Christmas Day was on a Wednesday, and the Tuesday came without any word at Nampara from Ross. Not that Demelza expected a letter, since letters travelled no faster than people; but she had hoped he would be back before this. She had not spent a Christmas alone at Nampara before, and this of all years would be most uncomfortable to bear.
Being in constant expectation of his coming was being on the constant qui vive, so she spent much of the day indoors, the first part of it casking some beer which they had brewed. Almost every footfall caused her to turn her head; but in the end she was out when he came, having gone to see Prudie Paynter, who was laid up with her leg and bitterly complaining of Jud’s neglect and misbehaviour. When she came back, he was already in the parlour and she walked in unsuspecting.
She gave a squeak as he turned. ‘Why, Ross, I didn’t know. I was up at Prudie’s. How did you come?’
He smiled as he kissed her – it was just a formal salute between them. ‘On four legs and then two. Should I have brought the carol singers?’
‘You’re an hour or so early: they don’t belong to be here before dark. When did you leave London?’
‘Last Tuesday. In snow. They manage things more seasonably up there. I stopped at Plymouth and saw Dwight and left there yesterday afternoon.’
Conversation was broken by the arrival of Jeremy – but he helped to ease the constraint which now was sought by neither of them. Ross had brought him presents, and some he gave him now and some he saved until tomorrow. Over Jeremy’s head, punctuated with squeals and shouts, he told her some details of the journey; but twenty minutes passed before he was able to say what he should have said at the start.
‘Have you three extra bedrooms you could get ready for tonight?’
‘Three? … Why, who is coming? What have you arranged?’
‘I have brought Caroline back with me. Caroline and her maid.’
Demelza opened her eyes. ‘Where is she? Do you mean at her uncle’s?’
‘She is with him now. But I invited her here to supper, and I want you to put her and her maid up over Christmas.’
‘Over Christmas? Gladly. I’d lay special carpets for her if I had them. But it’s awful short notice, Ross! And I don’t quite understand …’
‘We stayed a night in Plymouth and then came on. The story of her engagement was overhasty. There was no truth in it. When I heard that, I felt most of our old misgivings should be set aside and I tried my hand as matchmaker. Of course I hadn’t your skill, and at first she would have none of it. But on my second visit she decided to nibble at the bait. We saw Dwight in Plymouth.’
‘Yes?’
‘I believe they have made it up. He travelled back with us and, if we can fix him in, will stay here too.’
‘They have? Oh, Ross, I’m very glad! More than glad. The longer I have thought of it … But how did you contrive it? Can he get out of the Navy?’
‘How did I contrive it? I thought, what would Demelza do, and I did it. That was all. It was really not very difficult once the first resistance was overcome.’
‘And Dwight?’
‘He’s at the Gatehouse. There’s been delay in commissioning his ship. The captain arrived only yesterday morning. He gave Dwight three more days ashore. That means he must leave here after dinner tomorrow and be in Plymouth Thursday evening. What’s that on your wrist?’
She had put up her hand and fine white bandage showed.
‘It’s nothing; a scratch. Ross, I’m delighted for what you did. Above all, ’twas common sense. There is so little of it in this world! What time are they coming? I must fly. If you’d—’
As she went past him, he took her arm and lifted the lace back from her sleeve again.
‘It’s nearly healed. What can I give them for supper?’
‘Don’t worry, I bought a goose in Truro and some ribs of beef and a fillet of veal. I have never known you tie up a scratch in your life. Who put this bandage on?’
‘Jane. To tell the truth, it wasn’t exactly a cut.’
‘Then what was it?’
‘Garrick bit me by accident, like. I must tell Jane at once—’
‘Garrick bit you? Nonsense. What are you trying to hide?’
‘It is the truth. Last week something happened to excite him. I’ll tell you of it later. Just an unpleasantness. What time are they coming? Do you think it will work out right this time, Ross?’
‘Right.’ Ross still held her arm and was now untying the bandage. Seeing no way out, she suffered it without complaint, not entirely unflattered by his refusal to be put off. ‘Yes, I think it will work out this time. It is a great pity they have no longer. At the best it can only be a reconciliation before he leaves.’
He took off the last bandage and the lint. The bite was healing cleanly, but the marks left no doubt as to what it had been. Ross looked up.
‘Where’s Garrick?’
