The Miller's Dance

by Winston Graham

  Clowance picked at the skin in the palm of her hand. There had been a thorn there yesterday. Stephen had taken it out. She had enjoyed being hurt by him.

  ‘I know you are trying to be kind – both of you . . . and thank you for being so thoughtful. Would I be – could I be officially affianced to Stephen then? Soon. It might help. He would feel he was not being just put off, delayed. A promise would mean there would not be more delay.’

  There was a pause. ‘At Easter?’ Demelza said to Ross.

  ‘Very well,’ said Ross slowly. ‘Easter it shall be.’

  When Clowance had left he said: ‘You weakened the stand we agreed on last night.’

  ‘I know, Ross; I’m sorry. November is really no time to wait; but, do you ever remember when you were a child, each night when you went to bed was like a little death? Tomorrow morning was a month away. Well, Clowance is not a child, but even at her age three-quarters of a year seems half a lifetime. I felt of a sudden that perhaps a half-way-between date would make her happier, and if it is to happen, two extra months will not stop it.’

  Ross began to walk slowly about the room, picking up an ornament here, a book there, replacing them, without any particular awareness of what he was doing.

  ‘A lot of sensible men would forbid the marriage altogether, leave alone becoming involved in discussing when it should take place!’

  ‘I know,’ said Demelza.

  ‘You know? And yet . . .’

  ‘You’re not that type of man, are you. You have never imposed that sort of discipline on your children. I think, Ross, we have to accept facts.’

  ‘You know I caught him out when I was questioning him about the sinking of his privateer? I said he had run aground at Gris Nez, and before he had said the Scillies. He didn’t correct me . . . But to be fair there was another point in my question, and he may have been more concerned to answer that and so have overlooked the other.’

  ‘At least,’ Demelza said, ‘she has not run away. We are all being very civilized so far.’

  There was a thoughtful silence.

  ‘You think there could be a risk?’

  ‘If we forbade the marriage . . . and if she cares enough.’

  ‘It would be a way of finding out.’

  ‘Not a pretty way.’

  Ross crouched on his heels to poke the fire – then straightened up as that position hurt his ankle. He stirred the coal from a bending position. The firelight flickered on his face.

  Demelza said: ‘Does all this not make you feel old?’

  ‘Old?’

  ‘Prosy. Cautious. Elderly! If we cannot sensibly forbid, yet we have to counsel prudence. Advise care. Make them wait. I – I never thought it would be like this!’

  ‘How did you think it would be?’

  ‘Joyous. Us joining in. You and I. Have we not always been ready to take a risk? I thought I would throw my arms round my son-in-law’s neck and cry “Welcome! Welcome!”’

  The light died off Ross’s face as he shovelled coal on and watched the grey smoke rise. ‘My case is no better. Nor my ease. If I am able to agree that they shall marry, then I at once become parsimonious by offering him only the opportunity to start with Jonas. With all my connections in the county I should find something better for him than that.’

  ‘Perhaps you will later.’

  ‘Yes . . . perhaps I will later. To be grudging is a disagreeable sensation, particularly towards someone so – so ungrudging as Clowance. It’s her life, her judgment. I cannot believe that a man she chooses is undeserving of our love and support. But in the circumstances it seems right for them both that they do not begin their married life too easy.’

  Demelza was silent for a few moments.

  ‘When I was at Bowood last year,’ she said, ‘the ladies were talking about some rich young lady, who at eighteen had married a man they described as “worthless”. I have no means of judging how they calculated worth, of course! But I remember a Mrs Dawson who was there – she said: “We all know, unhappily, what a hand, a man’s hand, whosoever’s it may be, can do to a virgin’s body, how it can enslave.” I remember exactly those words. She said: “Intellect,” she said, “the mind, the spirit – they’re forgot. It is as strong as any spell, and between good and evil there is little difference of choice.” That’s what she said. I – have thought of it many times since.’

