When in the end, without consulting anyone further, Ross decided to go to the celebrations after all, and when, after an uneventful ride in, Demelza found herself shown up into one of the bedrooms of the Great House, the town house of the Warleggans, there were several worms of discomfort within her to spoil the first flush of excitement.
First, there was compassion for Jinny, who had tried to hang herself from a beam in her own kitchen the previous night; second, there was anxiety about Ross, who had not yet been entirely sober since his return and carried his drink like a gunpowder keg that any chance spark might set off; third, there was unease over Julia, who had been left in the care of Mrs. Tabb at Trenwith.
But all those reservations, vital though they were, could not quite destroy the pleasure of the adventure.
Some inherent good taste told her that that house had nothing to equal the Elizabethan charm of Trenwith, but she was overwhelmed by its bright furnishings, its soft carpets, its glittering chandeliers, its many servants. She was overwhelmed by the large number of guests and the easy familiarity with which they greeted one another, their expensive clothes, their powdered hair and patched faces, and their gold snuffboxes and glittering rings.
They were all there; George Warleggan had seen to that. It was like a preliminary regal reception before the public entertainment of the ball. Or all were there who would come. The lord lieutenant and his family had politely declined; so had the Bassetts, the Boscawens, and the St. Aubyns, not yet ready to put themselves on a level with those wealthy upstarts. But their absence was unremarked except by the perceptive or the malicious. Demelza had a confused recollection of meeting Sir John This and the Honorable Someone Else and had passed in a dazed fashion in the wake of a servant up the stairs to her bedroom. She was waiting for the arrival of a maid, who was coming to help her put on her new gown and to dress her hair. She was in a panic about it and her hands were cold, but it was the price of adventure. She knew herself far better able to cope with John Treneglos, who traced his ancestry back to a Norman count, than to face the prying eyes of a saucy servant girl who, if she didn’t know what Demelza had been, would soon be ready to guess.
Demelza sat down at the dressing table and saw her flushed face in the mirror. Well, she was really there. Ross had not come up yet. Dwight Enys was there, young and handsome. Old Mr. Nicholas Warleggan, George’s father, big and pompous and hard. There was a clergyman named Halse, thin and dried-up but vigorous-looking and moving among the aristocracy like one of them, not cringing for a bone like Mr. Odgers of Sawle-with-Grambler. Dr. Halse and old Mr. Warleggan, Demelza knew, had been among the magistrates who had sentenced Jim. She was afraid for what might happen.
A knock came at the door and she checked an impulse to start up as a maid entered. “This has come, ma’am. I was telled to bring it up to you. Thank you, ma’am. A dressing maid’ll be along in just a few minutes.”
Demelza stared at the packet. On the outside was written Rs. Poldark, Esquire, and over that Ross had just scrawled in ink not yet dry: For delivery to Mrs. Demelza Poldark.
She pulled at the wrapping, took out a small box, parted some cotton packing, gasped. After a moment, gingerly, as if afraid of burning herself, she put in a finger and thumb and drew out the brooch.
“Oh,” she said.
She lifted it and held it to her breast so she could see the effect in the mirror. The ruby glowed and winked at her. Ross’s gesture was tremendous. It melted her. Her eyes, black and liquid with emotion, glowed back at herself above the ruby. The gift, if anything, would give her confidence. With a new dress and that, no one surely could look down on her. Even the maids could hardly do so.
Another knock at the door and another maid entered.
Demelza blinked and hastily crumpled up the packing in which the brooch had come. She was glad to see they had sent an elderly maid.
• • •
Well, she was in it. It wasn’t decent, she was sure of that, but the maid didn’t seem to think anything was amiss. Of course other women wore that sort of thing; it was all the fashion. But other women might be used to that sort of gown; she was not.
It was the same general shape as the afternoon gown Verity had bought her, only more so. The afternoon dress was cut away from her neck and the tops of her shoulders, but this one was so much lower. It was amazingly ruched at the sides, and there was a lot of beautiful lace hanging over her hands, where she didn’t need it. How Ross had bought it she could not conceive. It had cost a pretty penny, that was clear. He spent money on her as if it was chaff. Dear, dear Ross! Unbelievably dear. If only poor Jim’s death had not come between those presents and their wearing, how happy the night would be!
