Demelza is dreading the following day. Will it be a day of more heartache, she wonders? Or worse, and she can barely allow this thought to surface, will she continue with chores and forget midday as she does most days. How can I forget it is a year gone without her? It's a betrayal to Julia as her mother! As a lass, her Gram would remind her that hard work is distracting and comforting- even a turtle would blessedly forget its heavy shell occasionally!
In the morn, Demelza wakes early after a restless night. Grainy and grey light castes shadows around this room she has grown to love. Her head is still heavy with sleep and her thoughts fuzzy but the breeze from the open window begins sobering them. Shadows moving from the flowing curtains take Demelza's eyes to the left of her bed. A sunbeam illuminates crystal-like dust floating above the little bed she sees.
Demelza's eyes narrow as she remembers how Jud once removed it to a large closet in the back-laundry area. Judas, she was angry! But she smiles thinking about the brawl that followed. She bested him…again!
She does not need to look. Ross is gone to the mine of course. Is there resentment there, she wonders? Demelza lets that go - mindful her grief does not cloud her pride of Wheel Leisure being their livelihood. Squeals of hungry animals coming through the open window bring her to the present. "I'm a coming-what a commotion!" she yells out.
They must be tended, she thinks, as they have rights and I am grateful that they, like Wheel Leisure, provide for our needs. Suddenly, an image of a baby goat with its main entangled in Julia's plump fingers seizes her and a rush of memories of Julia flood her thoughts. Emotions come that almost crush her heart. The tears she thought were spent and gone, come again. She weeps, but mercifully falls back asleep after several minutes.
Julia is facing Demelza sitting very still and looking directly at her. Julia is slightly above her, casting her eyes down. "Mama", she says. she smiles and looks happy. Standing to the girl's side is a figure, so faint that she's almost translucent. Somehow Demelza knows with clarity it is a woman looking at her. "She is so loved and cared for," conveys the woman without opening her mouth.
"Julia," she says as she awakes wide-eyed and sits straight up with a startle. "Only a dream," she cries out! Her dear Julia had not come back to her- it is only a dream!
But it felt so real, she thinks. It was so real, almost like my girl is in her little bed next to me again. Instead of anguish, Demelza notices that she feels calm and at peace. I know she is not here exactly, but decidedly, she is NOT gone! This realization fills her with a hope that is joyful. She sends a prayer of gratitude into the holy spirit. Demelza is also stricken that Julia appeared a year older- just what her actual age would be.
This visit is not completely unfamiliar to Demelza. The Cornish village of her ancestors was alive with tales of spirits dwelling behind the Veil. She and her townsfolk were cleaved with earth so deeply and completely that she swore her body sometime stayed behind in the waves when her spirit merged in the ocean's misty sea spray.
She longs to share this with Ross, but how? Ross has not the inclination to talk about things he would dismiss as fancy. Concrete objects that his sight, his touch, and his hearing detected were only of his world. He dwelled in the visible world and valued the things, like Nampara, he needed to survive and thrive with. And what Ross did not see, he doubted. That doubt was shared with others like him. Their certainty was so absolute and seemingly real that it was determined to be beyond their subjective truth, but absolute truth indeed.
Demelza knew truth was more complicated. It has many faucets, like the crystals swaying in the fine chandlers at Trenwith. Many people did see what others could not and to them that was normal. Her Gram told many tales and knew things. A seer, they called her. She said her ancestors recalled a time when "the ancients" walked the earth. They understood the heavenly realms as both a mystical place and real world. The ancients described the earthly Veil using fancy theories and sometimes numbers and symbols long lost to history. Except there are a few links to the past, Demelza thinks. Her miner uncles told stories of seeing cryptic symbols on walls tucked deep in the Cornish earth. Locals know how to keep some things secret to preserve their way of life. She realized these symbols were physics and mathematics, after seeing them in books Dr. Dwight had on his kitchen table.
Demelza recalls the day she paid Dr. Dwight Enis a welcome call with a basket of fresh herbs and carrots from her garden. He had been at the village for a few weeks, already availing his serves night and day with summons from sick villagers.
"Mrs. Poldark, how good of you to come," says Dr. Enis. 'Please come in."
"Please call me Demelza- I am more comfortable with it."
He smiled and she could see the boy he once was. Demelza thought how society would all benefit it we could see the innocent child in each other.
"And I am just Dwight," he says with a laugh.
"Truthfully, it is good have friends here who call me by my first name so I feel like a normal fellow and not this figure that is expected to have all the answers," he says.
Demelza walked to the table and set the basket down in the only clear spot, for the physician's table was cluttered with books, instruments, and other devices that showed this was more of a scientist's work space then a family table. In those worn texts she recognized the same symbols her family described.
As for the Spirit world - townsfolk saw what they saw and felt what they felt. That was enough for them. But less and less of them were experiencing the old ways.
How could her townsfolk, salt of the earth, not see the mystical? Their heritage - their own birthright? She thought of what the Cornish love as much the mines – the taking of the drink. Was it too much consumption of alcohol that dimmed the senses? Demelza always reckoned so, though she was reluctant to embrace ideas shared with the joyless preaching of clergymen who warned of the sins of such things. Could they be right about the idea, just erred in their arrogant attitude? Even a broken timepiece is correct twice a day her Gram would say. Demelza laughs as she daydreams about her beloved ones who are now gone but not far. She decides to keep Julia's visit to herself and treasure the gift.