‘I left him asleep in the kitchen. You’re not going to …’
‘I don’t know. How long is it since this happened?’
‘Yesterday sennight.’
Ross was silent a moment. The dreaded rabies was ruled out. ‘Has he been quiet since? Even if he is, I don’t think we can run risks, for Jeremy’s sake.’
‘No. No, it’s not that at all.’ In defence of her beloved Garrick she found herself forced to tell him what had happened, though she toned it all down until it sounded like the merest accident for which no one was in the least to blame.
When the bandage was tied again, she said: ‘Ross, which bedrooms shall they have? We have only two nice rooms, and I dearly wish they were not so shabby. And I cannot well get out of my own in so short a time, with Jeremy already settled there. I do not suppose Dwight will heed where he sleeps. But Caroline …’
He went across and put on two fresh pieces of wood. ‘You had best prepare her my room.’
‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘There are new curtains in there. And Dwight we can give the room over, though it is in poor shape.’
‘You can set up my bed in the little room behind if you like.’
‘Whatever you say.’ Demelza fingered the bandage and glanced at him. When she pushed back her hair, the candles made of her movements a mystical confused replica on the ceiling. ‘Jane and I could carry my new dressing-table down. It would be nice for Caroline. And I’ll fetch out the lace bedspread—’
‘I’m sure she will appreciate anything you do. But I’m also sure that her pleasure will not turn on the newness of the furnishings. Demelza, it’s not yet six-thirty. I thought to go out for an hour. You’ll have a free hand then, and I shall be back well before our visitors arrive.’
‘Will you go far?’
He smiled at her. ‘I want just to drop over and see George.’
‘I was afraid of that!’ she said. ‘Ross, you must not! You’ll come back with your head all bloody – if you come back at all! Ross, I tell you, no!’
‘Don’t fret this time. I shall go in peace.’
‘So you may, as you have before. But have you ever left in peace? It is very well for you to go to talk to him, but you know you will get thrown off his lands the very least! Something worse happens every time you meet! You cannot mean to create more ill will just because of a silly mistake on the part of his gamekeepers! George as good as apologized for them when he came up.’
He did not answer, but she felt no awareness of victory.
She said: ‘We have Dwight and Caroline coming. I do not wish to be bandaging your broken head, or – or talking to them, trying to be nice to them, and all the time waiting for your return. It’s a season of good will. Let us be content for today and tomorrow.’
The new wood was hissing as flames discovered the moisture within it. Occasionally it sputtered a protest. Ross pushed one piece farther on with his boot.
‘George seldom seeks violence – I introduce the violence, not he. As for his servants – they are nothing. I shall talk to him and come away. I’m very sorry, my dear. I very much want to please you tonight. I hope still to do so. But this is something … It is not wholly because of your brush with him. I have been thinking about him a good deal on the journey.’
George and Elizabeth supped at seven. It was early but a convenient hour for them both.
Immediately after Christmas they were to settle in town until after the baby was born. The one thing that irked George about his new country house was that no turnpike road existed. You could get a coach through the last five miles, so long as the mud was not too deep, but it was a crazy lurching journey which shook you up more than travelling on horseback.
Elizabeth had kept well since her marriage, except for one or two diplomatic indispositions. In a looped-up polonaise gown of yellow brocade she looked as lovely tonight as she had ever done in her life, the extra fullness in her cheeks softening the fine-drawn classic oval of jaw and chin – that ultimate beauty of bone which would never fade. At Trenwith they always supped alone. George had let it be known early that he wanted his evening meal in the company of his wife, so the Chynoweths ate in their sitting-room upstairs. The winter parlour had been transformed: much of the panelling ripped out and the walls hung with expensive flock paper; a new dining table with such a polish on it that the slightest thing left a mark; twenty extra candles; a liveried footman to wait on them. At the opposite end of the table George sat, full-bodied, self-possessed, well groomed. In the summer they would dine in the hall. George had plans for the hall.
Elizabeth had found life with her second husband a mass of contradictions. He lived, she found, more genteelly than the people of her own kind. Although he was putting on weight, he ate considerably less than Francis had done or her father did. Accustomed to a society in which men considered the courtesies observed if they didn’t slide under the table before the ladies left, she found his sobriety attractive. He drank but never got the worse for drink. He never spat or blew his nose in her presence. His courtesy towards her was unchanged whether they were in company or alone.