The maid had just finished her hair, piling it up and up. Since Julia’s birth she had not kept it clipped but had let it grow, and the sudden luxuriance of her surroundings as Ross’s wife had seemed to give great richness to it so that its darkness fairly gleamed with color. The maid had brought her powder box, but she instantly concurred in Demelza’s refusal; such hair was not to be whitened. She did not, however, agree with Demelza’s hesitant refusal of makeup, and she was attending to my lady’s face. Demelza’s restiveness under her hands had the result of keeping her dresser’s enthusiasm within bounds, and she came out of it with her dark eyebrows slightly lengthened, only a moderate amount of powder to harden the soft glow of her skin, and an excusable amount of rouge on her lips.
“One patch or two, ma’am?” said the maid.
“Oh, none, thank ’ee. I have no liking for ’em!”
“But ma’am would not be finished without one. May I suggest one just below the left eye?”
“Oh, well,” said Demelza. “If you think so.” Five minutes later, the jewel on her breast, she said, “Can you tell me which is Miss Verity Poldark’s room?”
“The second down the passage, ma’am. On the right-hand side.”
• • •
Sir Hugh Bodrugan tapped his snuffbox with hairy fingers. “Damn. Who’s that filly just come in the room, Nick? The one wi’ the dark hair and the pretty neck. With one of the Poldarks, ain’t she?”
“I’ve never put eyes on her before. She’s a pridey morsel to look at.”
“Reminds me of my mare Sheba,” said Sir Hugh. “Same look in her eyes. She’d take some bridling, I’ll lay a curse. Damn, I’d not refuse the chance.”
“Enys, you know the Poldarks. Who’s that handsome creature Miss Verity has just led in?”
“Captain Poldark’s wife, sir. They have been married about two years.”
Sir Hugh brought his thick eyebrows together in an effort of remembrance. Thinking was not his favorite pastime.
“Aye, but was there not some story that he’d married below him, a farm wench or some such?”
“I could not say,” Dwight answered woodenly. “I was not here at the time.”
“Well, maybe that is she,” said Nick.
“Lord’s my life, I’ll not believe it. Farm wenches just don’t come that way. Or not on my estate. I only wish they did. I only wish they did. Nay, she’s no vulgar; her flanks are too long. Here, Enys, you know the lady. Grant me the favor.”
She had come down thinking she would find Ross, but in that crowd it would be all but impossible. A footman stood beside her, and she and Verity took a glass of port. Somebody named Miss Robartes monopolized Verity, and before she knew it, they were separated. People began talking to her, and she answered them absently. As always port helped her, and she thought how wrong Ross had been to deny it to her at the christening. It was specially needed to give her confidence about her frock. Then she saw Dwight Enys bearing down on her and she greeted him with relief. With him was a beetle-browed, stocky, elderly man with a hairy nose, and Dwight introduced him as Sir Hugh Bodrugan. Demelza looked at him with quickened interest and met a gaze that surprised her. She’d seen that look in a man’s eyes twice before: once from John Treneglos at the Christmas party two years before, once that night from a stranger as she came down the stairs.
She breathed it in for a moment before curtsying.
“Your servant, ma’am!”
“Sir.”
“Cod, ma’am, Dr. Enys tells me you are Mrs. Poldark from Nampara. We’ve been neighbors two years and not met before. I hurry to repair the omission.” Sir Hugh snapped his fingers to a footman. “Wine for this lady, man; her glass is empty.”
Demelza sipped another glass. “I have heard of you often, sir.”
“Indeed.” Sir Hugh puffed out his cheeks. “And I trust that the report was not disfavorable, eh?”
“No, sir, not at all. I hear that you keep plump pheasants that are a trouble to the poor poachers when they come to steal ’em.”
Sir Hugh laughed. “I have a heart too, and no one has ever stole that yet neither.”
“Perhaps like the pheasants you keep it too well guarded.”
She noticed Dwight looking at her in surprise.
“Nay, ma’am,” said Sir Hugh, making eyes at her downright, “it is not guarded at all for them as knows how and when.”
“Good God, Hughie,” said his stepmother, coming on them suddenly. “I thought you’d gone without me, you wicked old devil. Seen about the carriage, have you? I can’t tramp across in all this fallalery.” The Dowager Lady Bodrugan, who was twenty years younger than her stepson, hitched up her fine satin cloak in a disgusted fashion and stared Demelza up and down. “Who is this? I haven’t the pleasure, miss.”