  Ross looked up sharply. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Nothing, my dear. Only that when people fall in love, merit, goodness, kindness are not what tis always determined by. And we cannot think for others. We cannot feel for others . . .’

  He stared at her still. He knew his wife well and wondered whether she was being quite frank with him, whether there was something behind her words.

  He said: ‘I wish we had not given way about November . . .’

  In fact Demelza was holding back something she had heard only that morning, and painfully, at that gossip shop, the Paynters’ cottage. Prudie, having drawn Demelza out of earshot of a sulphurous Jud – who was complaining that rain had been dripping on his bald head all night – confided apologetically that she had heard a rumour, a whispering, a cabby bit of rumour which was here and there in the village. She didn’t know whether she did ought to say nothing about’n or to hold her clack, but sometimes twas best to mention dirty spiteous lying dungy gossip, and then it could be nailed to the bud. The gossip was, and begging pardon for mentioning it, was that Miss Clowance and that foreign chap had been seen entering and leaving Trenwith. Mind, if twas true there was certain sure naught to’n, and anyway twas sartin to be a cabby lie, but she did just feel she did ought to mention it, like.

  Demelza thanked Prudie but made no other comment, passing it over as if she thought it of little importance. But privately she instantly believed it, and this had brought her change of attitude. She thought she read her daughter correctly and believed her still to be chaste, but she could imagine the strains she would be under, not only from Stephen but from her own temperament.

  She would never mention Prudie’s remarks to Ross. Somehow she must drop a hint to Clowance to warn her never to go there again – not for all the tea in China – for if this rumour got to her father’s ears there would be all hell to pay. You could seldom predict how Ross would respond to a given situation, but this one you could see from a mile off. He would be likely to kick Stephen out of the house. (This unfairly, for it could only have been Clowance who had led him to Trenwith. But Ross, unable to raise a hand to his daughter, would take it out on her suitor instead.)

  It was strange, Demelza thought, that in such a reaction it would not be moral outrage that spurred Ross to anger – he would undoubtedly believe whatever his daughter told him – the unforgivable thing was that they should have been meeting at Trenwith. She could imagine how he would feel if George wrote to him and said: ‘My servants, Tom Harry and Harry Harry, recently surprised your daughter, Miss Clowance Poldark, in compromising circumstances with one of her paramours, some seedy sailor, trespassing upon my property in the house of Trenwith. Would you please inform her . . .’

  Such a situation would be insupportable to Ross, a humiliation for which he would never forgive either Clowance or Stephen. Thank God that had not yet happened. Certainly these visits, for whatever purpose they were undertaken, must instantly be stopped.

  Chapter Four

  I

  Wheal Leisure was opened on Wednesday, March 25. During the last two months all the parts of the engine delivered on the foreshore had been winched up – the great pieces with agonizing slowness and care – and assembled under Jeremy Poldark’s supervision.

  The original main shaft of the mine was about fifty yards from where the engine had been built, and there had been some who argued that not to make use of it for the engine was a terrible waste, since a new shaft meant three months of back-breaking toil for a dozen men; but Jeremy had refused to consider it. The original shaft was too narrow, and although it began perpe
ndicularly, after about ten fathoms it began to incline, as the miners had followed the lode at an angle downwards. To have a bend in one’s pump rods sixty feet below ground was something Jeremy refused to consider, though he knew it was often done. Further, the placing of the engine on this platform of ground a short distance from the main site enabled it to be built about 40 feet lower. There was no need ever to raise the water to the surface, only to the height of the lowest adit, which winter and summer emptied its yellowish stream on to the beach at the foot of the cliff; and a saving of height as they went deeper meant a saving of strain on engine and rods.

  The pump rods now installed were fir poles such as might have been used for the masts of ships, but square instead of round. These poles were clamped one to another by long iron plates, fitted on all four sides of the wood and secured by cross bolts, so that they were held firm and straight and formed a single rod with the top end attached to the beam of the engine. Guides had been fitted at intervals down the shaft to prevent the rod from swinging or bending under the strain. Today the new engine would for the first time lift these heavy rods out of the deep bowels of the pit and then, at the top of the stroke, allow the rods to sink back under their own weight and by their pressure force the water up the columns of parallel pipes step by step and cistern by cistern until it reached the adit level where it could run away safely to the beach and the sea.

