The next day Dwight received news of his appointment. He was to be surgeon of the frigate HMS Travail, fitting out at Plymouth, and was to join her on December 20.
Ross said nothing of his intention to go and see Caroline, but he told Dwight of his discovery about the money. Dwight’s face flushed up. He had known nothing of it, he said, and hid his other feelings behind a mask of apology for having spoken so freely of his friend’s business affairs. Ross told him he had never been so much obliged to anyone for talking freely of his business affairs.
He left for London on the following day, dining at St Austell and spending the night at Liskeard. They crossed the ferry at Plymouth and lay the next night at Ashburton. Friday they dined at Exeter and slept at Bridgewater, and Saturday saw them eating at Bath and sleeping in Marlborough. The last day was a full one, for they were up early making a stage before breakfast. They dined at Maidenhead and reached London just before ten at night. The ground was snow-covered as they neared the city.
It was snowing the following day when Ross set out to find Caroline. Her address was No. 5 Hatton Garden, which he knew to be a superior residential district; but he had to ask many times on the way. The streets were more crowded than he remembered them, and people seemed to have no manners, pushing and thrusting each other aside to get along more quickly or to gain some temporary advantage. Twice he saw people knocked into the gutter. And there were enough in the gutter to begin: blind beggars, tattered ex-soldiers short of an arm or a leg, children with sore eyes, bent crones holding out acquisitive claws. Snow had made things worse, for there were a half-dozen pitched battles in progress between apprentices of one sort and another, and often the women joined in. In the middle of one fight a carriage came along, and suddenly everyone turned on it so that the coachman was nearly pelted off his seat. Whoever was inside knew better than to open a window to protest.
Ross bought a daily paper, but it was filled more with quacks’ advertisements than news of the war. Anyway, since the execution of Marie Antoinette, people had become inured to the bloodstained horrors of Paris. The French had gone mad, that was plain. And England was at war. That was the main thing. What fighting there had been had been disappointing and inconclusive, almost as if the combatants hadn’t yet got their hearts in it. But even that was a relief to overburdened feelings. More would follow. England was at war. Eventually the insanity would be purged. It was only a matter of time now.
A liveried manservant opened the door of the house when he rang, stared petulantly at Ross’s clothes, which he had not had time or patience to renew since his change of fortunes. ‘Miss Penvenen?’ said the manservant, after being stared down. He would inquire. A considerable wait. He came back. Miss Penvenen was in and would see Mr Poldark. Ross was shown into a fine, rather empty, rather cold room overlooking the street. The manservant’s heels clicked on the polished inlaid floor.
His eyes newly alive to decorations and furniture, he took note of the elegant walnut writing bureau with the claw feet; the inset oval-shaped cupboards displaying fine china on either side of the great marble mantelpiece. The panelling of the room was of carved pine, and there were few pictures but many miniatures and silhouettes. A fire burned in the grate but did not seem to warm the larger spaces of the room. Downstairs somewhere children were laughing.
The door opened amd Caroline came in.
‘Why, Captain Poldark, I could not believe it was you! But the name was so unusual. London is honoured. I have seen no flags out for your visit.’
‘They don’t put flags out when I come to a place,’ Ross said, bending over her hand. ‘They put them out when I go.’
He was quite shocked by the change in her. She had gone so much thinner and lost much of her beauty. She was a person whose looks would always be volatile, but just now they were at a low ebb. She wore a dress of a fashion Ross had never seen before, with the waist under the armpits and falling straight to the floor. It had short puff sleeves and a gold cord and tassel.
‘You should have told me of your visit. How long shall you be staying?’
‘Two or three days. I couldn’t have forewarned you, for I didn’t know of it myself until a few days ago.’
‘Urgent business? You’ll have sherry and biscuits? It’s nearly time. The apothecary tells me I must have sherry every two hours, and I don’t find it an unpleasurable remedy.’
He watched her sit and then took a seat himself at the other side of the fireplace while she talked on rather aimlessly and at some length. She was ill at ease in his presence.
‘You’ve been ill, Miss Penvenen?’
