Demelza by Winston Graham Page A

at last won her interest. Almost as a joke she had accepted his advances and then suddenly found that what he had to offer was no light thing after all. She had never had a home and had never had a suitor like this.
    Mark had seen Keren last night at Ladock. By Sunday of this week they would be at St Dennis on the edge of the moor. She had promised to marry him, promised faithfully on one condition. He must find somewhere for them to live; she would not share his father's house, crowded already, for a single day. Let him only find somewhere just for her alone before Sunday and she would run away with him. But if the company once travelled beyond St Dennis she would not, she said, have the heart to come back. From there they would begin the long trek to Bodmin and not even if Mark took a pit pony for her would she face the moors a second time. It was a flight from St Dennis or nothing. And it was up to him.
    'And what do you think to do, Mark?' Demelza asked. The Cobbledicks had moved into the Clemmows' old cottage; so there was no place empty at all. What Mark had in mind was to build himself a cottage before Sunday. His friends were ready to help. They had picked a possible spot, a piece of rough wasteland looking over on to Treneglos property though still on Poldark land. But with Captain Ross away...
    It was strange to think of the feelings of love stirring in this tough, short-spoken, gaunt man; stranger still to think of the wayward pretty May fly who had wakened them.
    'What d'you want for me to do?' she asked.
    He told her. He needed leave to build. He thought he might rent the land. But if he waited until tomorrow it meant missing a whole day.
    'Isn't it too late already?' she asked. 'You can't ever build a cottage by Sunday.'
    'I reckon we can just do un,' he said. 'There's clay to hand and, private like, thinkin' it might come, I been gathering stuff of nights. Ned Bottrell over to Sawle has got thatchin' straw. We can make do, if only tis a four walls and roof toer head.'
    Words were on Demelza's tongue to say that any woman who made such conditions ought to be left where she belonged; but she saw from Mark's look that it wouldn't do.
    'What land is it you want, Mark?'
    'Over the brow beyond Mellin. There's a piece of old scrub an' furse, an some attle from an old mine ditch. By the bed o' the leat as dried up years ago.'
    'I know it…' Her mind went over the issue. 'Well, it is not really in my hand to give it to you. What you must do is think to yourself: I'm an old friend, wouldn't Captain Ross let me have this bit o' scrubland to build my cottage?'
    Mark Daniel looked at her a moment, then slowly shook his head. 'Tis not for me to decide, Mistress Poldark. Friends in a manner of saying we been all our lives; grown up head by head. We've sailed together, running rum and gin, we've fished together on Hendrawna Beach, we've wrastled together when we was tackers. But when all's done he belong up here and I belong down there, and - and I'd no more think to take what was his wi'out a by-your-leave than he'd think to take mine.'
    All the garden was in shadow now. The bright sky seemed to have no link with the gathering dusk of the valley, the land had fallen away into this abyss of evening while the day still blazed overhead. A thrush had caught a snail and the only sound outside was the tap-tap-tap as he swung it against a stone.
    'If tis not in your power to do it,' said Mark, 'then I must see for a piece o' land elsewhere.'
    Demelza knew what chance he had of that. She found when she turned from staring at the sky that she could only see his eyes and the firm parenthesis of his cheekbones. She went across and picked up flint and steel. Presently her hands were lit up, her face, her hair, as the first candle sputtered and glowed.
    'Take an acre measuring from the bed o' the dry stream, Mark,' she said.
    'I can't say more'n that. How you shall hire it I've no notion, for I'm not learned in figures an' things. That's