The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham
Well . . . however long-winded, this is my Swan Song. I do not believe an Election can be long delayed when Parliament reassembles, and after that the great and the good George will see less of me, I swear, than the rich and wicked George spinning his webs in Cornwall.
I have seen the Prince a half-dozen times, and he is always very courteous to me, though I fear the one time we met last year I was not as courteous as I should have been to him. They say that after the accident to his Ankle while dancing he has had to take 250 drops of laudanum a day, and also hemlock, just to get three hours sleep!
I received Jeremy’s letter last week reporting a failure to find any Quality Ore in Wheal Leisure. You must tell him – or leave him read this letter – that it is very Early Days as yet. I have known one mine near East Pool where the Venturers prospected for two years before they struck profitable ground. Of course we could not sustain that – and sometimes now I wonder whether my decision was wise to keep the majority of shares in the two families; it bears heavy, but you know my reason.
Time is racing on, and I have already been away too long. I hope Jeremy behaves in a sensible way in all things; and take care also, please, for yourself and your Third Man. I do not as you know wear my heart on my sleeve in family matters, and no doubt Compliments and Love Tokens from me have fallen upon you as thick as snowflakes in a hot summer; but all the same I charge you to be circumspect in all things regarding your general health and safety. Preferably do not climb trees – even little ones; do not attempt to carry the spinet under your arm; nor argue with the cows; nor fall off your horse; nor leap up the stairs more than four at a time. All these things are Inadvisable.
In due course I shall be with you. Until then I subscribe myself your Ever Faithful if Frequently Absent, Husband.
II
On a Thursday in July, Stephen, parting from Clowance as the short darkness began to fall, said he would see her on Saturday as usual. He had taken to riding, and on these long summer evenings there was nothing they enjoyed more than galloping across the beach to the Dark Cliffs and back. This could be at some tides a hazardous undertaking, and twice recently they had had to dismount and lead their horses up across the sandhills and past Mingoose before they reached home.
‘What of tomorrow?’ Clowance said, gently stroking Nero’s sweaty neck.
‘Dearest, ye know we never meet on Fridays.’
‘Tomorrow the tide will be just right. We can walk through it as it recedes and have a glorious gallop back.’
‘Yes. Yes, I imagine. But twill be little different on Saturday.’
‘We shall have to wait then for the tide to go.’
‘. . . We could leave an hour later.’
She said: ‘Are you going to see Violet?’
Stephen’s horse rattled its bridle and snorted. He said: ‘Yes.’
‘Why do you not miss it for a week?’
‘She is mortal sick, Clowance.’
‘I know. But she has been sick a long time. This Friday arrangement is claiming something she has no real right to. Go Sunday morning.’
‘She will be expecting me tomorrow.’
‘And that is more important than meeting me?’
‘No. Of course not. But it has become a sort of – of a pact.’
‘Do you think she has a right to any sort of pact?’
‘Of a certainty not. But it is just that I have – promised – every Friday.’
Clowance sat her horse, fair hair blowing in the inevitable breeze.
‘Then I will come with you.’
There was another silence. Stephen said: ‘Dear heart, you should know what I feel about you. If you don’t, I have been sadly lacking in conveying me feelings. But when I go see Violet Kellow it is – something different. Of course I don’t love her. But it has been a sort of pretence – make believe – that I do. It is – a joke. She don’t even believe it herself. But she pretends to believe it – just like I do. So we meet Fridays. I sit for an hour or so talking, holding her hand, cheering her up. She’s a dear soul – in a brittle way. Soon she’s going to break . . .’
Clowance said: ‘So you will not allow me even to come with you – so that you can protest your undying devotion. I would clearly be in the way.’
Stephen hesitated. ‘Yes, me dear, you would,’ he said at length.
As she was about to turn her horse he caught at the bridle. ‘Clowance, show a mite of sense! Ye’re too big a person to feel that way! Violet is mortal sick. It is not as if I was carrying on wi’ some village girl, Beth Nanfan or the like. Even—’
‘How do I know you’re not?’
