Caroline, coquettish as ever

I yawned the whole evening. It was a sleepy tired, not a tired tired. Only after watching the season two finale of Poldark did I feel alert and present again.

Ross, with money to spare now that Wheal Grace struck a mega-lode of tin, goes to see his man of business in Truro. Ross wants to put his affairs in order because he can afford to, but also because he has decided to sign on again with his unit to fight in the war against France. Ross asks the name of “the man who was my benefactor,” buying Ross’s letter of debt from the Warleggans.

“Had I said it was a man?” Ross’s man of business says.

Later in the episode Ross is in a carriage bouncing along the road. He’s heading to Plymouth to conscript with Dwight, I think. Next shot is the dome of St. Paul’s over London. Ross walks up the steps to a grand house, the door opens, he steps into a grand lobby. We see this from the outside, and I can see the patterned marble floor. The shot reverses and it’s an incredible entryway, narrow but grand, with a stair at the far end, where the camera is, that splits and turns around and climbs to two narrow mezzanines looking down on the entryway and opening to the rooms on either side. Ross is then with Caroline in her drawing room or library. She’s looking extra extravagant, with pale-colored beads (pink, yellow, light green) woven into her gotten-up hair. He’s come to pay back the loan, of course.

“Then it proved to be a good investment,” Caroline says in her always smiling coquettish way, as if to say, “I’m a young, rich woman and I made a better investment than anyone.” Ross then congratulates her on her engagement to the son of the earl (an unseen character mentioned for the first time earlier in the episode).

But she hasn’t accepted. The son of the earl keeps proposing. She keeps turning him down.

“You’re not in love with him,” Ross says.

“I am not,” Caroline says, as if to suggest it’s unlikely she could love any man.

Then Ross gets to it: how come she broke off with Dr. Dwight?

She says he had already demonstrated that he was too fond of his poor patients who lacked the funds to pay him to ever live with her in Bath. (Bath is where they would have lived if they eloped without permission of her uncle.)

“But surely you could have returned to Cornwall,” Ross says.

“And live in a cottage and eat _____?” she says. (She used a one-syllable word I can’t recall, starting with a cluster of constants ending in R, ending in P or B, and clearly suggesting scraps and grub.)

But Ross presses her. Surely she still loves Dwight. The camera goes to her face and her lip barely tremors. Oh, how good this show is, the actors, the direction, the high drama.

Next scene is Ross at the riotous pub in Plymouth where Dwight has earlier arrived to pass an evening with the other conscripts and officers. Dwight is pleased to be joined by his oldest and closest friend. Lots of slapping on the back and that kind of thing.

“You’ve come from Nampara?” Dwight says.

“I come from London,” Ross says, where he has just seen Caroline, to repay the loan.

Dwight apologizes for having been too forthcoming with Caroline about Ross and Demelza’s financial business. Nonsense, Ross says. And then Ross shares the other piece of news, that Caroline is not in fact engaged.

“Surely this changes things,” Ross says.

“Not at all,” Dwight says. He’s made his decision, he sails with the Navy tomorrow.

“And were Caroline here?” Ross says.

The shot opens up, with Dwight on the left and Ross on the right, and between and behind them, coming into the pub, surrounded by men in drab and fading military wear, is a woman in a mint green coat, fresh and crisp as the color of her clothing.

Ugh, I love this.

Ross leaves them. Caroline sits with Dwight. He takes her hand. She is coquettish as ever.

“Now you’ll hate me,” she says.

“Now I’ll hate you,” Dwight says.

I would sleep with her.

She asks where his room is. They get up together. She smiles.

Other dramatic moments in the episode are Ross’s good-for-nothing man-about-the-house servant leading a torch-carrying riot to burn Trenwith to the ground after Demelza was shot by one of George Warleggan’s men as she climbed over the fence built he built around Trenwith; Demelza returns to Trenwith just ahead of the rioting crowd to warn George and Elizabeth, “though I hate you both”; the rioters burn the wooden gates around Trenwith and walk up to the door; George and his men come out with guns; the rioters are outweaponed, having only mining pickaxes and fire—and yet they are ready to BURN THE PLACE TO THE GROUND.

A shot is heard.

“It’s Aunt Agatha,” I think, who had demonstrated herself handy with a weapon in an earlier episode after Elizabeth was widowed, and before she married George.

No, it’s Ross Poldark, ridden in on a horse. He talks the men down.

“You’ve come before you sail off to war then,” George says. Just earlier he told Demelza Ross was joining the military again; Ross hadn’t yet told her; they’ve still been fighting about him having slept with Elizabeth, and Demelza has inwardly decided to leave him.

“I’ve come for but one thing,” Ross says.

He puts out his hand.

Demelza climbs on the horse with him.

Dwight is to sail in the morning. Caroline arrives at her uncle’s house in Cornwall, where he is ill, to to tend to him. There’s a narrow leather cord Dwight wrapped round her finger.

Ross and Demelza have one more scene in which he talks about his “ideal love” for Elizabeth, and his “imperfect love” for Demelza.

You can see she’s thinking, “Judas, Ross, what’s wrong with you?”

Ross goes on. “I’ve learned that imperfect love when tested remains strong, while ideal love, once made real, falls and cannot compare with imperfect love.”

He’s not quite as poetic as Francis was in his last episode, when Francis spouted quiet wisdom here and there, including to Demelza. But Ross’s words are poetry nonetheless, and Demelza comes to him. They embrace and kiss.

I love how the characters talk, like they really are in an 18th century novel even if the Poldark series was written by a 20th century male in Cornwall.

Final scene is Elizabeth by the fire, Aunt Agatha standing over her. George earlier (in a scene that started incredibly with a camera shooting them framed from inside the fireplace) just told Elizabeth they will be sending her son away to boarding school “to toughen him up. He’s had you to himself for too long.”

“Oh, but George,” Elizabeth says.

George shuts her up by remind her how much he’s done for her family.

Back to Elizabeth and Agatha.

“Surely he will change his mind when I bear his child,” Elizabeth says to Aunt Agatha. (Elizabeth told George earlier in the episode she was with child.)

“In March,” Agatha says.

“March is not a long way off,” Elizabeth says.

“If March comes sooner?” Agatha says.

The camera holds just long enough on Agatha’s face for us to see how beautiful she must have been when she was younger.

Camera goes to Elizabeth’s face, which fills with fear, the fireplace behind her.