The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham
‘Is it not about a young lady who showed preference for a man she knew and then changed her feelings at her brother’s request?’
‘That play has yet to be written. You should attend to the stage.’
‘Perhaps the farce will suit me better. That may be more true to life.’
Cuby looked at the glass of lemonade he was offering her. ‘Thank you, you may drink that. I’m not thirsty.’
‘You did say lemonade? Is this another change of feeling? But your brother is safely out of earshot.’
She turned to thrust herself away from him, but people hemmed her in. ‘I did not suppose you could be so needlessly offensive.’
‘Needlessly? Do you think I have no need, no cause?’
She was about to reply when the voice of someone beside her, louder than the others, shouted:
‘Leave us open they doors, Enry, cann’t ee? Tedn proper dark yet.’ Someone shouted back: ‘Couldn’t, you. They’d never disjoin them as has paid from them as has not!’
Jeremy said: ‘If I am bitter, tell me why I should not be.’
‘Because you see only one side.’
‘You have never given me help to see any other!’
‘I had hoped it was not important to you – that it would all soon be forgot.’
‘Well, it has not been.’
‘No. No, I see that . . .’
‘Is that all you can see?’
‘You cannot expect me to discuss it in the middle of this crowd!’
‘Why not? Nobody is listening.’
She took a deep breath. He offered her the glass again.
‘Tell me your side,’ he persisted. ‘I would like to understand it. I would like to be enlightened.’
She took the glass from him, sipped it, but more as if it were some poison cup. ‘You accuse me – insultingly – of changing my feelings at my brother’s command. You cannot be sure what my feelings were! And who says they have changed?’
‘Then what am I to think?’
‘Think – believe – what I told you last at Caerhays. Think of me as well as you can – that’s all.’
‘I think you’re beautiful.’
They both knew then that the emotional wound was wide open again.
‘No!’ she said quietly but very angrily. ‘No, that’s not it! That’s not the way to try to understand. I am not weak, I am strong! I am not wanton or frivolous, only hard. I . . .’ She threw her head back. ‘In fact, I intend to marry money.’
‘So I have been told.’
She stopped. ‘You know that?’
‘I have been told so.’
‘Well, it’s true. Who said so?’
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s true.’
‘Who said so?’
‘The same person who told me your family was near bankrupt over this stupid castle Major Trevanion has built; and that they were looking to you to retrieve their fortunes.’
She turned on him. ‘And if it is true, who is responsible? Not just my brother, who gets all the blame! From the age of sixteen, when this castle was being planned, I wanted it too! When I saw the plans and sketches I was enchanted. So was Charlotte. So was my mother. So were Augustus and Clemency. We all bear responsibility! The cost has gone far beyond our expectations. I told you of the landslip. And there have been many more mishaps. We jointly bear the blame.’
‘But it is you who must sacrifice yourself for money.’
‘Oh,’ she shrugged, suddenly cold, ‘who is to talk of sacrifice? I may yet find some pretty man with a fortune whom I may come to care for far more than his moneybags.’
‘As you once cared for me?’
‘Oh, you.’ She half laughed contemptuously. ‘You’re just Jeremy and by then will be long forgot.’
‘You’re making much of this forgetting. D’you suppose I can forget? I’m in love with you. I love you. I love you, Cuby. Does that mean nothing to you at all?’
‘Stop it, I tell you! Be quiet! Shut up!’
People were pushing back towards the auditorium.
She saw his face. ‘I’m sorry, Jeremy.’
‘For me or for us both?’
‘I am sorry for having allowed myself to like you too much.’
There was a germ of comfort for him here among all the bitterness and jealousy and distress.
‘So you do still care.’ It was no longer a question.
‘What does that mean? It can mean anything. Let us go back now. I still wish to – to watch, to enjoy the play.’
‘Cuby . . .’
‘No more now, please.’
‘Cuby, you do care. Can you deny it?’
‘I am not in the witness-box!’
‘Can we meet afterwards? After supper perhaps.’
‘No! If I’d known you would be here I should not have come!’
‘To talk. For ten minutes only.’
‘No!’
‘Ah,’ said Valentine, pushing his way through and smiling his brilliant, crooked smile. ‘Are you joining us again? Clemency and Clowance have gone already, anxious not to miss a word. Brighten up, Cuby, for the Farce. I believe you have taken the Tragedy too much to heart.’
II
There was another entr’acte just before nine, but Cuby did not budge from her seat. When it was over, and they came out into the mild windy April night, with the carriages and the chairs and the lanterns waiting and winking outside in the square, it was only four minutes’ stroll back to the Warleggans’, so the five young people dismissed one carriage and walked, stepping carefully here and there to avoid the pools and the horse-droppings and the heaps of refuse, talking and laughing among themselves, making their way from High Cross to St Mary’s Church, down the slit of Church Lane, into the new broad Boscawen Street and thence to Prince’s Street, where the Warleggans’ town house was up the steps on the right.
They supped, but on far sides of the table. Major Trevanion this time sat directly opposite Jeremy, but they looked stiff-faced at each other and avoided conversation. Fortunately the table was broad.
