Demelza (53 page)

'I warn you,' Ross said, 'half of them are in drink and many fighting among themselves. If you interfere they'll stop their quarrelling and turn on you. And so far it has been fists and a few sticks. But if you fire into them not half of you will come out of it alive.'

The sergeant hesitated again. 'Ye'd advise me to wait until first light?'

'It is your only hope.'

The captain burst out again, but some of the passengers, shivering and half dead from exposure, cut him short and pleaded to be led to shelter.

Ross went on to the house, leaving the troopers still hesitant on the edge of the maelstrom. At the door of the house he stopped again.

'You'll pardon me, gentlemen, but may I ask you for quietness. My wife is just recovering from a grave illness and I do not wish to disturb her.'

The chattering and muttering slowly died away to silence. He led the way in.

ROSS WOKE AT the first light. He had slept heavily for seven hours. The inescapable pain was still there but some emotional purging of the night had deadened its old power. It was the first time for a week he had undressed, the first full sleep he had had. He had gone up to his old room, for Demelza had seemed better last night, and Jane Gimlett had said she would sleep in the chair before the fire.

He dressed quickly, stiffly, but was quiet about it. Below him in the parlour and in the next two rooms twenty-two men were sleeping. Let them lie. All the strain of last night had brought the stiffness of the French musket wound back, and it was with a sharp limp that he went to the window. The wind was still high and the glass as thick with salt. He opened the window and stared out on Hendrawna Beach.

Dawn had just broken, and in a clear sky seven black clouds were following each other across the lightening east like seven ill-begotten sons of the storm. The tide was nearly out and both wrecks were dry. The
Queen Charlotte
, lying almost deserted, might have been an old whale cast up by the sea. Around and about the
Pride of Madras
people still milled and crawled. The sands were patchy with people, and at first he thought Leisure Cliff and those east of it had been decorated by some whim of the revellers. Then he saw that the wind had been the only reveller, and costly silks had been blown from the wreck and hung in inaccessible places all along the beach and cliffs. Goods and stores were still scattered on the sand hills and just above high-water mark, but a large part was already gone.

There had been bloodshed in the night.

Jack Cobbledick, calling in just before midnight, had told him that the troopers had gone down to the beach and tried to stand guard over the wreck. But the tide had driven them off and the wreckers had gone on with salvaging their prizes as if the soldiers had not existed. The sergeant, trying to get his way by peaceful measures, was roughly handled; and some of the soldiers fired into the air to scare the crowd. Then they had been forced off the beach step by step with about a thousand angry men following them.

A little later an Illuggan miner had been caught molesting a St Ann's woman, and a huge fight had developed which had only been broken by the inrush of the sea threatening to carry off the booty, and not before a hundred or more men were stretched out on the beach.

Ross did not know whether the troopers had again tried to take over the wreck when the tide went back, but he thought not. It was more likely that they still kept discreet watch in the sand hills while the sergeant sent for reinforcements.

But in another six hours the ships would be nothing but hulks, every plank and stick carried away, the bones picked clean.

He closed the window, and as the rimed glass shut out the view the pang of his own personal loss returned. He had planned so much for Julia, had watched her grow from a scarcely separable entity, seen her nature unfold, the very beginning of traits and characteristics make their quaint showing. It was hardly believable that now they would never develop, that all that potential sweetness should dry up at its fount and turn to dust. Hardly believable and hardly bearable.

He slowly put on his coat and waistcoat and limped downstairs. In the bedroom Jane Gimlett slept soundly before a fire that had gone out. Demelza was awake.

He sat beside the bed and she slipped her hand into his. It was thin and weak, but there was a returning firmness underneath.

'How are you?'

'Much, much better. I slept all the night through. Oh, Ross. Oh, my dear, I can feel the strength returning to me. In a few days more I shall be up.'

'Not yet awhile.'

'And did you sleep?'

'Like the…'

'He changed his simile. 'Like one drugged.'

She squeezed his hand. 'An' all the folk from the ship?'

'I have not been to see.'

She said: 'I have never seen a real shipwreck, not in daytime. Not a proper one.'

'Soon I'll carry you up to our old bedroom and you can see it all through the spyglass.'

'This morning?'

'Not this morning.'

'I wish it was not this time o' year,' she said. 'I seem to be tired for the summer.'

'It will come.'

There was a pause.

'I believe tomorrow will be too late to see the best of the wreck.'

'Hush, or you'll wake Jane.'

'Well, you could wrap me in blankets an' I should come to no harm.'

