Bella Poldark Read Free Page B

think the worst, Ross; fear the worst perhaps.'
    'God, if he fathers a brat on her there'll be Hell to pay!'
    'Something Ruth said to me once makes me think that is unlikely . . . But I may be altogether in the wrong - I mean about Valentine and Agneta. Twas a speculation I should maybe have kept to myself.'
    'Maybe you should.'
    Ross seldom saw Agneta Treneglos, but he remembered she was the only dark one of the family: tall and sallow and a good figure but with errant eyes and lips that told you the had too many teeth waiting to be exposed. His irritation moved from Demelza to Valentine, where it more properly belonged. Confound the boy. (Boy indeed: he was twenty-four.) Valentine was the unquiet
    spirit of the neighbourhood, one who could become regarded as the scourge if he continued on his present way. Ross uncomfortably remembered that his own father had had somewhat similar characteristics. He did not notice any such wildness in the Warleggan family, to whom Valentine technically belonged. And Selina six months forward, producing a child after three years . . . There were rumours, which Dwight refused to confirm, that she had slit her wrists after one of her husband's love affairs.
    Ross could tell that Demelza had gone to sleep. You could hear the regular tick-tick of her breathing. He was peevishly tempted to dig her in the ribs and demand that she continue the conversation. But, on the whole, he decided not.

Chapter Two
    Clowance had no good reason for not having written, but she had been busy all week, and on the Saturday, which was the day on which she usually wrote, Harriet Warleggan had pressed her to go to Cardew for 'a little party'. Since Stephen's death and the bitter disillusion that had come to be a part of her grief, she had concentrated her mind on keeping his little shipping business -- literally -- afloat. Tim Hodge, the fat, middle-aged, swart seaman who had become Stephen's right-hand man in the last adventure, had stayed on and now managed that part of the business which it was less appropriate for a woman to become involved in. He also commanded the Adolphus. Sid Bunt continued to be in charge of the Lady Clowance, and was entirely efficient in his little coastal runs. This May Jason, Stephen's son, had returned to Bristol. With his share in Stephen's lucky privateering adventure, and part of Clowance's larger share, he had a modest amount of capital and thought to go into partnership with friends in Bristol. Clowance missed him but at heart was glad he had gone. Some of his ways reminded her too much of Stephen, and his presence, every time she saw him, was a reminder of the fact that she had never been legally married to Stephen because his first wife had been alive at the time. Although the bitter taste of Stephen's bigamy, the flavour of his betrayal, had grown less rancid as
    the months turned into years, it was still there. Yet the person she of course most greatly missed was Stephen himself. Whatever his faults, his personality had been strong and pervasive, at times engagingly frank and at times fiercely loving. With Jason no longer in Penryn she found it easier to ignore the memories of Stephen's faults and to remember him with loving grief. She had remained living in the cottage where she and Stephen had spent all their married life. The big house Stephen planned had been only part-built at the time of his accident. It still remained unfinished, waiting for someone else to buy it, a monument to the vagaries and the uncertainty of life. In the time since Stephen's death she had seen only a few of her family and friends, and of the latter she saw most of George Warleggan's wife. Clowance was certain that it was under Harriet's pressure that Sir George had come to an agreement with Hodge for the regular shipping of cement from the Warleggan quarries in Penryn by Adolphus. This was one of the contracts Stephen had angled for but never achieved. It was a great help for a tiny shipping line to