The Trevanions were spending the night with the Warleggans, but faithful to Demelza’s preferences, her children after supper would have to ride a matter of three miles up the hill to Polwhele. Jeremy again cursed his luck, for the Trevanions would leave for home early in the morning, and there would be no chance then. And Cuby was clearly intent on avoiding a further meeting tonight. Yet now the awful wound was open again, something he felt had to be resolved. Some peace of mind, some hope, or some death.
Then by chance, just when he was despairing, he caught her in the hall as she came slippering down the stairs. Of course she moved to pass him but he barred the way. The drawing-room door was half open only just behind him.
‘Let me pass,’ she whispered intensely but he did not move.
‘I asked for ten minutes.’
‘No!’
‘Five, then. Tell me, explain to me, a little more of your thinking in this matter. After all, do you not owe me that? You say you would – sell yourself merely to preserve a house – not an ancient and beloved family seat which has sheltered ten or twelve generations of Trevanions, but a castle, a new castle, a beautiful but somewhat ridiculous castle – on which your family has insanely overspent itself.’
‘Yes! If you wish to put it so unpleasantly. That is no worse a reason than many people marry for. Certainly I should never rest easy if I married for preference only and went away somewhere to some other part of the country and watched from afar as the house and the grounds and all the other lands were sold and the Trevanions vanished from a countryside where they had lived for so many centuries! For that is what will happen, and I should have contributed to it!’
‘And Augustus and Clemency? Do they also have these noble ideals?’
‘Why are you so objectionable? Clemency, yes, she does. Augustus . . . I cannot say.’
‘You think that if he finds a young lady with a pretty fortune he will be likely to hand over
She did not reply.
‘Of course,’ Jeremy said, ‘his name is still Bettesworth . . .’
She said: ‘Good night, Jeremy. And goodbye. There are many pleasant girls who would make as good a wife for you as I would. I urge you to find one.’
‘The difficulty is’, he replied, ‘that I have found the one I want. Be she pleasant or unpleasant, I still want her.’
Her pearl-ivory skin was darkened rather than coloured by its flush.
He said: ‘When I knew – when I was told it was money that you wanted and not breeding I was somewhat more disgusted even than before. To want someone of higher estate, if fastidious and arrogant, was yet understandable. This willingness to auction yourself for money . . .’
‘If you don’t let me pass I shall call out to my brother!’
‘Call out! Go on. Call out!’
She did not.
‘So,’ said Jeremy unmoving, ‘I thought I would cut you out of my life – forget you – as you seem always to be urging me to do – set the sour page aside as a lesson in the futility of – of trying to judge human nature – of its shallowness, of its worthlessness, of its disenchantment . . . Until by misfortune I met you again today . . .’
There was a bray of laughter from the room beyond. It was Unwin Trevaunance, who always laughed like that.
Jeremy said: ‘Now, having seen you again, I discover my mistake in supposing you can be forgot. On whatever terms, I am still tied . . . So now . . . so now I think, how much would you want, Cuby? If you are for sale, what is your price?’
‘Coming from you,’ she said in a low voice, ‘could anything be more insulting?’
‘No, I don’t see that. I’m in the market. I want to buy you. I’d rob a bank to buy you! Tell me how much you would cost?’
She began to cry. It was totally without noise. Just tears coming out of her eyes and running down her face. For some moments she did not even try to brush them away.
‘Ten thousand?’ he asked.
She said: ‘Oh, Jeremy! Please take yourself away to Hell and leave me alone!’
III
All those who were leaving had left. The dark, vivid sister of the Duke of Leeds had departed with the Hon. Maria Agar, with whom she was spending the night. Having accepted a postponement of one month to his first marriage, with disastrous consequences to his happiness, George looked with an element of unease on his future wife’s insistence on continuing secrecy about his second. In fact, as he had pointed out to her this afternoon, there could be little secrecy remaining. The banns had been published for the first time yesterday in the church of Breage in which parish Lady Harriet was at present living, so anyone attending prayers there would be bound to know. Her aunt, Miss Darcy, obviously knew. Maria Agar knew. Caroline Penvenen knew. And the household of Cardew could hardly be given less than three weeks to prepare for a new mistress.
She had patted his face and said: ‘Do you want a big wedding with three choirs and five hundred guests and a great marquee?’
‘You know I do not! It is the very last thing. But that is not—’
‘Nor do I. This way – nobody speaking about it until a week before – a quiet, simple ceremony – the fewer relatives and friends the better. Is it not more dignified, for us?’
‘Yes, I agree. But—’
‘Then pray do not be a sulky boy.’
It was so long since he had been called any such thing that he was not quite sure whether to be flattered or annoyed. But she had her way.
The one advantage of the secrecy was that Valentine need not be told until he was back at Eton. Disciplined by his father last year for over-spending and for having been rusticated for a half for immoral behaviour, Valentine had this year been noticeably more circumspect and the tensions between him and Sir George had lessened. But there was still a disaffection between them. Many boys go through a cynical, world-weary, disillusioned stage which means only that they are unsure of themselves and are having difficulty growing up. Valentine’s was more deep-seated and enduring than that, and often he made George uneasy and irritable with his thin handsome good looks and sharp sarcastic tongue. Sometimes in their quarrels the old suspicion had reared its head in George and he had had difficulty in keeping to the oath he had sworn on his dead wife’s body that he would never again give room to the old corroding doubt and jealousy which had ruined the last years of their married life.