‘I am a little out of sorts, and the heat of a London summer took my energy. How is your wife?’
‘Very well, thank you. We are all very well. And the mine has come into paying country, so that I am making money for the first time in my life. And all thanks to you.’
She looked quite convincingly surprised; then to give herself an escape from his heavy-lidded look, she turned and pulled the bell tassel beside her.
‘I drew it out of Pascoe last week,’ he said. ‘Afterwards he was a thought repentant of his confidences, but I gave him your full absolution.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Yes, indeed. So it would be a pity to waste time denying the indictment. You are convicted, Miss Penvenen, of wilfully saving three people from the worst disaster that bankruptcy can bring. You had no possible excuse for doing it, no ties of friendship or relationship, and it is a very grave charge.’
‘And what’s the sentence?’
‘To receive my gratitude for a selfless, kind, and Christian act that I shall never be able to understand and shall never forget.’
The colour came to her face, perhaps more at his tone than what he had said. She laughed and turned towards the door, glad before it opened of the interruption. When the sherry was on a table between them and the servant had left again, she said:
‘You make altogether too much of it, Captain Poldark.’
‘Ross,’ he said. ‘Christian names for a Christian act.’
‘Captain Ross, then. You make far too much of it. I have always been used to indulging my whims, and that was such a one. Sherry?’
‘Thank you. I disagree as to making much of it. You should have been in my shoes.’
‘But I was not. And don’t forget, spinsters are unpredictable at the best of times. I might well have endowed a sailor’s home instead, or indeed turned against you as easily—’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘In any case, the money is nothing to me. A few hundred pounds—’
‘Dwight tells me your personal fortune is not large.’
At that she was silent a moment, took up a biscuit, and chewed it slowly. ‘You have answers all ways. I see there is nothing for it but to accept the halo you offer me.’ She put up her hand to her hair. ‘I imagine it would look comic on a redhead, and in any case I shall surely tip it off at the first fence. But if it pleases you, Captain Ross, then don’t let me interfere with any arrangements you wish to make. The canonisation could be arranged for tomorrow at eleven.’
Ross sipped his sherry. ‘My journey took me five days. I have been thinking a good deal about you on the way – Caroline.’
‘I pray not for the whole five days. I do remember my ears burning once, but I thought it was the fever back.’
‘I came to tell you – one thing I came to tell you is that I shall be able to repay the whole of the money very soon. I have with me a draft on Pascoe’s bank for £280, which is your interest for the year. But the capital should also be forthcoming within a few months.’
‘There you are, you see! You elevate me merely for a shrewd stroke of business. I don’t believe my uncles earned me anything near twenty per cent when the money was in their charge.’
‘You talk of being a spinster, but I believe you’re not to remain so very much longer. I heard of your engagement just before I left – to a Lord Coniston, is it?’
‘Does that affect the safety of my investment?’
‘No. It only points my interest in your future.’
She rose and poured him another glass of sherry. Her arm was freckled along its outer curve.
‘You were not about to make me an offer yourself, Captain Ross?’
He smiled. ‘I’m not a Muslim. And have seldom regretted it before …’
She curtsied slightly before she sat down. ‘Thank you for being so gracious about it. But your compliments come a trifle early. I’m not promised to Walter.’
‘Not? You mean you are not promised to Lord Coniston?’
‘You look astonished. Does it matter – I mean, to you?’
‘Well, yes …’
‘He has offered himself once or twice, the last time as recently as last month. He’s personable enough, but I don’t think I shall marry him.’
Ross stared at his wine. Her reply had taken him completely by surprise. All he had planned to say to her – and all he had planned not to say to her – had been built on this belief. He felt as if his attitude of mind suddenly needed rethinking, and he had only a moment or so in which to do it.
‘Your uncle in Cornwall told someone I know that you had definitely promised to marry this man.’
‘My Aunt Sarah – whom I live with here – is always premature. He’s eligible and he had asked me; that was enough for her. But why does it upset you?’
‘If it’s not an impertinence, may I ask why you don’t intend to accept?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, the usual capriciousness of my sex.’