But of course it was impossible to treat him as she had treated Francis. He was not one quarter so malleable, so mercurial, so easy to understand. She missed Francis’s dry humour and easy sophistication. Somehow she never seemed able to meet George on equal terms. While she was absolute mistress of the small things, she found him absolute master of the large. She did not love him; she was not even sure that he loved her; but she felt herself to be a treasured possession, cared for and considered in every way. Often it was delightful to be so treated. It was what she had longed for during her widowhood. Occasionally she found it oppressive.
He kept all his other feelings under as good a control as his feelings for his wife. It seemed as if in climbing the ladder of society he had been so afraid of betraying the wrong emotions that he had grown afraid of showing any at all. He was morbidly sensitive about his humble beginnings, though even that he was clever enough to keep from her for some months. Then one day she made a remark that could be taken two ways, and she saw the instant resentment before he could hide it. After that she walked carefully, watching her own words when necessary so that no hint of condescension could be gathered from them.
Tonight in the first part of dinner they talked about the news which had just come through to Falmouth of the fall of Toulon. Its surrender to the British last August, together with thirty battleships and great quantities of naval stores, had looked like the end of the war. Lord Hood in grateful astonishment had taken possession and had sent an urgent appeal for forty thousand troops to consolidate this magnificent opportunity. The government had sent two thousand British soldiers, some Piedmontese, and a few Spaniards. Now in December the Republic, freed of its other preoccupations, had sent a large force and reduced the town, led by a new young general of whose name the Falmouth news-sheet had three different spellings in the length of a column but of whose ability no one seemed in doubt.
George had always been for war as against Revolution. The Warleggans were founding their dynasty within the framework of a settled and ordered society. Anything which might undermine that society was to be resisted and condemned. War was far the lesser of the evils.
‘… small forces,’ he was saying, ‘which we reduce to complete incompetence by distributing to the corners of the globe. Our campaign in Flanders is bogged in mud. The Vendeans have asked for our help in vain. This would bring about Pitt’s downfall if there were anyone to replace him. But Dundas, Grenville, Richmond, none of them have the parliamentary command …’
Elizabeth saw the door open just behind the manservant and Ross come in. So certain was she that it must be another servant with the wine that for a second she disbelieved her eyes. Then George saw her face and turned.
He instantly pushed back his chair.
Ross said quietly: ‘I have not come to make a disturbance this time – unless you force it.’
George did not move his chair any farther.
‘And you,’ said Ross, as the manservant, catching some glance from his master, moved towards the bell pull.
‘How did you get in?’ George said.
‘I want a word with you, George.’
The servant said: ‘Shall I …’
‘No,’ said George, watching Ross like a snake.
‘That’s wise. There’s no need to wreck your diningroom: I have committed enough violence in this house …’ Nobody spoke. Ross’s eyes flickered across to Elizabeth. She met this gaze with bitter hostility. It was the first time they had seen each other since the night in May. He looked at her a moment longer, in surprise, a little in assessment. ‘I am sorry to upset you, Elizabeth.’
‘You don’t upset me,’ she said.
‘I’m glad of that.’
‘You may be glad or sorry. I’m not interested.’
George, gratified, said: ‘Pray forgive me for exposing you to this intrusion, Elizabeth.’
‘It need never happen again,’ Ross said. ‘I have no ambitions here … But I’m tired of our relationship, George. Whenever we meet, we snarl like dogs – and every now and then it comes to the point of a scuffle, but inconclusive even then. It seems now we’re to be neighbours, close neighbours perhaps, for years to come. A disagreeable prospect for me, but not one that I can alter. There are really only two ways out of it, and I have come to suggest that we should choose the better one.’
‘Is there a better one?’
‘Well, I think so. I’d suggest that we agree to avoid heedless provocation and live as peaceable as we can. What is your view?’
George looked down at his fingers. ‘I should have thought your visit tonight a very heedless piece of provocation.’
‘No, for I came to put the alternatives before you. I am lawabiding now, George, and prosperous. Think of that. Prosperous. That must gall you. But never mind. It surely must be in the interests of both of us that we should make the civilized choice.’
‘And what other do you suggest exists?’
Ross listened to the sound of footsteps in the hall. ‘I’m a little unsure as to details, because my wife would not supply them, but I believe an insult was paid her while I was away.’
‘No insult was paid her that she did not invite.’