Elizabeth, by giving birth prematurely to her daughter, had reinforced and made concrete all her angry denials about the birth of her son. George, at her death, had totally accepted them. And in the intervening years he had adhered to his belief that Valentine was truly his son. He still did not really doubt it even now, but he wished the boy would exhibit some more solid Warleggan traits, like his sister Ursula.
It could be said that he bore most resemblance in bearing and manner to his half-brother, Geoffrey Charles Poldark, at that age. In the days when Geoffrey Charles was living under his roof George had found him a constant irritant and a thorn. At the time he had blamed the Poldark blood of his father, since nothing ever good, in George’s view, came from that poisonous strain. But possibly, since Elizabeth was mother to them both, the fault lay at least partly with the Chynoweths. Old Jonathan had been an ineffectual nonentity all his life; but Elizabeth’s mother, herself a Le Grice, had been a determined and difficult woman, so one might trace the contrariness and perverseness to her. It was the most acceptable explanation.
Anyway, George would be saved the necessity of explaining or at least announcing personally his forthcoming marriage. A letter was altogether different. When Valentine came back it would all have happened; everyone would have settled down and a new pattern be firmly established.
After the Trevanion girls had retired, only the three older men were left in the drawing-room on the first floor, drinking port and stretching their legs towards the fire.
Sir Unwin Trevaunance, who had left Tehidy this morning, was catching the coach for London tomorrow at eight-thirty, so he said he was sleepy and would leave the other two to their own devices.
‘You’ve told us little of your own project,’ George said. ‘I trust it augurs well.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Unwin. ‘The advance in copper prices makes the venture the more promising. I doubt not I shall be down again before long. It’s a pesky distance to travel. When I sold Place House I thought, that’s an end to those interminable bone-rattling joumeys.’
‘Except that you still sit for Bodmin,’ said Major Trevanion.
‘Oh, pooh. Who cares about that? There’s no election pending.’
George said: ‘And you find Mr Pope amenable to the idea?’
‘Not at all! He’s as stubborn as a horse with glanders. I’d damn his eyes if twere not for that pretty woman he has somehow enticed into being his wife. God knows, I wonder what happens to women sometimes! Morsels as tasty as that hide away when you’re looking for a wife and then they turn up married to old men as thin as asparagus tips, and with a good deal less juice in ’em, I would suppose.’
‘It is possible that money and possessions play an important part,’ observed Trevanion drily.
‘Oh yes. Oh yes. Alas, alas.’
‘So what do you intend to do?’ asked George.
‘About what?’ Unwin looked startled, as if his secret thoughts had been surprised.
‘About the mine?’
‘Oh, that. Well, go ahead, of course! He cannot stop us. There’s not a court in the land that would find for him . . . How’s your mine doing, by the way? That one I see smoking each time I go to Place House.’
‘Spinster? Only moderate well. We cleared a small profit last year, but costs are ever rising.’
‘What made you close Wheal Plenty just along the coast? Good copper, wasn’t it?’
‘High-grade ore. But it is the sort of mine that yields abundantly only for a time. Once
‘That’s been opened again, though, hasn’t it? By the Trenegloses. And the Poldarks.’
‘Much good may it do them,’ said George spitefully. ‘Copper never improves as you go deeper.’
‘Well, we shall hope to find ore at shallow levels. The signs are good . . . We’re wanting a name for the venture, by the way. Do you have any thoughts?’
‘Wheal Pope?’ suggested Trevanion, and laughed loudly.
‘If you are interested,’ George said, ‘we might have surplus materials from Wheal Spinster. We have some track and ladders from the west shaft that we are closing down. We could agree a price.’
John Trevanion, on whom the port was having a deleterious influence, pursued his own line of thought. ‘If Wheal Spinster, why not Wheal Virgin, eh? Or Wheal Wife? Or Wheal Widow.’ Another gust of laughter.
Unwin stared at him, as if taking his proposal half seriously. ‘Chenhalls wants to call it some fancy name – Hannah, I think, after a mistress he once had. For my own part, since your nearest mine has closed, George, I thought we might call it West Wheal Plenty.’
‘Plenty?’ said Trevanion. ‘Plenty of what?’
Unwin smiled. ‘Of all the things we most desire, my friend. And now good night to you both. I must be up betimes.’
IV
Left alone at last, the two remaining men changed from port to brandy and talked for a while. The only other active person in the house was Valentine, who on the third floor was making successful advances to a young kitchen maid who had recently been engaged. His father might think him too tall, with over-thin shanks, one slightly bowed, and a long nose down which he permanently took a sour view of the world; but she found his dark good looks and gentility and cheerful, charming confidence quite overwhelming.
In the drawing-room Sir George kicked at the fire to make it blaze. ‘On the subject we have so far scarcely discussed, Major Trevanion, I have to tell you that the sort of advance you had in mind, made virtually without security, must attract a high rate of interest.’