He stared at her. ‘You trying to pick a fight with me, dear heart?’
‘No, but I would like to see this straight. I would like—’
‘No matter what ye’d like, ye’ll never see it straight if you’ve no trust in me at all!’
‘Well, there are still rumours enough.’
‘Such as what, do you suppose?’
‘You go to the kiddleys – especially Sally Chill-Off’s. You go to the Nanfans’. It seems to me you go anywhere there’s a chance of a village girl.’
She tried to get her bridle free but he held it very firm. Nero rolled his eyes and snorted and was not happy with this restraint from outside. Stephen’s horse was also trying to back away.
Stephen said: ‘Listen to me: I don’t go back on friends, whoever they may be! Nanfans was very kind to me while I lived with ’em, and still are. Beth’s a nice pretty girl and I like her. But so do I like Will and Char, her father and mother. D’you think they’d be friends along of me if I was carrying on with their daughter while being promised to you? And as for Sally’s . . . there’s folk in there I’ve come to know over this last year or so – including old Tholly, who’s a rogue if ever there was one; but he was a friend of your grandfather’s! Never stops talking of the Old Cap’n, as he calls him. Regular devil he must’ve been.’
Nero, either prompted or on his own initiative, tossed up his head and nearly unseated Stephen, who lost his hold. But Clowance could see his face in the half dark.
‘Specially with women,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather was a devil with women, according to old Tholly. No woman was safe, Tholly said. There was so many wronged husbands, it’s a blamed wonder old Joshua ever died in his bed. That’s what Tholly says.’
Clowance’s temper flared. ‘I don’t know what Tholly says and I don’t care! If my grandfather was a devil with women and you seem so much to admire him, perhaps you had better go follow his example!’
She dug her heels into Nero and galloped through the gate towards the stables. Stephen began to follow her, and called her name but she would not look back. As Matthew Mark Martin came running out to help her dismount Stephen cursed under his breath and turned his horse away. He began to make his way up the track past Mellin Cottages to his lonely home at the Gatehouse.
III
When he reached Fernmore the following evening he wondered if this weekly visit was really worth a row with Clowance. Yet he was angry and resentful towards her for what he saw as her arrogance, and his resentment was the greater for still feeling, in spite of the engagement, a niggling sense of inferiority which was an insult to his manhood. All the same, were the Kellows that important to him? Daisy anyway was in Truro today visiting her aunt, Mrs Choake; Paul was in Falmouth with his father; and Mrs Kellow only waited to see him upstairs before asking if Stephen would ‘see to’ Violet for a few minutes while she called on Mrs Odgers, the parson’s wife. Although no one could be more devoted to Violet than her mother, she clearly saw Stephen as a regular and reliable visitor whose arrival was a chance for taking a welcome break.
However, Violet was the main object of his call. He went up the stairs, and Violet was looking better. Last week she had looked sick to death, but she was lively today, better coloured, and the sore on her mouth had disappeared. It crossed Stephen’s mind that perhaps Clowance was not altogether mistaken in supposin
Yet once they got talking together he perceived that Violet’s cheerfulness was surface-rooted.
It began with the usual banter. ‘Stephen, my pet, we are alone at last! You have come to claim your rights as a bridegroom!’
‘That’s for sure, old darling.’ He kissed her. ‘I told your mother not to come back for two hours. That should be long enough, shouldn’t it? Shall I draw the curtains?’
‘Please.’
He laughed and held her hand. ‘You look five times the girl you was last week. Been taking your turnip broth regular? Before I know where I am we shall be walking the beach together!’
She shook her head. ‘You know that could never happen now. You’ve sold your soul to another. However much Miss Clowance may see fit to allow you to call here, she would not take kindly to any beach promenading. Nor would I in her shoes . . . But she has small need to worry. I’ll never see the beach again.’