  The nine-foot-square shaft was divided all the way down by a partition of stout wooden planking, the smaller half of which would be used for drawing up the ore by means of buckets or kibbles, these being of iron plate and rounded like coal scuttles so that they should not catch against projections as they went up and down. The larger half of the pit contained the pump rod and also the ladders by which the miners climbed up and down to and from their work. The ladders would further be used for inspection and repair of the rods and pipes.

  About eight that morning, before people began to gather for the opening ceremony, Jeremy walked up to the mine with Horrie Treneglos and Stephen Carrington. As he had expected, Dan Curnow and Aaron Nanfan were already there, but after a few moments the others went outside to inspect the painting of windows and doors, which was still in progress. It gave Jeremy a chance of walking round the engine house on his own.

  On the ground floor opposite him was the boiler he had ordered from Harvey’s seven months ago, now built round with heat-resistant fire-brick forming a double flue underneath; above it but more centrally placed was the cylinder, jacketed in a padded container of varnished elm bound with brass rings; surrounding it were the valve gear, the wheels and levers of the exhaust and top regulators, and the steam gauge – this last not being clock-faced but rising and falling like a thermometer. A table and two comfortable chairs completed the furnishing of the room where the engineer would spend most of his waking life.

  The only second-hand piece of equipment being used was outside the engine house: a smaller beam Ross had bought from a failed mine, and which they were utilizing as a balance bob. This invaluable contraption consisted of a see-saw beam attached to the free arm of the main beam, with a large box at the other end containing stones and lumps of iron and lead to give it a calculated weight. Gravitation was not only strong enough to pull the pump rod down, it also raised the heavy balance box. When it came time for the engine to do its work of pulling up the rod, the weighted box, drawn by gravitation towards the ground again, lightened the engine’s load.

  Up the stairs Jeremy went to the middle chamber where the cylinder protruded through from below and the polished sword-coloured piston-rod reached further up into the floor above. He remembered the struggle they had been at to get the great beam into place: it had been winched by block and tackle, hung from sheerlegs, up the outside of the engine house and swung in through an aperture in the beam wall before being lowered on to the bob stools.

  There had, of course, been a trial start yesterday, and everything had gone according to plan; but one still had a feeling of responsibility, of apprehension. Soon the fire, having been lighted yesterday and damped down overnight, would be raked and the damper opened. Shortly after that the boiler would begin to sing as it raised steam.

  About eleven a.m. people began to collect, many of them with no specific interest in the mine – except that a stone of prosperity dropped into a pool of poverty sent out ripples – but more with the same wish to be present at any occurrence that would provide a show, as they would have gone to watch a good catch of pilchards, or a hanging. At eleven-thirty the choir from the church, with instruments, assembled outside the engine house, and then Captain and Mrs Poldark and their two daughters, and Mrs Kellow and Mr Charles and Miss Daisy Kellow and Mr and Mrs John Treneglos and a half-dozen others of the gentry.

  At eleven forty-five the choir sang, and played, ‘Jesus shall Reign Where’er the Sun’. Parson Odgers, escorted by his wife to make sure that he didn’t forget what he was doing and wander off on the beach, said three prayers, and Sam Carne followed him with two. It was the first ceremony at which Mr Odgers had ever consented to appear on the same platform as Sam, for he looked on Wesleyanism as a foreign and infidel faith only a degree less deadly than Catholicism. But Ross, who would have been quite agreeable to the shortest possible opening ceremony, and an entirely secular one at that, knew that his workforce would not be happy without the blessing of both church and chapel, any more than they would without the upturned horseshoe nailed over the door. So he had ‘persuaded’ the Odgers to fight their prejudices in the interests of commercial and spiritual goodwill.

