Dinner began at five and went on until seven forty. It was a meal worthy of the age, the house, and the season. Pea soup to begin, followed by a roast swan with sweet sauce, giblets, mutton steaks, a partridge pie, and four snipe. The second course was a plum pudding with brandy sauce, tarts, mince pies, custards, and cakes, all washed down with port wine and claret and Madeira and home-brewed ale.
Ross felt that there was only one thing missing: Charles. The great paunch, the more or less subdued belches, the heavy good humor; at that moment the corporeal remains of that massive, mediocre, but not unkindly soul were rotting away and becoming one with the soil that had given it life and sustenance; the organic humors of which it was composed would soon be helping to feed the rank couch grass that overran the churchyard. But in that house from which he had spent few nights away in the course of his sixty-eight years, in that house remained some unspent aura of his presence more noticeable to Ross than the aura of all the portraits of forty-six ancestors.
One did not so much feel sorrow at his absence as a sense of the unfitness of his not being there.
For such a small party the dining hall was too gaunt and drafty; they used the winter parlor, which faced west and was paneled to the ceiling and was convenient for the kitchens. Chance stage-managed Demelza’s arrival.
Verity had come to the large parlor to tell them that dinner was ready. Elizabeth was there and the four of them left the room smiling and chattering together. As they did so Demelza came down the stairs.
She was wearing the dress that had been made up from Verity’s choice, the very pale mauve silk with the half-length sleeves, slightly hooped and pulled apart like a letter A at the front to show the flowered apple-green bodice and underskirt.
What Ross could not quite understand was her appearance, her manner. Natural that he should be pleased with her; she had never looked so charming before. In her own queer way that evening she rivaled Elizabeth, who started any such competition with advantages of feature and coloring over almost all women. Some challenge born in the situation had brought out the best of Demelza’s good looks, her fine dark eyes, her hair neatly dressed and tied, her very pale olive skin with the warm glow under it. Verity was openly proud of her.
At dinner she didn’t burst her stays. In Ross’s opinion she overdid her good behavior by pecking at many things and always leaving the larger portion on her plate. She outvied Elizabeth, who was always so small an eater; a suspicious person might have thought her to be mocking her hostess. Ross was amused. She was on her mettle.
A talkative girl at meals, full of questions and speculations, she took little part in the conversation at that meal, refused the burnt claret that the others drank, and herself drank only the home-brewed ale. But she didn’t look bored and her manner was always one of intelligent interest while Elizabeth spoke of people she did not know or gave some anecdote of Geoffrey Charles. When she was drawn in, she answered pleasantly and naturally and without affectation. Aunt Agatha’s occasional broadsides didn’t seem to disconcert her: she would look at Ross, who sat next to the old lady, and he would shout an answer. That put the onus on him of finding the right one.
Talk turned on whether there was truth in the rumor of another attempt on the king’s life. The last such rumor had certainly been true, when Margaret Nicholson tried to stab him at a levee; Francis made some cynical comments on the good cloth used in the royal waistcoat. Elizabeth said she had been told the king’s household servants had not been paid for twelve months.
They talked of France and the magnificence of the court there. Francis said he was surprised someone had not tried to sharpen a knife on Louis, who was far more deserving of one than Farmer George. The French queen was trying to find a cure for all her ills in animal magnetism.
Verity said she thought she would try that for her catarrh, for she had been told to drink half a pint of seawater daily and she found she could not stomach it. Dr. Choake blamed all colds on the malignancy of the air; raw meat put on a pole turned bad in forty minutes, while similar meat kept in salt water remained fresh for a long time. Ross remarked that Choake was an old woman. Francis said perhaps there was literal truth in that statement, since Polly was so unfruitful. Elizabeth turned the conversation to her mother’s eye trouble.
Francis drank ten glasses of port over the meal but showed little change. A difference, Ross thought, from the old days when he was always the first under the table. “Boy’s no head for liquor,” Charles would grumble. Ross glanced at Elizabeth, but her look was serene.
At fifteen minutes before eight the ladies rose and left the two men to drink brandy and smoke their pipes at the littered and derelict table. Between themselves they talked business, but the conversation had not been in progress many minutes when Mrs. Tabb appeared at the door.
“If you please, sir, visitors has just come.”
“What?”
“Mr. George Warleggan and Mr. and Mrs. John Treneglos, sir.”
Ross felt a spasm of annoyance at having the surprise sprung on him. He had no wish to meet the all-successful George. And he felt sure Ruth would not have come had she known he and Demelza were there.
