The Angry Tide Read Free

drudge, terrorized by a drunken father and smothered by a clutch of younger brothers, for all of whom she had had to act the mother at fourteen. Perhaps her father's conversion to Methodism would have taken place anyhow, perhaps she would have been able to make some niche for herself in the poverty-ridden, grindingly hard world of the miners. But nothing, nothing compared to what she had - even if the most important part of what she now had she was no longer sure she wholly retained.
    At least the material part was who lly there, was here to be seen a nd appreciated all around her. A farm (estate if you liked to call it that) which provided many of the necessities of life; a mine which provided all the rest and the luxuries besides; a farm house (or manor house if you liked to c all it that) of which one 'wing’ (it only had one) had recently been extended and rebuilt; four indoor servants to do her bidding, with all of whom she had instinctively established a nice relationship of half-friendship, half-respect; two unique and beautiful children; a superb position to live, at the foot of a valley and, as it were, pe ering over a low wall into the s ea. And her twenty-eighth birthday just gone - not too old yet, not fat, not skinny, not lined, no birth creases across her belly, all except two of her teeth and those back ones, and the front kept white by rubbing them every morning with a marshmallow root. She mixed now with the highest people in Cornwall, not merely the gentry but the nobility, and they accepted her - or appeared to accept her - as one of themselves. She also mixed with the miners and the f isherfolk, and they accepted her too.
    And Ross. She had Ross. Or thought she had. But he was far away. And for too long had been far away. And here was the worm in the bud, the rot in the deeps of the heart.
    To try to take her mind off it she sat on a granite stone - a part of the old Wheal Maiden house that had not been utilized by the Methodists - and stared again after the retreating figure of Rosina, so distant now as to be almost out of sight. The sky was brilliantly clear after the inflamed temper of yesterday; even the few dark clouds to the south over Sawle Church's leaning spire were retreating with the advent of dusk. It was understandable that folk should suppose some similarity between themselves and the climate and imbue the wind and the storm with human characteristics. Yesterday the weather had been in a vile rage; it had cursed and sworn and quarrelled with everyone and thrown the crockery; now it had blown itself out, the temper was over and in the reaction it seemed tranquil in its exhaustion. You couldn't believe it was the same person.
    The trouble with Rosina, De melza thought, was that she was betwixt and between. With the skill of her fingers she was able to dress in humble good taste; she had even taught herself to read and write; but these skills and small evidences of a wish to be different set her above the ordinary miner or fisherman with his untutored manners and blunt approach to life. They were probably as much put off by her, thinking themselves inferior to her, as she by them, thinking the opposite; and it was hard on her for she met no one else.
    Of course, Demelza thought, she herself had two brothers, both crossed in love. Sam, the el der, had fallen in love with the loud, jolly, lusty Emma Tregirls, and she with him; and only his religion stood between them. But she could not swallow his intense Methodism, which filled his whole life, nor, being an honest young woman, was she willing to pretend that she had. So she had moved and become a palourmaid at Tehidy ten miles away. In some respects Rosina would suit Sam much better than Emma, if only he could be persuaded to see it that way.
    But people never fitted into convenient pigeon-holes. Also, it had been at Demelza's suggestion, seeing them in complete deadlock, that Emma had gone away, with the agreement that they should meet again in