‘Oh, now, come now—’
‘Oh, now, come now,’ she mocked. ‘It is easy for you to sympathize, for you care little or nothing for me.’
‘But I do, I care the greatest of a lot. Otherwise, I would not—’
‘The greatest of a lot,’ she said. ‘What does that mean? The greatest of a lot. Where do you find these phrases? They sound more suitable to an effete drawing-room than what might be bandied about among pirates roving the seas with cutlasses and the like.’
‘Privateers,’ he corrected. ‘You would learn to know the difference if you was ever captured by one or the other. And I’ve never used a cutlass yet – though I’m often tempted to when I come to see you.’
So it went on, harmless, lightly insulting banter mixed with half-serious, half-cynical declarations of affection. It was a form of conversation Violet had excelled in even when well, and these meetings with Stephen, who played her at her own game, brought the sparkle out in her again. But only for a short time. Presently she lay back on her pillow, porcelain eyes exploring the day.
‘This weather, Lud, it is so humid; it feels as if the clouds are sitting on the housetops like little fat elephants. Thank God Dr Enys permits me a window open. Mama would keep me in a sealed room for fear the fresh air would set me coughing. Put that drumble-drain out, will you, Stephen. He has no business in here, and he irritates me.’
Stephen gingerly picked up the rosebud on which the bee had briefly settled, carried it to the window and shook it. The bee would not let go and began to creep up the stalk of the flower. He dropped it.
‘I believe you are frightened of insects! A big man like you!’
‘Drumble-drain,’ he retorted. ‘Where do you get such phrases? Drumble-drain. They sound more suitable to a speary old Cornish fishwife than to an effete drawing-room.’
‘Touché. . .’ She sighed. ‘D’you know, Stephen . . .’
‘What?’
‘No matter. I had better not say it. Tell me about your work as a miller. Does it prosper? There are two men in the choir in church and I confess I have never known which of them is Wilf Jonas.’
‘Wilf has a birthmark behind his ear that spreads down the back of his neck.’
‘Alas, I never saw their necks so close! I confess I never tried! Well, tell me what you have been doing. Are there any more lifeboats for sale?’
He gave her a brief account of his doings over the last week. He had the faculty of being able to present quite ordinary happenings in a way that was never dull to the listener. It was the gift of the gab, as Ben Carter called it. It entertained Violet for a few minutes. When it was over she offered him a sweetmeat. He took it and they chewed in silence.
‘Mrs Pope came to see me yesterday.’
‘Oh, did she. That was a neighbourly act.’
‘I could not quite determine whether she looked on it as a social visit or whether she accounted it part of her duty to the sick poor.’
Stephen guffawed. ‘That would not suit you, Miss Violet, would it. Well, mebbe you have to excuse her, with a husband like she’s got. A leaky old drainpipe.’
‘You always excuse pretty women,’ Violet said. ‘I’ve noticed it before.’
‘Of course. That’s why I excuse you. But think on it, what must life be like for her, tied to a sick old man?’
‘Do you know what she said yesterday? She said, “When I go into Cornish society now without my husband, and it is known that he is old and ill, it exposes me to the impertinences of many idle young men.” I so wanted to laugh!’
‘So would I.’ Stephen brooded. ‘D’ye know, from the look of her, I would not have supposed that she would have resented such impertinences at all!’
‘She has too careful a sense of her own position, that is the trouble.’
They ate another sweetmeat together.
He said: ‘What were you going to say, Violet?’
‘When?’
‘Just now. You began to say something and then broke off.’
‘Oh, that. I dare not tell you.’
‘I reckon there’s nothing you daren’t tell me. Nothing you daren’t say to a man!’
She smiled enigmatically out at the dark day, a hint more colour in her face.
‘I would have you know I was brought up a lady – much more so than Mrs Pope – however low I may have dropped from that estate by falling in love with you.’
He laughed again, but a little less certainly. Joke and truth were interwoven but one could not discern the balance, the proportion of the mix.
