Demelza Read Free

meantime. I am going upstairs.'
    At the back of his mind Ross was aware of the sound of wind rushing about in the distance. Once when he glanced out of the bedroom window his eyes confirmed that the swell had in fact quite broken up and the sea was stippled with white-lipped waves which crossed and recrossed each other in confusion, running heedlessly, colliding and breaking up into wisps of futile spray. The wind was as yet only gusty on the land, but here and there eddies rushed over the water, little winds, vicious and lost.
    While he was there Demelza made a big effort to be normal, but he saw that she wished him gone. He could not help her.
    Disconsolate, he went down again and was in time to greet Mrs Zacky Martin, Jinny's mother. Flat-faced, competent, bespectacled and sneezing, she came into the kitchen with a brood of five small children dragging at her heels, talking to them, chiding them, explaining to Ross that she had no one to trust them with - Jinny's two eldest and her three youngest - greeting Jud and asking after Prudie, commenting on the smell of frying pork, enquiring about the patient, saying she had a touch of ague herself but had taken a posset before leaving, rolling up her sleeves, telling Jinny to put the colewort and the motherwort on to brew, they being better than any doctor's nostrums for easing of the maid, and disappearing up the stairs before anyone else could speak.
    There seemed to be a child on every chair in the kitchen. They sat like timid ninepins at a fair, waiting to be knocked off. Jud scratched his head and spat in the fire and swore.
    Ross went back to the parlour. On the table was a bundle of crochet work that Demelza had been doing last night. A fashion paper which Verity had lent her lay beside it - something new and novel come to them from London; there had never been anything like it before. The room was a little dusty and unkempt.
    It was fifteen minutes after six.
    No birds singing this morning. A moment ago a ray of sunlight had fallen across the grass, but had been quickly put out. He stared at the elm trees, which were waving backwards and forwards as if with an earth tremor. The apple trees, more sheltered, were bending and turning up their leaves. The sky was heavy with racing clouds.
    He picked up a book. His eyes scanned the page but took nothing in. The wind was beginning to roar down the valley. Mrs Zacky came in.
    'Well?'
    'She'm doing brave, Cap'n Ross. Prudie and me'll manage, don't ee worry an inch. Twill all be over long before ole Dr Tommie d'come back.'
    Ross put down the book. 'Are you sure?'
    'Well, I've had eleven o' my own and there's three of Jinny's. And I helped wi' two of Betty Nanfan's twins and four of Sue Vigus's, the first three out of wedlock.' Mrs Zacky hadn't fingers enough to count. 'This won't be easy, not like Jinny's was, but we'll do a proper job, never you fear. Now I'll go get the brandy and give the maid a tot of that tease her up. '
    The house suddenly shuddered under a gust of wind. Ross stood staring out at the wild day, anger with Choake rising in him and seeking outlet like a part of the storm. Common sense told him that Demelza would be all right, but that she should be denied the best attention was intolerable. It was Demelza who suffered there, with only two clumsy old women to help her.
    He went out to the stables, hardly aware of the storm that was rising about them.
    At the stable door he glanced over Hendrawna and saw that clouds of spray had begun to lift off the sea and drift away like sand before a sandstorm. Here and there the cliffs were smoking.
    He had just got the stable door open when the wind took it out of his hand, slammed it shut and pushed him against the wall He looked up and saw that it would not be possible to ride a horse in the gale.
    He set off to walk. It was only a matter of two miles. A hail of leaves and grass and dirt and small twigs met him as he turned the corner of the house. Behind him the wind was