They went home that same evening. He had a morbid distaste for the interest his presence aroused in the town, and his whole concern was to get away from staring eyes. There was no coach, so they hired horses and left at half past six.
Demelza had wanted Verity to go with them and to stay for a few days at Nampara before returning to Falmouth, but she obdurately refused. Instinct told her that at this stage they should be by themselves. Dwight too was to have ridden with them, but he was involved at the last moment in helping some injured man. The rest of them—Jud Paynter and Zacky Martin and Whitehead Scoble and the Gimletts—were coming on by stage wagon tomorrow and walking from St. Michael.
So they left Bodmin quite alone—left the buzzing town, from which the crowds drawn by the election were already beginning to dribble away. By next week, when the judges and the counsel were posting on to Exeter, Bodmin would be back to normal.
It was dusk before they passed Lanivet and dark by the time they were half across the moors. Mist had blown up again and once or twice they thought they had missed the way. They talked scarcely at all, and discussion as to the right road was a welcome topic when other words would not come. At Fraddon they rested for a while but soon were in the saddle again. They reached Treneglos land about nine thirty and later made a detour to avoid Mellin Cottages. This was another inducement to return early, to be home before the news spread so that there were no cheering cottagers to welcome them. The uncomplex Demelza would not have minded in the least—a triumphal procession was what the occasion deserved—but she knew how Ross would hate it.
So they came upon their own property at last: the stone posts where the gate had once hung, the descending valley among the wild nut trees. As always fog made the land secretive and strange. It was not the familiar, friendly countryside they knew and owned; it reverted to an earlier and less personal allegiance. Ross was reminded of that night seven years ago when he had come home from Winchester and America to find his house derelict and the Paynters drunk in bed. It had been raining then but otherwise just such a night. There had only been the dogs and the chickens and the dripping of moisture from the trees. He had been numb with the blow of Elizabeth’s engagement to Francis, angry and resentful of a hurt only half realized, desperately alone.
Tonight he was coming back to a house yet more empty because Julia was not there, but riding beside him was the woman whose love and companionship meant more than all the rest, and he was returning free of the cloud that had shadowed his life for six months. He should feel happy and free. During his time in prison he had thought of all the things he should have said to Demelza and would never have the opportunity of saying. Now with unexpected reprieve came the old cursed constriction on his tongue blocking up emotional expression.
The mist was less thick in the valley, and presently they saw the black shape of their house and crossed the stream and reined in at the front door beside the big lilac tree.
Ross said, “I’ll take the horses around if you’ll get down here.”
Demelza said, “It seems funny without even Garrick to give a friendly bark. I wonder how he is, over at Mrs. Zacky’s.”
“Likely to scent your return at any moment, I should think. A half mile is nothing to him.”
She slipped down and stood a moment listening to the clatter and clop as the horses were led around to the stable. Then she opened the front door with its familiar friendly squeak and went in. The smell of home.
She groped into the kitchen, found the tinderbox and scraped it. By the time Ross came in she had a fire flickering and a kettle perched precariously on the sticks. She had lit the candles in the parlor and was reaching up to draw the curtains.
As he saw the stretch of her young body, the dark hair lank with the clammy night, the olive color in her cheeks, an impulse of warmth and gratitude toward her came to him. She had never for a moment expected him to rejoice at his deliverance. She might not understand the causes, but some instinct told her that spiritually he was still, at the most, a convalescent. It would take time, perhaps a long time.
She looked around, met his gaze, and smiled. “There was some water left in the pitcher. I thought we could brew a dish of tea.”
He took off his hat, flung it in a corner, and ran a hand through his hair. “You must be tired,” he said.
“No. Glad to be home.”
He stretched and wandered slowly around the room, glancing at things he had virtually said good-bye to a week ago, now renewing their acquaintance as if after many years. The house was isolated and empty in a dark, still world. The pulse of living had died while they were away.
“Shall I light up a fire in here?” she asked.
“No… It must be late. My watch has stopped, and I see the clock has stopped. Did you forget to wind it?”
“Could you expect me to remember that?”
“I suppose not.” He smiled rather absently, went across to the clock Verity and Demelza had bought three years before. “What do you think the time is?”
“About eleven.”
He set the hands and began to wind up the weights. “I should have thought later than that.”
“Well, ask Jack Cobbledick in the morning.”
“How will he know?”
“By the cows.”
Ross said, “Couldn’t we ask them tonight?”
She laughed but with a slight break in her voice. “I’ll go’n see if the kettle’s singing.”
While she was gone he sat in a chair and tried to arrange his thoughts, to sort them out so that he knew what his own feelings were. But relief and relaxation were still so entangled with the old tensions that nothing clear would come. When she returned with cups and a steaming teapot, he was wandering around the room again, as if after his week’s captivity, even these confining walls were irksome.