But Francis’s surprise was genuine.
“Cock’s life, so they come visiting on Christmas Eve, eh? What have you done with them, Emily?”
“They’re in the big parlor, sir. Mistress Elizabeth said would you come soon and help entertain them, and they do not intend to stop long.”
“Surely. We will go right away.” Francis waved his glass. “Right away.”
When Mrs. Tabb left he lit his pipe. “Imagine old George coming tonight. I thought he was spending Christmas at Cardew. A coincidence, what? And John and Ruth. You remember when we used to fight John and Richard, Ross?”
Ross did.
“George Warleggan,” said Francis. “Great man. He’ll own half Cornwall before he’s done. He and his uncle own more than half of me already.” He laughed. “The other half he wants but can’t have. Some things just won’t go on the table.”
“His uncle?”
“Cary Warleggan, the banker.”
“A pretty name. I’ve heard him called a moneylender.”
“Tut! Would you insult the family?”
“The family grows too intrusive for my taste. I prefer a community run on simpler lines.”
“They’re the people of the future, Ross. Not the worn-out families like the Chynoweths and the Poldarks.”
“It’s not their vigor I query but their use of it. If a man has vitality let him increase his own soul, not set about owning other people’s.”
“That may be true of Uncle Cary, but it’s a small matter hard on George.”
“Finish your drink and we’ll go,” Ross said, thinking of Demelza with those new people to face.
“It is more than a little strange,” said Francis. “Philosophers would no doubt hang some doxy name on it. But to me it seems just a plain perversity of life.”
“What does?”
“Oh…” The other hesitated. “I don’t know. We envy some other person for something he’s got and we have not, although in truth it may be that he really hasn’t it. Do I make myself clear? No, I thought not. Let’s go and see George.”
They rose from the ruins of the feast and walked through into the hall. As they crossed it, they heard shouts of laughter from the large parlor.
“Making a carnival of my house,” said Francis. “Can this be George the elegant?”
“Long odds,” said Ross, “on its being John the Master of Hounds.”
They entered and found his guess a good one. John Treneglos was sitting at Elizabeth’s hand spinning wheel. He was trying to work it. It seemed a simple enough action but, in fact, needed practice, which John Treneglos lacked.
He would get the wheel going nicely for some moments, but then his foot pressure on the treadle would be not quite even and the cranked arm would suddenly reverse itself and stop. While it was working right there was silence in the room, broken only by an interplay between Treneglos and Warleggan. But every time John went off his stroke there was a roar of laughter.
Treneglos was a powerful, clumsy man of thirty, with sandy hair, deep-set eyes, and freckled features. He was known as a fine horseman, a first-class shot, the best amateur wrestler in two counties, a dunce at any game needing mental effort, and something of a bully. That evening, though on a social call, he wore an old brown velvet riding coat and strong corduroy breeches. It was his boast that he never wore anything but riding breeches, even in bed.
Ross was surprised to see that Demelza was not in the room.
“You lose,” said George Warleggan. “You lose. Five guineas are mine. Ho, Francis.”
“One more try. Damn. The first was a trial try. I’ll not be beat by a comical contraption of this sort.”
“Where is Demelza?” said Ross to Verity, who was standing by the door.
“Upstairs. She wished to be left alone for a few moments so I came down.”
“You’ll break it, John,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “You’re too heavy-footed.”
“John!” said his wife. “Get up at once!”
But John had been merrying himself with good brandy and took no notice. Once more he got the wheel going, and it seemed that that time he had done the trick. But at the wrong moment he tried to increase the speed, and the cranked arm reversed and everything came to a jerking standstill. George uttered a cry of triumph and John Treneglos rose in disgust.
“Three more times and I should have mastered the pesty thing. You must give me a lesson, Elizabeth. Here, man, take your money. It’s ill gotten and will stick in your crop.”
“John is so excitable,” said his wife. “I feared for your wheel. I think we are all a little foxed, and the Christmas spirit has done the rest.”
If John Treneglos set no store by fashion, the same could not be said of the new Mrs. Treneglos. Ruth Teague, the drab little girl of the Easter Charity Ball, had shot ahead. An instinct in Ross had sensed at the ball that there was more in her than met the eye. She wore a blossom-colored hoopless dress of Spitalfields silk with silver spangles at the waist and shoulders. An unsuitable dress for traveling the countryside, but no doubt her wardrobe was well stocked. John would have other calls on his pocket besides his hunters. And John would not have things all his own way.