  When all this was done Ross and Demelza climbed to the third floor of the engine house and out on to the unrailed wooden platform – or bob plat – high above the groups of people below. Ross shouted out his short speech while Demelza stood beside him, her hair ruffling in the wind. From here she could see the whole three-mile length of Hendrawna Beach, the sand tawny and hard in the hazy sunlight, the swell thundering in in the distance like an undisciplined cavalry charge. Smoke blew away hurriedly from two chimney tops of Nampara. Mary Gimlett had been washing sheets; they semaphored messages and flapped and tied themselves round the line.

  Below, this house – this engine house – was brand-new and handsome. The doors and window-frames were painted scarlet; the window-boxes, which later would be filled with summer flowers – marigolds or geraniums – were at present bright with the daffodils she had picked yesterday from her garden. (Couldn’t see the garden from here for the shoulder of the chimney.) How would it all look a year hence? The brickwork darkened with smoke, coal dust in niches of the yard, ochreous stainings on the stone walls; but still reasonably smart, still reasonably tidy – though there was a depressing tendency among most engineers to let the congealed dirt and grease collect in the house where it was not important, so long as the working part were kept oil-clean and bright.

  But what of the products brought up? All her life, it seemed to her – or all that part of her life worth living, since she came to Nampara – had been bound up, coloured, influenced for good or ill, certainly for richer or poorer, by the progress of these mines that Ross owned. First this one, Leisure, when she was still a servant in the house; she remembered a dinner Ross had given to mark the decision to open; strange, impressive, bewigged elderly gentlemen had attended it – she had long forgotten their names but not the inquiring, knowing glances that had come her way; then, when she was married, the struggle to keep the Warleggan influence from gaining control of it; Ross’s impulsive – or it seemed impulsive – decision to re-open Wheal Grace. His cousin Francis’s death in it; the further tragedy of unwatering Wheal Maiden just over the hill; the enormous enduring prosperity which had come to them as a result of the discovery of the tin floors at Wheal Grace.

  ‘I cannot name this mine,’ Ross shouted into the cool, windy, sunlit air, ‘for it is already known to us all. But I will re-name it Wheal Leisure, and the new engine I will name Isabella-Rose.’

  He lifted the bottle of whi
te Canary wine and broke it over the beam, and as the liquid glittered and spilt in the light air there was a cheer from the waiting people.

  Below, Jeremy and Curnow had raised the steam to seven inches on the scale. With the outer cylinder fully warmed and steam escaping gently from the small valve of the waste pipe, they now opened the steam regulator, blew out the air, then shut the regulators and repeated this at intervals until the gauge had fallen to four. Then Jeremy opened the exhaust regulator and the injection valve at the same time. Gradually the piston began to slide and the beam above it to move: to avoid too violent a stroke while the load was so light he shut off the regulators again; the piston continued to slide downwards and the engine’s valves emitted a sudden sharp click as the steam was cut off. The pump rods now took charge, and their weight, acting on the pump plungers in the shaft, began their perpetual task of thrusting the water in the pit upwards towards the adit level. While Tom Curnow adjusted the four valves which regulated the distribution of the steam Jeremy went to the foot of the stairs waiting for his father and mother to come down to witness the ever-recurring miracle of a modern fire engine at work.

  II

  The customary dinner had been eaten, the toasts drunk, most of the guests had left. Unlike his father, who named the mine he opened after his wife, Ross had been unwilling to re-name this mine Demelza. He had a feeling that only one person, one object in the world merited that name. It was fine to call the engine Isabella-Rose; Bella was flattered and everyone else was pleased.

  Ross had spread his net wide, and everyone connected with the mine had been invited to the dinner. Stephen and Clowance sat side by side and few could doubt their attachment for each other. All the same it was still a week to Easter and Ross did not make an announcement. As soon as he could, Jeremy slipped out of the house again and walked back across the beach to Wheal Leisure. Already, he noted with pleasure, the yellow water gushing from the adit at the foot of the cliff had doubled in volume since this morning.