it to her to start afresh in a town where neither of them was known. Demelza listened in silence, and her silence to his overstrained perceptions was a criticism.
She said: ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it for your sake, Dwight; sorry for our own. ‘Twill not be only in Sawle and Grambler that you’ll be missed. We shall feel – quite lost. And Jeremy.’
‘Thank you …’
The kettle now seemed to be bursting with steam and water, and the fire was spitting its protests. She made tea.
‘I’ve been in correspondence with a physician who studied with me in London. He’s ill and needs a change, so has agreed to come for six months on trial, with the prospect of staying. It will be far better than leaving no one at all. Wright is a good man, older than I am, but with similar views. I’m sure you will like him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course I know it will not be the same for a time. Without conceit I know that. And it means also something for me – on which I depend. I shall miss people – and of course chiefly you.’ He frowned out of the window to hide his feelings. ‘I want you to tell Ross, will you, how much I feel I owe to him, to you both, for your friendship. The whole thing has been a great grief to me.’
After a few moments Demelza brought him a cup of tea. ‘Marrying someone you love isn’t a time for grief, Dwight. The last thing Ross or I should want – or I’m sure that any of your friends would want … Worry about us and our ailments so much as you like until Saturday. But after Saturday you should forget all that and begin your new life as if Sawle and Grambler had never been. ‘Twould not be unfeeling to do that. It would be good sense.’
When Dwight had gone, Demelza cleared away the tea things. Time Jeremy was thinking of bed. Dwight’s visit had left her lonelier than ever. The discussion had curiously skirted the character of the girl in the case. Ross had once predicted Caroline would wipe her feet on Dwight, but perhaps he had revised his opinion since then. Demelza knew Bath by repute. That it would suit Caroline was fairly clear. Whether Dwight would settle into the conventional pattern remained to be seen.
Strolling round the small bleak island of St Mary’s, Ross waited impatiently for some sign of the Irish ketch bearing Mark Daniel. So far in two days there had been none. The winds had been contrary, veering and backing between northwest and east. An active man, and with so much at stake in this meeting, he found the time unbearably slow. Three French crabbers put into the sheltered water between St Mary’s and Tresco on Tuesday when the weather was bad, but their crews did not come ashore.
Hugh Town was little more than a straggle of thatched cottages and fish cellars clutching the shore of the island where it curved in a natural harbour. Every night the new revolving oil light on St Agnes Island, only installed three years, sent out its warning to wandering ships. Previously the light had come from an oak log fire. Although in the centre of the island and eighty feet above sea level, it had sometimes been put out by the sea. For more than a hundred years now no local man had been permitted to be in charge of it, after one wreck when the fire wasn’t kindled until the ship was on the rocks.
Dressed in old clothes, Ross was still conspicuous about the island, and at the tiny inn where he stayed conversation stopped whenever he came into the room. On the Wednesday he was rowed over to St Martin’s and spent a couple of hours up the Beacon Tower, watching the horizon for ships. From this vantage point the multiplicity of tiny islands looked like an anchored fleet.
On the Wednesday, Mr Ray Penvenen told his niece that in view of the prospect of war he thought it better to leave for London on the Friday instead of the Sunday. He had certain banking interests, and he would prefer to be in touch with them as soon as possible. But Caroline did not like this at all. Apparently she was not ready to go. Nothing would induce her to leave before Sunday morning. If he wanted to go before, he must leave without her. After argument, in which she seemed needlessly downright, he gave way. She had been so considerate to his views in other respects that he felt he must humour her in this. Nevertheless his mind was not quite easy, and several times that evening she looked up from her reading to find his eyes on her.
On the Thursday, Dwight had to go into Truro to draw some money and to obtain letters of credit for his journey. On coming out of the bank he almost bumped into a tall fair soldier in the uniform of the Scots Greys. Such figures might soon become a commonplace of countryside and town, but this man’s great moustache was familiar. Then Dwight remembered where he had seen him before – leaving the cottage of Vercoe the Customs Officer at St Ann’s. It was almost twelve months ago: sometime last spring.
On Thursday afternoon a small fishing vessel appeared in Crow Sound and presently nosed her way into the quieter waters of the Road. She was fore-and-aft rigged, but she carried a large square sail on her mainmast. After about half an hour a dinghy brought a man ashore.