“Well, well, Captain Poldark,” said Treneglos ironically. “We’re neighbors, but this is how we meet. For all we see of you you might be Robinson Crusoe.”
“Oh, but he has his Man Friday, dear,” said Ruth gently.
“Who? Oh, you mean Jud,” said Treneglos, blunting the edge of his wife’s remark. “A hairless ape, that. He cheeked me once. Had he not been your servant I’d have given him a beating. And what of the mine? Old Father is cock-a-hoop and speaks of shoveling in the copper.”
“Nothing ambitious,” Ross said, “but gratifying so far as it goes.”
“Egad,” said George. “Must we talk business? Elizabeth, bring out your harp. Let us have a song.”
“I have no voice,” said Elizabeth, with her lovely slow smile. “If you have a mind to accompany me—”
“We’ll all accompany you.” George was deferential. “It would suit the night admirable.”
Not for George the self-confident uncouthness of John Treneglos, who traced his ancestry back to Robert, Count of Mortain. It was hardly credible that a single generation divided a tough, gnarled old man who sat in a cottage in his shirtsleeves and chewed tobacco and could barely write his name from that cultured young man in a new-fashioned tight-cut pink coat with buff lapels. Only something of the blacksmith’s grandson showed in the size of his features, in the full, tight, possessive lips, in the short neck above the heavy shoulders.
“Is Demelza coming down?” Ross asked Verity quietly. “She has not been overawed by these people?”
“No, I don’t think she knows they’re here.”
“Let’s have a hand of faro,” said Francis. “I was damned unlucky on Saturday. Fortune cannot always be sulky.”
But he was shouted down. Elizabeth must play the harp. They had come specially to hear Elizabeth play. Already George was moving the instrument out of its corner and John was bringing forward the chair she used. Elizabeth, protesting and smiling, was being persuaded. At that moment Demelza came in.
Demelza was feeling better. She had just lost the dinner she had eaten and the ale she had drunk. The occurrence itself had not been pleasant, but, like the old Roman senators, she was feeling the better for it. The demon nausea had gone with the food and all was well.
There was a moment’s silence after she entered. It was noticeable then that the guests had been making most of the noise. Then Elizabeth said, “This is our new cousin, Demelza. Ross’s wife.”
Demelza was surprised at the influx of people whom she must meet. She remembered Ruth Teague from seeing her once on a visit to Ross, and she had seen her husband twice out hunting: Squire Treneglos’s eldest son, one of the big men of the neighborhood. When she last saw them both she had been a long-legged untidy kitchen wench for whom neither of them would have spared a second glance. Or Ruth would not. By them and by George Warleggan, who from his dress she felt must be at least the son of a lord, she was overawed. But she was learning fast that people, even well-bred people like those, had a surprising tendency to take you at your own valuation.
“Damn it, Ross,” Treneglos said. “Where have you been hiding this little blossom? It was ungrateful of you to be so close about it. Your servant, ma’am.”
Since to reply “your servant, sir,” was clearly wrong, besides being too near the truth, Demelza contented herself with a pleasant smile. She allowed herself to be introduced to the other two, then accepted a glass of port from Verity and gulped half of it down while they were looking the other way.
“So this is your wife, Ross,” said Ruth sweetly. “Come and sit by me, my dear. Tell me all about yourself. All the county was talking of you in June.”
“Yes,” said Demelza. “People dearly love a gossip, don’t they, ma’am?”
John roared and slapped his thigh.
“Quite right, mistress. Let’s drink a toast: a merry Christmas to us all around and damnation to the gossips!”
“You’re drunk, John,” said Ruth severely. “You will not be able to sit your horse if we don’t leave at once.”
“First we must hear Elizabeth play,” said George, who had been exchanging some close confidence with Elizabeth.
“Do you sing, Mistress Poldark?” asked John.
“Me?” said Demelza in surprise. “No. Only when I’m happy.”
“Are we not all happy now?” asked John. “Christmastide. You must sing for us, ma’am.”
“Does she sing, Ross?” Francis inquired.
Ross looked at Demelza, who shook her head vigorously.
“No,” said Ross.
The denial seemed to carry no weight. Somebody must sing to them, and it looked as if it was going to be Demelza.
The girl emptied her wineglass hurriedly, and someone refilled it.
“I only sing by myself,” she said. “I mean I don’t rightly know proper tunes. Mistr—er—Elizabeth must play first. Later, mebbe—”
Elizabeth was very gently running her fingers up and down the harp. The faint rippling sound was a liquid accompaniment to the chatter.
