Poldark Saga - Winston Graham discussion

What are your favorites in book 4? We should assume this entire discussion will contain spoilers for this book!

This book had so much sadness! But I thought this one to be the first in the series to deserve 5 stars. There are several parts that I'd say are favorites, but I'll start with the one at the very end (and leave others to post theirs)...after so much bitterness we have this lovely scene:

..."'if you suppose or suspect that in buying these things I was hoping to buy myself back into your favour, then you're right. I admit it. It is true, my dear, my very dear, my very dear Demelza. My fine, my loyal, my very sweet Demelza.'

'Oh, no!' she said, the tears overbrimming her eyes again. 'You cannot say that! You cannot say that now!'

'Do you know of any way to stop me?'

'Well, you cannot mean it! I have never felt so bitter for myself...If we are to make it up, if we are to live together, I think it will be a good thing if you are unpleasant to me for a little while.'

'Remind me next week. I could make a New Year resolution of it.'

'But seriously...'

'Seriously, Demelza,' he said."

I enjoyed reading Demelza's reaction to Ross after his affair with Elizabeth and her response to him throughout the remaining part of the book. Starting from the moment she awakens the morning after. The description of her loss of faith, comparing it to religious faith, was so poignant. Her attempt to be composed at breakfast then her overwhelming anger & destructiveness ("Ross did not stir an inch"). The loss she feels over his integrity, ("he had represented a kind of nobility, not of birth but of character"). Then after the Bodrugen Ball, when Ross comes to meet her at the beach, her shrinking from his touch, offering to leave ("I can find work easy") or let him leave ("George can't marry her if you're there"). Ross sees a different side of Demelza and it startles him. These were the pages I re-read over & over because they reveal her strength, independence ("no one would have thought her dependent on anyone") and her dignity. The most surprising thing to me was that it takes him over 7 months to say he is sorry. He comes home every night, he takes her shopping, he tells her he prefers her, but not until the last page does he actually say he's sorry. I'm glad she made him work for a reconciliation and come to a true point of repentance.

Mara wrote: " I'm glad she made him work for a reconciliation and come to a true point of repentance."
What I found interesting though, is there is acknowldgement by Ross that he did wrong. He feels guilt. He's trying to make amends with Demelza--they sleep in separate rooms for a while. It's Demelza's admission of her attempts at infidelity that really brings the whole matter to a head. Maybe it's the realization that he COULD lose her that finally brings the reconciliation?

Here's the bit where Demelza has started to forgive Ross and stopped living in constant fear that he would run off with Elizabeth--Book 2, Chapter 5

"He got up too and handed her a pair of women’s garters. They were very fancy.

‘For me?’ said Demelza.

‘I notice you’ve been wearing no stockings often this winter, and can only suppose you were in some straits to keep them up.’

Demelza burst into tears.

‘Oh, come, come, I meant no offence. It was just a passing thought. If you’d prefer not to have them—'

‘It isn’t that,’ she said. ‘You know very well it is not that.’ She put her hands to her face. ‘It is the relief…And then buying all these things.’

‘They were none of them extortionate.’

He put his arm round her, but her breakdown was checked by a sudden howl from Jeremy, who, unused to seeing his mother in tears, was moved to copy her. Demelza knelt over him and comforted him, wiping his eyes as well as her own. After a few seconds she glanced up at Ross.

‘I’m sorry. It was the relief. You see—I love you so much…’

Ross stared down at them both, moved himself and happy. The light from the window glinted on her hair, on the curve of her back, on Jeremy’s clutching hands.

‘I must put them on,’ he said.

Demelza looked up. ‘You mean Jeremy’s bonnet and gloves?’

‘What else,’ rejoined Ross, smiling grimly.

With the usual sort of difficulty, Jeremy was invested with his new regalia. It all fitted pretty well, and should have done, since the shopkeeper had tried them on her own child first. Presently he went tottering off, the bonnet at a rakish angle, one glove not properly tied.

She had known that Ross hadn’t meant that. She held the garters in her hand, and he took them from her, so she sat down uncertainly. She was wearing stockings tonight, old ones, but they were black and her skin above them glistened like ivory. He put the garters on with a good deal of care. It was months, almost years, since there had been this sort of thing between them, that odd fusion of desire and affection for which there is no substitute. Her eyes in the gathering darkness glowed at him. They stayed for a while hardly moving, he kneeling and she leaning back in the chair. His hands were cool on her legs. Remember this, she thought. In the times of jealousy and neglect, remember this.

He said: ‘So you are not to be rid of me, my love.’

‘I am not to be rid of you, my love.’

Over in the corner by the door Jeremy thumped down and began methodically to pull off his gloves."

“If what I feel for you is dislike -- for coming between me and my work sometime every day in the last fifteen months --if that's dislike...If being unable to forget your voice, or the way you turn your neck, or the lights in your hair -- if that's dislike...If wanting to hear that you're married and dreading to hear that you're married...If resenting the condescension that pretends you're not out of my reach...Perhaps you can identify these symptoms for me.”
― Winston Graham, Warleggan