‘Now, now, old darling, that’s enough of that. One of these days I might take you serious.’
‘You’ll take me serious when I’m dead,’ Violet said.
‘If you’re going to be morbid I’d best be going.’
‘Yes, you had,’ said Violet, ‘if I say what I was going to say, for it will scare you more thoroughly than the drumble-drain. Be off with you now. Run away, little boy, and go buy another lifeboat.’
He took her hand. ‘Say on. Go on, shock me. See if you can. What’s wrong? Tell your old shipmate.’
She took her hand away. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said lightly. ‘Oh, nothing much. Nothing important. I’m going to die, that’s all. As I said to you a few weeks ago. Of course, it means nothing. People die every day – nearly as many as are born. The only person to whom this death is important is me!’
‘If I—’
‘Now wait. I said to you a few weeks ago, that what upsets me is I have known so little, done so little, experienced so little. How much can one have lived at twenty-two? I have never been to London, I have never been at sea, I have never had a lover, I have never had a child, I have never fully grown into the world before it is time to go out of it. All this, dear Stephen, I bitterly and most passionately resent!’
Some jackdaws were chakking on the roof just above the bedroom. The light from the window briefly darkened as they took it into their heads to fly away. The beat of their wings seemed to create a flutter of air and the curtain stirred.
‘Violet,’ said Stephen. ‘That’s a bad view, that is . . . I am kind of shocked—’
‘No. That is not it. That is not the shocking part. This is what I was going to say to you. I am a virgin.’
He looked at her in puzzlement, half grinned. ‘Well . . . we never ventured that far, did we.’
‘Nor has any man.’
‘Well . . .’ he said again. ‘That’s good. Leastwise . . .’
‘Leastwise it is not good. I have never known what it is to have a man. That is not good. But in the misty days of last year I thought there was still time.’
‘Of course there’s still time—’
‘Don’t, please, lie to me. I know there is not.’
‘Well,’ he said once again, and smiled at her.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Yes. Is it not an embarrassing subject?’
‘But surely not shocking.’
‘Not yet.’ She moved an inch or two away
He stared. ‘I don’t quite see—’
‘My face is still pretty. I examine it each morning for flaws and I find few. But my body has lost much weight since a year ago when you put your hands upon it in the church. It has – wasted. I do not suppose you could bear to touch it now.’
He still stared, his mind slowly adjusting to what she was saying and what she was implying.
‘It is a pity,’ she said, ‘that it is too late for me to know . . .’
‘Know what?’
‘Is that not a stupid question?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes . . .’ His face had flushed. ‘But you don’t surely mean . . .’
‘Why should I not mean?’
‘Well, old darling, you’re serious sick.’
‘Mortal sick.’
‘Now, now. But whatever way you see it—’
‘So I am sick,’ she said. ‘Mortal sick, I believe. And what of it? That is precisely my meaning. I really think I rather love you, Stephen. Not much. But enough to pass for the real thing. It is an unladylike confession – even unmannerly – but I will not retract it. If I were ever to experience the sensation of having a lover, a man, I do not suppose I would ever think of choosing anyone to give me that experience better than you. Now are you shocked?’
He felt unable to move from the chair beside her bed. The birds had gone. The heavy afternoon dreamed in silence.
‘Violet,’ he said.
‘Yes, Stephen.’
‘Violet, I’m not shocked – not that way – because I know ye do not mean it.’
‘Of course not. It was the veriest joke.’
‘No, I know twas not that. But you have to try to understand . . .’
‘Understand what?’ She pushed limp hair away from her brow.
‘Well. Try to understand—’
‘That you are engaged to marry Clowance Poldark?’
‘That was not what I had the mind to say.’
‘It is very strange,’ she said. ‘It’s a woman’s place never to propose – only to accept or refuse what is put to her. But one of the few advantages of mortal illness is that these restrictions are waived. So I feel in a position both of great weakness and of great strength. Pray answer me and say exactly what you think.’