They went home the following day after an early dinner, walking as they had come, by way of the cliff path and Sawle Village and Nampara Cove. They had said good-bye to their relatives, and were again alone, striding off over the heather-covered moor.
For a time they talked as they had talked the previous night, desultorily, confidentially, laughing together, and silent. There had been rain that morning, heavy and windless, but it had stopped while they were at dinner and the sky had cleared. Clouds had gathered again. There was a heavy groundswell.
Demelza was so glad that her ordeal was over, and decently even triumphantly over, that she took his arm and began to sing. She took big masculine strides to keep up with his but occasionally would have to give a little skip to make good on lost ground. She fit them in with her song so that her voice gave an upward skip at the same time as her feet.
Before the sun set, the black day broke on the horizon and sea and land were flooded with light. At the sudden warmth under the lowering clouds, all the waves became disordered and ran in ragged confusion with heads tossing and glinting in the sun.
Demelza thought, I am nearer sure of him than I have ever been before. How ignorant I was that first June morning thinking everything was sure. Even that August night after the pilchards came, even then there had been nothing to compare me with. All last summer I told myself it was as certain as anything could be. I felt sure. But last night was different. After a whole seven hours in Elizabeth’s company, he still wanted me at the end. After a talk all to themselves with her making eyes at him like a she-cat, he still came to me. Perhaps she isn’t so bad. Perhaps she isn’t such a cat. Perhaps I feel sorry for her. Why does Francis look so bored? Perhaps I feel sorry for her after all. Dear Verity helped. I hope my baby doesn’t have codfish eyes like Geoffrey Charles. I believe I’m going thinner, not fatter. I hope nothing’s wrong. I wish I didn’t feel so sick. Ruth Treneglos is worse than Elizabeth. She didn’t like me making up to her hare-and-hounds husband. As if I cared for him. Though I shouldn’t like to meet him in a dark lane with nobody near. I think she was jealous of me in another way. Perhaps she wanted Ross to marry her. Anyway, I’m going home to my home, to bald Jud and fat Prudie and red-haired Jinny and long-legged Cobbledick, going home to get fat and ugly myself. And I don’t care. Verity was right. He’ll stick to me. Not because he ought to but because he wants to. Mustn’t forget Verity. I’ll scheme like a serpent. I would dearly love to go to one of George Warleggan’s card parties. I wonder if I ever shall. I wonder if Prudie’s remembered to meat the calves. I wonder if she burned the heavy cake. I wonder if it’s going to rain. Dear life, I wonder if I’m going to be sick.
They reached Sawle, crossed the shingle bar, and climbed the hill at the other side.
“Are you tired?” Ross asked, as she seemed to lag.
“No, no.” It was the first time he had ever asked that.
The sun had gone down, and the brows of the sky were dark. After their brief carnival the waves had reassembled and rode in showing long, green caverns as they curved to break.
And Ross again knew himself to be happy—in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He was filled with a queer sense of enlightenment. It seemed to him that all his life had moved to that pinpoint of time down the scattered threads of twenty years; from his old childhood running thoughtless and barefoot in the sun on Hendrawna sands, from Demelza’s birth in the squalor of a mining cottage, from the plains of Virginia and the trampled fairgrounds of Redruth, from the complex impulses that had governed Elizabeth’s choice of Francis, and from the simple philosophies of Demelza’s own faith, all had been animated to a common end—and that end a moment of enlightenment and understanding and completion. Someone—a Latin poet—had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, there and then, past and present and to come.
He thought, If we could only stop life for a while I would stop here. Not when I get home, not leaving Trenwith, but here, here reaching the top of the hill out of Sawle, dusk wiping out the edges of the land and Demelza walking and humming at my side.
He knew of things plucking at his attention. All existence was a cycle of difficulties to be met and obstacles to be surmounted. But at that evening hour of Christmas Day 1787, he was not concerned with the future, only the present. He thought, I am not hungry or thirsty or lustful or envious; I am not perplexed or weary or ambitious or remorseful. Just ahead, in the immediate future, there is waiting an open door and a warm house, comfortable chairs and quietness and companionship. Let me hold it.
In the slow dusk they skirted Nampara Cove and began the last short climb beside the brook toward the house.
Demelza began to sing, mischievously and in a deep voice.
There was an old couple and they was poor,
Tweedle, tweedle, go twee.