‘I understand you’re claiming the cliff path as your property between Sawle and Trevaunance.’
‘It is my property.’
‘I’m not sufficiently interested to dispute it, though there may be others who will.’
‘I have already made sure of the legal position.’
‘I thought you would have. But the possession of property doesn’t entitle you to be affrontful to people innocently using a footpath which has been public for years.’
‘Your dog was straying. In what way was your wife harmed?’
‘She has left me in no position to argue about it. But I suggest that you take care she’s not molested again.’
‘The remedy is in her hands not mine.’
‘That is where we differ, and differ beyond the point of peaceful enmity. As I say, I have no wish to come here again—’
‘You will not, I’ll see to that.’ George took out his watch. ‘You may have three minutes more.’
Ross said: ‘I am trying very hard to put the choice intelligibly before you, and you asked me as to the other alternative. Well, that is it … Age has mellowed us both; but you must know of my ability to incite miners, for you once tried to get me convicted for doing so. It would not be difficult to bring three hundred, and you know what they are like. I don’t wish to threaten or to dramatize a simple promise; but they would trample across your lawns and pull up your trees, and in a night it would look as if a hurricane had blown. And any bloodshed caused by trying to keep them out would certainly lead to more bloodshed. The law will not protect you; for it knows no way of offering protection except with a company of infantry, and soldiers now are scarcer than battleships.’
George turned as the door opened and Tom Harry put his head in.
‘Begging your pardon, sir. The cook—Ah …’
He had seen Ross. Ross did not move. Harry sidled in and another man stood in the doorway.
Ross said: ‘That’s an alternative you’ll have time to think over. The present alternative is before you.’
George hunched his shoulders. ‘You’ve finished what you came to say?’
‘Yes.’
Tom Harry said: ‘Now, see ‘ere—’
‘Wait,’ said George. ‘Let him go.’
There was a pause. Harry’s hands dropped to his sides.
Ross said: ‘It is Christmas tomorrow and believe me, I have come in no carping spirit. We cannot be friends, but it’s tedious to spend all one’s life with one’s hackles up. I certainly don’t want to; and I hope you don’t want to. In coming to live in my district, you have vastly annoyed me; but you have also offered up certain hostages for your own good behaviour.’
He glanced at Elizabeth. Seeing her had upset him in a new way. ‘Explain to George, will you, that I’m in earnest.’
She said: ‘I know nothing of any insult to Demelza. But I’ve complete faith in my husband’s capacity to order his life as he thinks best.’
Ross stared at her. ‘Then see to it that he appreciates the choice.’
He went out, pushing past Tom Harry, who only shifted an inch or so. The man in the doorway retreated more quickly, and Ross walked across the hall, half expecting some attack from behind. He glanced round that great hall which had been a part of his life ever since he was a child. Here he had come with his father and mother when he was just old enough to walk. He had played here in a corner with Verity and Francis while words from the sober elders grouped round the fire had floated across to his half-attending ears: Chatham’s illness and the Wilkes controversy and the repeal of the Stamp Act. Here, returning from America, he had found Elizabeth celebrating her engagement to Francis. Here he had come for the christening of Elizabeth’s child, for his uncle’s funeral … Something belonging intimately to his family had existed in this room.
But not any longer. The familiar wood and glass and stone were not enough.
Warleggan ground. George’s influence was all-pervasive.
The bitterness of Elizabeth’s tones and looks had only surprised Ross in their degree. He had expected her enmity. But he did not suppose all of it derived from the ninth of May. He was not proud of his adventure then, nor ever a man given to passing off his own behaviour with an easy excuse; but after the initial resistance that night there had been no particular indication that she hated him. Her attitude towards him during a number of years, and particularly the last two, was more than anything else responsible for what had happened, and she must have known it. Her behaviour that night had shown that she knew it.
But there had been other – and later – sins on his part. Over and over again during those first weeks following he had known he should go and see her and thrash the whole thing out in the light of day. It was unthinkable to leave the situation as he had left it, but that was precisely what he had done. He had behaved abominably first in going, then in not going; but he did not know what to say, and the impossibility of explaining himself had stopped him. If the history of the last ten years had been the tragedy of a woman unable to make up her mind, the last six months was the history of a man in a similar case. For a long time he had been quite unsure of his own feelings; then they had crystallized; and from that moment a private meeting with Elizabeth was impossible.
Now it was too late.