“If you sing me a few bars,” she said. “I think I could pick it up.”
“No, no,” said Demelza, backing away. “You first. You play first.”
So presently Elizabeth played, and at once the company fell silent, even the tipsy John and the well-soaked Francis. They were all Cornish, and music meant something to them.
She played first a piece by Handel and then a short sonatina by Krumpholz. The plucked vibrating tones filled the room, and the only other sound was the murmur of burning wood from the fire. The candle glow fell on Elizabeth’s young head and on her slim hands moving over the strings. The light made a halo of her hair. Behind her stood George Warleggan, stocky and polite and ruthless, his hands behind his back, his eyes fixed unwinkingly on the player.
Verity had subsided on a stool, a tray with glasses on the floor beside her. Against a background of blue moreen curtains, she sat with hands clasped about her knees, her head up and showing the line of her throat above its lace fichu. Her face in its repose reminded one of the younger Verity of four years prior. Next to her Francis lolled in a chair, his eyes half closed, but listening, and beside him Aunt Agatha chewed meditatively, a dribble of saliva at the corner of her mouth, listening too but hearing nothing. In her finery sharply different from the old lady, but having something strangely in common with her in the vitality of her manner, was Ruth Treneglos. One felt that she might be no beauty but that she too would take some killing off when the time came.
Next to her was Demelza, who had just finished her third glass of port and was feeling better every minute, and beyond her Ross stood, a little withdrawn, glancing occasionally from one to another of the company with his unquiet eyes. John Treneglos was half listening to the music, half goggling at Demelza, who seemed to have a peculiar fascination for him.
The music came to a stop, and Elizabeth leaned back, smiling at Ross. Applause was on a quieter note than could have been expected ten minutes before. The harp music had touched at something more fundamental than their high spirits. It had spoken not of Christmas jollity and fun but of love and sorrow, of human life, its strange beginning and its inevitable end.
“Superb!” declared George. “We were more than repaid for a ride twenty times as long. Elizabeth, you pluck at my heartstrings.”
“Elizabeth,” said Verity. “Play me that canzonet as an encore, please. I love it.”
“It is not good unless it is sung.”
“Yes, yes, it is. Play it as you played it last Sunday night.”
Silence fell again. Elizabeth played something very short by Mozart and then a canzonet by Haydn.
There was silence when it was over before anyone spoke.
“It is my favorite,” said Verity. “I cannot hear it often enough.”
“They’re all my favorites,” said George. “And played like an angel. One more, I beg you.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “It is Demelza’s turn. She will sing for us now.”
“After that I could not,” said Demelza, whom the last piece and the strong wine had much affected. “I was praying to God you had forgotten me.”
Everyone laughed.
“We must hear this and go,” said Ruth with an eye on her husband. “Please, Mistress Poldark, overcome your modesty and satisfy us as to your attainments. We are all agog.”
Demelza’s eyes met those of the other girl and saw in them a challenge. She rose to it. The port had given her Dutch courage.
“Well—”
With mixed feelings Ross saw her walk across to the harp and sit down at the seat Elizabeth had left. She could not play a note on the instrument, but the instinct was sound that persuaded her to take up that position; the others were grouped around it to listen and she was saved the awkwardness of standing with nothing to do with her hands. But ten minutes prior was the time when she should have sung, when everyone was jolly and prepared to join in. Elizabeth’s cultured, delicate playing had changed the atmosphere. The anticlimax would be certain.
Demelza settled herself comfortably, straightening her back, and plucked at a string with her finger. The note it gave out was pleasing and reassuring. Contrast with Elizabeth: gone was the halo and in its place the dark crown of humanity.
She looked at Ross; in her eyes was a demon of mischief. She began to sing.
Her slightly husky voice, almost contralto, an imperceptible fraction off the note, and sweet-toned, made no effort to impress by volume; rather, it seemed to confide as a personal message what it had to say.
I do pluck a fair rose for my love;
I do pluck a red rose blowing.
Love’s in my heart a-trying so to prove
What your heart’s knowing.
I do pluck a finger on a thorn,
I do pluck a finger bleeding.
Red is my heart a-wounded and forlorn
And your heart needing.
I do hold a finger to my tongue,
I do hold a finger waiting.
My heart is sore until it joins in song
Wi’ your heart mating.
There was a moment’s pause, and Demelza coughed to show that she had done. There came murmurs of praise, some of it merely polite but some of it spontaneous.
“Very charming,” said Francis, through half-closed lids.