‘And you do not love him.’
‘As you say. I do not love him.’
‘In fact it’s probable that you are still in love with Dwight Enys.’
She took another biscuit. ‘Could the impertinence be in that question and not in the other?’
‘You know he has joined the Navy?’
She looked up quickly. ‘What, Dwight? No, I did not.’ For the first time he had got under her guard.
‘He’s joining his ship at Plymouth this week. There has been no settling him in Cornwall since you left.’
‘How very unwise of him! I should have thought he would have behaved with the utmost common sense.’
‘One does not always behave very sensibly when one loves a person as he loves you.’
‘Did you really come to thank me for the money or to act as his ambassador?’
‘He knows nothing of this. But he told Demelza last week that it was because of you he was leaving us.’
‘And what am I supposed to do, go into a decline because of that? Would it suit you if I gracefully fretted away?’
‘It would suit me if you told me why you left Cornwall when he failed to meet you that night. Oh, not that. I can understand that very well. Why you didn’t later accept his very reasonable explanation.’
She got up and went to the window. ‘What business is it of yours?’
‘It has suddenly become my business. I’ve long had a sincere affection for Dwight. I’m now under the deepest obligation to you. I want to know.’
‘It doesn’t give you the least excuse to interfere.’
He came up beside her. ‘I want to know, Caroline.’
Two young girls were just coming out of the house in the charge of an older woman, a governess. One girl glanced up at the window and saw Caroline and waved. She raised a hand in return.
‘How is your cousin-in-law, Elizabeth Poldark?’
‘She’s married again. She married George Warleggan.’
‘Oh … That does surprise me. Are they living at Trenwith?’
‘Yes. On my doorstep.’
‘That will not be welcome to you.’
‘It is not welcome to me.’
‘And your mine? It’s really paying?’
‘We can’t compute yet what the returns will be.’
‘My uncle has been ill. Do you know if he’s better?’
‘At the moment, yes.’
She turned, her fingers still holding the curtain. He noticed the little amber specks in her eyes. ‘Yes, I loved Dwight, if that’s any joy to you. It’s no joy to me, for I know we could not have been happy. I came to London with my uncle that day because I was vastly angry, piqued, disappointed – all the feelings you’d suppose. I did not know then that Dwight had been doing what he did for you – to help you. I knew that he had gone into Sawle, answering a medical call at the last moment from someone who needed him more than I did. The fact that afterwards he had involved himself in some scuffle with the preventive men and got himself knocked about and arrested did not really make the important difference which you seem to imagine. His going to see the Hoblyn girl was a – a symptom, a symbol. That is what you don’t understand and what he surely must. At least I tried to tell him in my letter. Captain Poldark – Ross, as you say I must call you – did you see anything of Dwight during those last weeks when we had arranged to elope and live in Bath?’
‘I suppose I did. I don’t remember.’
‘Well, he behaved as if he were preparing to do something shameful and underhand. Oh, yes, he was in love with me in his way, and that made him set a bright front on it; but underneath he was miserable! He thought he hid it from me, but it was plain to see. He was leaving his charge, his people, his cures, leaving them disgracefully, deserting them at dead of night and going to live in a fashionable and wealthy city. He may have had reasons for feeling that way – I don’t say if it is the right attitude or the wrong attitude – but there could have been no happiness in it for me. You think me a fickle and capricious woman; but in fact I’m not quite so featherbrained as you suppose. At least I could see that we should have a miserable future if he spent the rest of his life blaming himself for the desertion and trying not to blame me! It is true; don’t shake your head, it is true!’
‘Yes, I see it; I’m not denying that. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it all. And you explained all this to Dwight in a letter?’
‘As much as I was able.’
Ross took a turn about the room, and for a while neither of them spoke.
He said: ‘The desertion as you call it was especially difficult for Dwight because of his affair with another woman years ago, a patient—’
‘Yes. Keren Daniel. I know about her.’
‘I am not defending him, but I suppose that gave him a bad background for any later move which might look a trifle sordid to himself. There would not be wanting people who would say he had married you for your money.’
