Keren had been hurrying for a very good reason. She had Mark’s supper, two salted pilchards for which she had paid twopence, in her bag, and she did not want to be late in cooking it. She reached home, running most of the way, burst into the cottage, began gathering sticks for lighting a fire. Mark had been doing a turn of work for Will Nanfan on his small holding to earn more money. All that week, while he had been on the night core, his routine had been: down the mine from ten until six in the morning, sleep from seven to twelve, hoe his own garden for an hour, then a mile’s walk to Nanfan’s, where he worked from two till seven. He had been getting home about half past seven, when he would turn in for another hour or so before it was time for supper and tramping off to the mine again. Hard going but necessary, for Keren was not a good manager. She always wanted to be buying something to eat instead of contriving something. It was an attitude of mind quite foreign to her neighbors.
Down in Sawle she had stayed watching two men fight over a disputed net. She had found she was home in good time and need not have hurried. But she did not swear at herself or inwardly rail at Mark for keeping her so tied to time—and that for another very good reason. Dwight was home.
She had not seen him for nearly a week. And he was home.
She cooked the supper and woke Mark and watched him eat it, pecking at things herself like a bird. She was unstable in it as in all things, choosing to half starve herself when the food did not appeal, then when something tasty came along, she would eat until she could hardly move.
She sat there watching Mark get ready for the mine, with a curious hidden tenseness in her body as she had done many times before, and always with the same reason. He had been more morose of late, less pliable to her moods; sometimes she thought he was watching her. But it did not worry her, for she was confident of always being able to outwit him and she was careful not to do anything suspicious when he was about. Only on those night cores of Mark’s was she really free, and up till then she had been afraid to make use of them—not afraid of discovery but afraid of Dwight’s opinion of her.
The sun had gone down behind a mass of night cloud, and its setting was only to be noticed by a last flush in the sky before dark. In that room the shadows were already heavy. Keren lit a candle.
“You’d be best to save your light till ’tis full dark,” Mark said. “What wi’ candles at ninepence a pound an’ one thing and another.”
He was always complaining about the price of things. Did he expect her to live in the dark?
“If you’d built the house the other way around, it would have kept a lot lighter in the evening,” she said.
She was always complaining about the way the house faced. Did she expect him to pick it up and set it down again just as she fancied?
“Mind you bolt the door while I’m away,” he said.
“But that means I’ve got to get up to let you in.”
“Never you mind. You do as I say. I don’t fancy you sleeping here alone and unwatched like you was this morning. I wonder you fancy to sleep that way yourself.”
She shrugged. “None of the local folk’d dare venture here. And a beggar or a tramp wouldn’t know you were away.”
He got up. “Well, see you bolt it tonight.”
“All right.”
He picked up his things and went to the door. Before he went he glanced back at her sitting there in the light of the single candle. The light shone on her pale skin, on her pale eyelids, on her dark eyelashes, on her dark hair. Her lips were pursed and she did not look up. He was suddenly visited by a terrible spasm of love and suspicion and jealousy. There she sat, delectable, like a choice fruit. He had married her, yet the thought had been growing in him for weeks that she was not really for him.
“Keren!”
“Yes?”
“And see you don’t open it to no one afore I git back.”
She met his gaze. “No, Mark. I’ll not open it for no one.”
He went out wondering why she had taken his words so calmly, as if the thought held no surprise.
After he left, she sat quite still for a long time. Then she blew out the candle and went to the door and opened it so she could hear the bell at the mine ringing the change of core. When it came, she shut the door and bolted it and lit the candle again, carrying it into her bedroom. She lay down on the bed, but there was no danger of falling asleep. Her mind was crammed with thoughts and her nerves and body atingle.
At length she sat up, combed her hair, scraped around the box to find the last of the powder, put on a shabby black cloak, and tied up her hair with the scarlet kerchief Mark had won. Then she left the house. As she went she hunched her shoulders and walked with a careful hobble, to deceive anyone who might see her.
There was a light in the Gatehouse as she had expected, in the window of his living room. There was also a glimmer in one of the turreted windows. Bone was going to bed.
She did not knock at the door but tiptoed around among the brambles until she reached the lighted window facing up the hill. There she stopped to take off her scarf and shake out her hair. Then she tapped.
She had some time to wait but did not knock again, for she knew how good his hearing was. Suddenly the curtains were drawn back and a hand unlatched the window. She found herself looking into his face.
“Keren! What is it? Are you well?”
“Yes,” she said. “I—I wanted to see you, Dwight.”
He said, “Go around to the front. I’ll let you in.”
“No, I can manage here if you help.”
He stretched out a hand; she grasped it and climbed nimbly into the room. He hastily shut the windows and pulled the curtains across.
A fire crackled in the grate. Two candelabras burned on the table, on which papers were spread. He was in a shabby morning gown and his hair was ruffled. He looked very young and handsome.
“Forgive me, Dwight. I—I couldn’t come at any other time. Mark is on night core. I was so anxious…”
“Anxious?”
“Yes. For you. They told me you’d been with the fever.”
His face cleared. “Oh, that…”
“I knew you were home Tuesday, but I couldn’t get across and you didn’t send me any word.”
“How could I?”
“Well, you might have tried somehow before you left for Truro again.”
“I did not know what work Mark was on. I don’t think there was any reason to worry about me, my dear. We disinfected ourselves very thoroughly before we came home. Do you know that even my pocketbook stank after being in that jail and had to be burned?”
“And then you say there was no danger!”
He looked at her. “Well, you are good to have worried so. Thank you. But it was dangerous to come here at this time of night.”
“Why?” She met his gaze through her eyelashes. “Mark is down the mine for eight hours. And your servant is in bed.”
He smiled slightly, with a hint of constraint. All the way into Truro the day before and at times in the middle of the Assembly, Keren Daniel had been before him. He saw plain enough where their way was leading, and he was torn between two desires, to halt and to follow. Sometimes he had almost decided to take her, as he saw she wanted him to, but he knew that once begun no man on earth could predict where it would end. The thought was bulking between him and his work.
He had been grateful for the ball the night before and the sudden refreshing contact with people of his own class. It was helpful to meet Elizabeth Poldark again, whom he thought the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It had been helpful to meet Joan Pascoe and to contrast her poised, clear-skinned, clean-thoughted maidenhood with the memory of that wayward, impulsive little creature. He had come back sure that the fantastic playing with fire must stop.
But faced with Keren, the choice was not so easy. Joan and the other girls were “at a distance”; they were remote, they were young ladies, they were people who made up the world. Keren was reality. Already he knew the taste of her lips, the melting touch of her body.
“Well,” she said, as if reading his thoughts, “aren’t you going to kiss me?”
“Yes,” he said. “And then you must go, Keren.”
She slipped her cloak off quickly and stood up to him with her hands behind her back, her attitude one of odd urgent demureness. She put up her face and half closed her eyes.
“Now,” she said. “Just one.”
He put his arms about her and kissed her cool lips, and she made no attempt to return his kiss. And while he was kissing her, the knowledge came that he had missed it during the previous week, missed it more than anything in life.
“Or a thousand,” she said under her breath.
“What?” he asked.
She glanced sidelong away. “The fire’s nice. Why should I go?”
Dwight knew then he was lost. And she knew too. There was nothing he could do about it. He would follow. He would follow.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Or a thousand. Or twenty thousand. Or a million. They’re yours for the asking.”
He put his hands up to her face, pressed it between his hands. There was a sudden tender vehemence in his touch.
“If I take there’ll be no asking.”
“Then take,” she said. “Then take.”