He sighed and put her hand against his cheek. It was not a disconsolate sigh, for her returning life was a tonic to his soul. Whatever she suffered, whatever loss came to her, she would throw it off, for it was not in her nature to go under. Although she was the woman and he a fierce and sometimes arrogant man, hers was the stronger nature because the more pliant. That did not mean she did not feel Julia's death as deeply and as bitterly, but he saw that she would recover first. It might be because he had had all the other failures and disappointments. But chiefly it was because some element had put it in her nature to be happy. She was born so and could not change. He thanked God for it. Wherever she went and however long she lived she would be the same, lavishing interest on the things she loved and contriving for their betterment, working for and bringing up her children…

Ah, there was the rub.

He found she was looking at him. He smiled.

'Have you heard of them at Trenwith?' she asked.

'Not since I told you before.' He looked at her and saw that despite her loss there was no trace of bitterness in her thoughts of Elizabeth and Francis. It made him ashamed of his own.

'Did they say there was any loss among those who were in the
Pride of Madras
?'

'None of the passengers. Some of the crew.'

She sighed. 'Ross, I b'lieve the miners, the Illuggan and St Ann's miners, have made a rare mess of the garden. I heard 'em tramping over it all last evening, and Jane said they had mules and donkeys with them.'

'If anything is damaged it can be put to rights,' Ross said.

'Was Father amongst them, did you see?'

'I saw nothing of him.'

'Maybe he is reformed in that way too. Though I doubt there must have been many Methodies among those who came. I wonder what - what he will say about this…'

Ross knew she was not referring to the wreck.

'Nothing that can make any difference, my dear. Nothing could have made any difference.'

She nodded. 'I know. Sometimes I wonder if she ever really stood any chance.'

'Why?'

'I don't know, Ross. She seemed to have it so bad from the start. And she was so young…'

There was a long silence.

At length Ross got up and pulled the curtain back. Even this did not wake Jane Gimlett. The sun had risen and was gilding the waving treetops in the valley. As he came back to the bed Demelza wiped her eyes.

'I think, I believe I like you with a beard, Ross.'

He put his hand up. 'Well, I do not like myself. It will come off sometime today.'

'Is it going to be a fine day, do you think?'

'Fine enough.'

'I wish I could see the sun. That is the drawback to this room, there is no sun until afternoon.'

'Well, so soon as you are well you shall go upstairs again.'

'Ross, I should like to see our room again. Take me up, just for a few minutes, please. I believe I could walk up if I tried.'

On an emotional impulse he said: 'Very well: if you wish it.'

He lifted her out of the bed, wrapped a blanket round her legs, two round her shoulders, picked her up. She had lost a lot of weight, but somehow the feel of her arm about his neck, the living companionable substance of her, was like a balm. Still quiet to avoid rousing Jane, he slipped out of the room, mounted the creaking stair. He carried her into their bedroom, set her down on the bed. Then he went to the window and opened one to clean a circle in the salt of the other. He shut the window and went back to the bed. Tears were streaming down her face.

'What is wrong?'

'The cot,' she said. 'I had forgotten the cot.'

He put his arm about her and they sat quiet for a minute or two. Then he picked her up again and took her to the window and sat her in a chair.

She stared out on the scene, and with his cheek pressed against hers he stared with her. She took up a corner of the blanket and tried to stop the tears.

She said: 'How pretty the cliffs look with all those streamers on 'em.'

'Yes.'

'Redruth Fair,' she said. 'The beach puts me in mind of that, the day after it is over.'

'It will take some clearing, but the sea is a good scavenger.'

'Ross,' she said, 'I should like you to make it up with Francis sometime. It would be better all round.'

'Sometime.'

'Sometime soon.'

'Sometime soon.' He had no heart to argue with her today. The sun shone full upon her face, showing the thin cheeks and the pallid skin.

'When something happens,' she said, 'like what has just happened to us, it makes all our quarrels seem small and mean, as if we were quarrelling when we hadn't the right. Didn't we ought to find all the friendship we can?'

'If friendship is to be found.'

'Yes. But didn't we ought to seek it? Can't all our quarrels be buried and forgot, so that Verity can come to visit us and we go to Trenwith and we can - can live in friendship and not hatred while there's time.'

Ross was silent. 'I believe yours is the only wisdom, Demelza,' he said at length.

They watched the scene on the beach.

'I shall't have to finish that frock for Julia now,' she said. 'It was that dainty too.

'Come,' he said. 'You will be catching cold.'

'No. I am quite warm, Ross. Let me stay a little longer in the sun.'