‘Oh, people! If you spend your life thinking what people will say, you will not stir from your own fireside.’
‘I entirely agree. And in principle I’m sure Dwight would. But he’s a deeply sensitive and punctilious person. I see his point; and I see yours now … But if you both loved each other, surely there was some other way out of the mess.’
‘For me to live with him in three rooms at the Gatehouse, with my uncle kicking up a rumpus a few miles away and everyone in the district knowing of it?’
‘No … But would it not have been better to see him, when he had travelled all that way to speak to you?’
She looked at Ross with a little deprecating expression. ‘I’m not made of iron, though no doubt you think that also.’
‘No,’ said Ross. ‘I don’t think so. I find you more and more a woman after my own heart.’
With a swift-flushing colour she said: ‘I believe I shall have a proposal from you yet.’
‘You may shortly have a proposal from me of a different nature. Do you still love Dwight?’
‘Extravagantly!’
‘No.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘Tell me, Caroline.’
She shook her head. ‘I find this a very embarrassing interview.’
‘Dwight will be in Plymouth all this week and part of next. If you travelled with me when I return on Thursday …’
She stared at him blankly, angrily. ‘You must be mad!’
‘Am I? It depends what you feel for him.’
‘It depends not at all on that—’
‘Then on what? You could be in Plymouth Sunday. Don’t you suppose it worth a final meeting? You’ve never talked over it sensibly together, in the presence of a third party, have you?’
‘It’s seldom possible to be sensible on such occasions.’
‘I doubt that. Anyway, it’s your last chance of seeing him.’
‘I don’t think you should appeal to my sentiment.’
‘Well, you cannot ignore the facts.’
‘That’s just what you are doing. The facts have not changed since we separated. There’s no better way out now than then.’
‘But they have changed. You are not making him leave his friends in Sawle. He’s doing it of his own free will. I didn’t understand before why he thought that so necessary. I do now. If you meet him now, he will be free of all those associations.’
‘And tied to the Navy.’
‘Yes. There’s no comfortable escape to Bath. The facts have changed both for the better and for the worse. They should be worth reconsidering.’
For a moment she seemed to waver. Then she shook her head emphatically. ‘Impossible …’
‘Only one person can make it impossible and that is yourself.’
‘Yes … you’re right! You’re wholly right, Ross. I have spoken as if all the weakness, all the shortcomings, were on his side. Do you think I’ve not had time enough since to look into my own? What happened, the way it happened, showed me up to myself. Do you know what it’s like when your anger and bitterness are so great that you can only hurt yourself – and go on hurting yourself for ever and ever, it seems, so that there’s no escape? That hasn’t changed. The possibility of its happening again hasn’t changed.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, it may have lessened, but it doesn’t disappear. How can it? If I had brought a different understanding to his feelings, I should be a different person. I am not a different person. I’m only myself. Not only did I expect too much of him, but he expected too much of me. I know less of married life than you, but I should have thought it the worst way to begin. The break went both ways – and very deep. I haven’t such a plenitude of courage to hurt myself again, and him too.’
There was silence for a time. She said: ‘Nor would what you think come out of a single meeting. I have done too much of it already – arriving to turn his life upside down and then leave again. Let him go – in peace.’
Ross took out his purse and unfolded a piece of paper. ‘Here is my draft. Your banker will send a receipt.’
She took the paper. He did not like his defeat at all; not one bit.
He said: ‘There’s one other thing I should tell you. Your uncle is not altogether better. Dwight tells me the disease is held in check, but it’s not probable that he will improve much from his present condition. When Dwight is safe at sea, I think you should come down.’
‘Very well.’
The life had temporarily gone out of her, in a way he had not known before; the emotion had tired her. She asked him to meet her uncle and aunt that evening, but he refused, making the excuse of pressure of business. As he was leaving he said:
‘If you should change your mind before Thursday, you’ll find me at the Mitre in Hedge Lane. It is just off Leicester Fields.’
‘Very well,’ she said again. ‘But I cannot.’ And he went out into the crowded street.