“Egad,” said John Treneglos with a sigh. “I liked that.”
“Egad,” said Demelza, sparkling at him. “I was afeared you might not.”
“A sharp answer, ma’am,” said Treneglos. He was just beginning to realize why Ross had committed the solecism of marrying his kitchen maid. “Have you any more of the same?”
“Songs or answers, sir?” asked Demelza.
“I have not heard that piece before,” said Elizabeth. “I am much taken with it.”
“Songs, I meant, chit,” said Treneglos, putting his feet up. “I know you have the answers.”
“John,” said his wife. “It is time we were going.”
“I am comfortable here. Thank you, Verity. A good body this port has, Francis. When did you get it?”
“Trencrom’s firm. Their stuff has been less good of late. I must make a change.”
“I bought some passable port the other day,” said George. “Regrettably tax had been paid and it ran me in for near on three guineas for thirteen quart bottles.”
Francis raised an ironic eyebrow. George was a good friend and an indulgent creditor, but he could not refrain from bringing into a conversation the price he had paid for things. It was almost the only sign left of his origins.
“How do you contrive for servants now, Elizabeth?” Ruth asked, her voice carrying. “I have the utmost difficulty. Mama was saying this morning that there was really no satisfying ’em. The young generation, she was saying, have such ideas, always wishing to rise above their station.”
“One more song, Demelza please,” Verity interposed. “What was that you were wont to play when I stayed with you? You remember, the seiner’s song.”
“I like them all,” said John. “Damn. I had no idea we was in such gifted company.”
Demelza drained her newly filled glass. Her fingers went over the strings of the harp and made a surprising sound.
“I have another,” she said gently. She looked at Ross a moment, then at Treneglos from under her lashes. The wine she had drunk had lit up her eyes.
She began to sing, very low but very clear.
I suspicioned she was pretty
I suspicioned she was wed,
My father telled me ’twas against the law.
I saw that she was coxy,
No loving here by proxy,
As pretty a piece of mischief as never I saw.
With no intentions meaning
I called at candleteening: All’s fair they say in love as well as war.
My good intentions dropped me,
No father’s warning stopped me,
As pretty a piece of mischief as never I saw.
She paused, then opened her eyes for a second at John Treneglos before she sang the last verse.
The nest was warm around us,
No spouse came home and found us,
Our youth it was as sweet as it was raw.
And now the cuckoo’s homing
A-tired of his roaming.
As pretty a piece of mischief as never I saw.
John Treneglos roared and slapped his thighs. Demelza helped herself to another glass of port.
“Bravo!” said George. “I like that song. It has a pleasant tripping sound. Well sung, indeed!”
Ruth rose. “Come, John. It will be tomorrow before we reach home.”
“Nonsense, my dear.” John tugged at the fob attached to his chronometer, but the watch would not come out of his deep pocket. “Has anyone the time? It cannot be ten yet.”
“You did not like my song, ma’am?” Demelza asked, addressing Ruth.
Ruth’s lips moved a fraction. “Indeed, yes. I found it most enlightening.”
“It is the half after nine,” said Warleggan.
“Indeed, ma’am,” said Demelza. “I am surprised you need enlightening on such a matter.”
Ruth went white at the nostrils. It is to be doubted whether Demelza understood the full flavor of her remark. But with five large glasses of port inside her, she was not given to weighing the pros and cons of a retort before she made it. She felt Ross come up behind her, his hand touch her arm.
“It was not of the matter I was speaking.” Ruth’s gaze went past her. “May I congratulate you, Ross, on a wife so very skilled in all the arts of entertainment.”
“Not skilled,” said Ross, squeezing Demelza’s arm, “but a very quick learner.”
“The choice of tutor means so much, does it not?”
“Oh yes,” agreed Demelza. “Ross is so kind he could charm the sourest of us into a show o’ manners.”
Ruth patted her arm. She had the opening she wanted. “I don’t think you are quite the best judge of that yet, my dear.”
Demelza looked at her and nodded. “No. Mebbe I should have said all but the sourest.”
Before the exchange became still more deadly, Verity interposed. The visitors were moving off. Even John was at last levered from his chair. They all drifted out into the hall.
Amid much laughter and last-minute talk, cloaks were put on and Ruth changed her delicate slippers for buckle riding shoes. Her new-fashioned riding cloak had to be admired. A full half hour passed while affectionate good-byes and seasonal wishes were given and received, jokes made and replied to. At last, to the clop and clatter of hoofs, the party moved off down the drive, and the big door banged. The Poldarks were alone again.