She said nothing but poured out the tea. “P’raps Jack half suspicioned someone would be back tonight, for he left a jug of milk. Come sit down, Ross.”
He sat in the chair opposite her, accepted a cup, sipped it, his lean introspective face showing the strain more now than at any time. This side she could not see the scar. The tea was warm and grateful, soothed one’s stretched nerves, hinted at the old companionship.
“So we’re to start life afresh,” he said at length.
“Yes…”
“Clymer said I was amazingly lucky—that a Cornish jury was the most pigheaded in the world. He charged me thirty guineas; I thought it not unreasonable.”
“I thought he did nothing at all.”
“Oh yes… Again and again it was his guidance. And the speech I made—was partly his.” Ross’s face twitched. “God, how I disliked that!”
“Why? It was a handsome speech, I thought. I was so proud of you.”
“Proud…heaven forbid!”
“And others thought the same. Dwight told me he’d heard that was what got you off.”
“Which is worse. To have to go crawling for one’s freedom.”
“Oh, no, Ross! There was no crawling in that. Why should you not defend yourself, explain what you did?”
“But it was not true! At least…if it was not false, it was an evasion of the truth. I had no thought of saving life when I roused the neighborhood. It was the Warleggans’ ship. That was all I cared about. When I found Sanson dead in the cabin, I was glad! That was what I should have told the jury this afternoon—and would have but for Clymer and his counsels of expedience!”
“And now tonight you would not be free but perhaps sentenced to transportation. Do you think, Ross, that that would have been a good exchange, just for stretching a story so’s to put it in the best light? And if you’d said what you wanted, would it have been more than half the truth, more the truth than what you did say? Dwight was right, an’ you know it! You were crazed with grief, and the jury’s verdict was the only fair one.”
Ross got up. “Whitewashing my neighbors too. We knew they were all on the beach for what they could get, and with little thought to the shipwrecked sailors. Who would blame them?”
“Right enough. Who would blame them—or you?”
Ross made an angry, disquieted movement. “Let’s talk of other things.”
Instead, they talked of nothing, and silence fell. The house seemed to hold itself together about them. She tried to bring up the election, but it didn’t make sense. Eventually he sat down again and she refilled his cup.
“I’d dearly love to go on doing this forever,” she said.
“Drinking tea? You’d find it distressing after a while. But why?”
“It is the homey thing,” she said.
One of the candles began to sputter, and she got up and snuffed it. The smoke it had made drifted upward in a dark spreading curl.
“It’s you and me,” she said, “in our own house. Nothing between us—no interruption. Maybe it’s because I’m just of common stock, but I want the home about me: candles burning, curtains drawn, warmth, tea, friendship, love. Those are what matter to me. This morning—even a few hours ago—I thought it was all gone forever.”
“Common stock? Don’t believe it.” After a minute, he added, “Nor was Julia of common stock, and she was like you.”
“That is the other thing I want,” she said, taking the opening.
“What?”
“A fire—and perhaps a cat by the hearth—but mostly a child in the cot.”
His jaw muscles tightened, but he didn’t speak.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s time for bed. Tomorrow I am to become a farmer again, eh?”
“No, tell me, Ross.”
He stared at her. “Was not the last experience enough for you? I want no more fodder for the epidemics.”
She stared back at him, horrified. “Not ever?”
He shrugged, uncomfortable and a little surprised at her expression. He had thought she felt the same as himself.
“Oh, it may be they will come in due course. We cannot help that. But not yet, pray heaven. And they can never take Julia’s place. I should not want them to. I should not want them at all yet.”
She was about to say something more but checked herself. She had known in court that she was with child again and, since the moment of his acquittal, had been keeping the knowledge to herself like some secret to be betrayed in due time, when it would perhaps help him in the struggle back to normal life again, give a new interest, a renewed purpose. Now the gold had suddenly peeled off and revealed something tawdry and inferior—and unwanted. She went around snuffing the other candles, getting the smoke in her eyes, thankful that he was staring into the fire. The triumph of the day gone. She was as desolate as he.
Just then there came a tentative knock on the front door. At first they thought they had mistaken it, but it came again. In surprise Ross went out and across the hall and flung it open. The flickering light of a horn lantern showed half a dozen people standing in the mist.
There was Paul Daniel and Jack Cobbledick, and Mrs. Zacky Martin and Beth Daniel and Jinny Scoble and Prudie Paynter.
“We seen the light,” said Mrs. Zacky. “We thought to come’n see if ’twas you back, my son.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Beth Daniel.
“Es it all right?” asked Paul Daniel. “Are ’ee free and it all over?”
“You’re early for carols,” said Ross, “but come in and take a glass of wine.”
“Aw, no, we’d no thought t’intrude, my dear. ’Twas only wanting to know, and seeing the window alight…”
“Of course, you must come in,” said Ross. “Aren’t you all my good friends?”