“This is Captain Ross’s wife. From Nampara. I was saying we’ve been lax in our manners not asking ’em over to an evening of whist…”
“D’you hunt, mistress?” demanded Constance Bodrugan.
“No, ma’am.” Demelza finished her port. “I have some sympathy for the foxes.”
Lady Bodrugan stared. “Pah, a Methody or some such! I smelled it. Let’s see, weren’t you a miner’s daughter?”
Inwardly Demelza trembled with sudden unruly anger. “Yes, ma’am. Father hung at Bargus for the crows to pick, an’ Mother was a highwaywoman an’ fell over a cliff.”
Sir Hugh roared with laughter. “Serves you right, Connie, for your quizzing. Take no account of my stepmother, Mrs. Poldark. She barks like her hounds, but there’s little vice in it.”
“Damn you, Hugh! Keep your apologies for your own behavior. Just because you feel—”
“Why, there!” John Treneglos pushed his clumsy way into the circle. For once he was dressed up, and his freckled sandy face was already flushed with drink. “Hugh and Connie, tagging at each other as usual. I might have known! And Mistress Demelza,” he added with assumed surprise. “Well, now, here’s a good meet. Tallyho! Mistress Demelza, I want you to promise me the first country dance.”
“Well, that you can’t have, John,” said Sir Hugh. “For she’s promised it to me. Haven’t you, ma’am. Eh?” He winked.
Demelza sipped another glass, which someone had put into her hand. It was the first time she had seen John Treneglos since his quarrel with her father, but he seemed to have ignored or forgotten that. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ruth Treneglos edging her way through the crowd toward her husband.
“I thought that was the second, Sir Hugh,” she said.
She saw “the look” come strongly into John Treneglos’s eyes as he bowed. “Thank ’ee. I’ll be waiting to claim the first.”
“Here’s Captain Poldark,” said Dwight, almost with a note of relief in his voice.
Demelza turned and saw Ross and Francis and Elizabeth entering the room together. Dear life, she thought, what do these men think they are? There isn’t one of ’em I’d glance at twice with Ross in the room. The strong bones of his face stood out hard and severe, the scar hardly showing at all. He wasn’t looking for her. Beside him Francis was slight. By the color and shape of their eyes they might have been brothers.
They might have been brothers entering a hostile room and preparing to fight. Demelza wondered if others read their expression the same, for the noise and chatter in the room grew less.
Then George Warleggan came up, smiling suavely, and began to move among the guests, remarking that it wanted ten minutes to eight.
• • •
The night was fine, and Demelza persuaded Ross to walk to the Assembly Rooms. The distance was nothing, and if they picked their way they would get there clean. There were already a lot of people in the streets, many of them drunk, and Demelza had the wish to see how her own kind were enjoying the night.
Two great bonfires roared, one in the cockpit overlooking the town, the other in High Cross opposite the Assembly Rooms. It was rumored that there were to be fireworks at Falmouth, but the sophistication was not for Truro. In places lanterns had been hung on poles in the narrow streets, and the quarter moon had not yet set, so there was a fair amount of light.
Demelza wanted too to rebuild her contact with Ross. The sudden admiration of those men had surprised and elated her, but they really didn’t mean anything at all. She wanted to be with Ross, to keep his company, to encourage his enjoyment, to have his admiration. But she couldn’t break down the wall that his anger and resentment had set up. It was not resentment against her, but it kept her outside. Even his concern for the success of his copper company—overriding that winter—had been forgotten. She had tried to thank him for his wonderful gift, but he hadn’t seemed to respond.
Just for a moment his eyes had changed, warmed when he saw her in the frock, but she had not been able to keep his interest, to keep him away from his thoughts.
They reached the steps of the Assembly Rooms and paused to look back. The bonfire was roaring and crackling in the center of the little square. Around it the figures were moving and dancing, yellow and black in the flickering flame light. Beyond and to the right the bow windows of the houses were dotted with faces, old people and children watching the fun. To the left the light wavered through the quiet trees and set white among the gravestones. Then a carriage and a sedan chair drew up at the door of the Rooms, and Ross and Demelza turned and went up the stairs.